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

dark tense slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

“…she knew she wouldn’t give up greatness. Not for a child’s life, and not even to prevent the suffering of the people she loved, and who loved her.” 

This story is a reimagining of the Ming Dynasty’s first Emperor; the Hongwu Emperor (Zhu Yuanzhang). 

I really wanted to like this story. Historical fiction with elements of fantasy, a sapphic romance, and an exploration of gender identity. This sounded right up my alley! But unfortunately, I did not love this book. 

It begins with a young girl in a village that is plagued by famine. This young girl has been promised a fate of ‘nothingness’. Her brother (Zhu Chongba), however, has been promised a fate of ‘greatness’ and yet, dies soon after. To avoid her terrible destiny, the young girl claims her brother’s identity and enters a monastery. When the monastery is destroyed, Zhu is forced back into a chaos-stricken world. She does everything in her power to stay alive and convince Heaven that she is worthy of her brother’s fate. 

I really liked the first part of this book. The reader is thrown into the young girl’s life and instantly connects with her and her terrible life experiences.

While in the monastery, Zhu is a great character. Her ambition and majority of her actions are justifiable. 

However, when Zhu enters the real world, her ambition goes unchecked. She will do anything, and I mean anything, to claim her brother’s destiny (including killing innocent people, putting her own people in unnecessary danger, and hurting the people she cares about with zero remorse). This made the book extremely difficult to get through because I need to like (or at least enjoy reading about) a protagonist in order to like a novel. I know that Zhu Chongba’s character is based on the Hongwu Emperor (who was also a ruthless and ambitious leader) but it just made me not enjoy this book as much as I wanted to. 

I also found that the pacing of Parts 2 and 3 were really slow. After the immersive and brilliantly tragic first part of this novel, I was disappointed to find that the rest of the book dragged on and on.

Finally, I wish that the magic system was explained in more depth because I did not know what was going on with the random appearances of ghosts & the bursts of light 😭

⭐️⭐️⭐️

*spoilers below* ⚠️⚠️⚠️

The one character I liked was Ma but I wish that she had stood up to Zhu at the end of the book (especially because she had cared about the Prince of Radiance so much). It was sad to see her just accept that she was likely going to continue getting hurt by Zhu. 


Expand filter menu Content Warnings