A review by laguerrelewis
She Who Became the Sun by Shelley Parker-Chan

adventurous dark emotional funny inspiring reflective sad tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

This book, like its characters, contains multitudes. It reflects on gender, survival, ambition, society, discrimination, loyalty, identity, and even more than I name here. It also manages to tell an epic story on top of all that. For that I praise Shelley Parker-Chan. My only gripes with this book are that it takes a very long time to get into the meat of the book, that the prose is beautiful at the expense of sometimes distancing us from the characters (who were truly my favorite aspect of this story) and
there is a very interesting connection made with fate and biological sex throughout the story, but ultimately I, as a nonbinary reader, felt wasn’t explored as well as it could have been.
All in all I recommend this book and enjoyed it, though I will say I am not in a rush to pick up the sequel.

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