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A review by mg_in_md_
Empress by Shan Sa
1.0
To be rated/reviewed closer to this month's book club meeting
I had a very hard time getting through this book and even harder time settling on how to rate/review it. I am reluctant to give one star ratings for a few reasons...but...while I appreciated the author's ambition in telling the story of this controversial woman, and felt that the translation was extremely well-done, this was not the book for me. If I hadn't been the one who nominated it for my book club, I probably would have stopped reading it. As it was, I ended up skimming over certain passages to get to the end. I knew virtually nothing about Empress Wu (China's only female emperor) prior to reading this book and was eager to learn more about her life and this period of history. This fictionalized account of her life is told in the first person, perhaps to humanize a woman who was defamed for daring to seize power and maligned by the history books. It follows Empress Wu from the womb to the grave. The language used is poetic and inventive, and the author clearly did a tremendous amount of research about Empress Wu, the golden age of the Tang dynasty, and life in the palace court. Unfortunately, I could not get past the more intimate personal elements and wished that they had been minimized to focus more on the politics. Maybe those aspects of Empress Wu's life were too interwoven into the politics though and this was unavoidable in telling her story, but I felt that certain scenes were gratuitous and distracted me from learning about this period of time and this woman. Perhaps a nonfiction account would have appealed to me more or I would have had a different reading of this book if I'd known more about Empress Wu prior to reading it. I am still torn about how to describe this book more than a week after having finished it because I'm not sure if my reaction is fair since I knew so little about the subject prior to reading this book. I am left wondering if I'm judging the story based on facts/aspects of Empress Wu's life that the author could not change in order to stay true to the history.
In addition to this being the January book club selection, I used this book for the 2016 Book Riot Read Harder Challenge category of "read a book of historical fiction set before 1900." At least I can say it most definitely helped me to read harder this year!
I had a very hard time getting through this book and even harder time settling on how to rate/review it. I am reluctant to give one star ratings for a few reasons...but...while I appreciated the author's ambition in telling the story of this controversial woman, and felt that the translation was extremely well-done, this was not the book for me. If I hadn't been the one who nominated it for my book club, I probably would have stopped reading it. As it was, I ended up skimming over certain passages to get to the end. I knew virtually nothing about Empress Wu (China's only female emperor) prior to reading this book and was eager to learn more about her life and this period of history. This fictionalized account of her life is told in the first person, perhaps to humanize a woman who was defamed for daring to seize power and maligned by the history books. It follows Empress Wu from the womb to the grave. The language used is poetic and inventive, and the author clearly did a tremendous amount of research about Empress Wu, the golden age of the Tang dynasty, and life in the palace court. Unfortunately, I could not get past the more intimate personal elements and wished that they had been minimized to focus more on the politics. Maybe those aspects of Empress Wu's life were too interwoven into the politics though and this was unavoidable in telling her story, but I felt that certain scenes were gratuitous and distracted me from learning about this period of time and this woman. Perhaps a nonfiction account would have appealed to me more or I would have had a different reading of this book if I'd known more about Empress Wu prior to reading it. I am still torn about how to describe this book more than a week after having finished it because I'm not sure if my reaction is fair since I knew so little about the subject prior to reading this book. I am left wondering if I'm judging the story based on facts/aspects of Empress Wu's life that the author could not change in order to stay true to the history.
In addition to this being the January book club selection, I used this book for the 2016 Book Riot Read Harder Challenge category of "read a book of historical fiction set before 1900." At least I can say it most definitely helped me to read harder this year!