He Who Drowned the World by Shelley Parker-Chan: review

5/5 stars on Goodreads

He Who Drowned the World by Shelley Parker-Chan

He Who Drowned the World concludes The Radiant Emperor duology that began with She Who Became the Sun. The first book was so brilliant that when it came time to read the sequel, I postponed it for months in fear that it wouldn’t live up to the first. I shouldn’t have worried.

In the second book, Zhu Chongba, the orphan girl turned a boy monk who assumed her brother’s destiny along with his name and gender, has become the Radiant King, Zhu Yuanzhang. But she has a long way to go to defeat the Mongols and becoming the emperor. She has the Heavenly Mandate, but she isn’t the only one and the fight for the throne is fierce.

A battle after a battle follows. Zhu Yuanzhang is outnumbered, but she is resourceful and she has an unexpected—and unwilling—ally, the eunuch general Ouyang who is driven by his need to revenge his father and kill the Great Khan. The two are mirrors of each other, in their destinies and the perceived wrongness of their bodies, but only Zhu is willing to accept it.

The journey to the throne is difficult and unexpected. The death of the Great Khan isn’t what Ouyang imagined, and the Great Khan Zhu has to face isn’t who she thought he would be either. But after all the death and sacrifices, after believing she would do anything for her destiny, Zhu learns in the end that there is a sacrifice she isn’t willing to make.

This was a great book. It’s heavy on war campaigns and court intrigue, which aren’t my favourites, but the attention is always on the characters, which makes everything interesting. The contenders for the throne aren’t nice people and some of their fates are well-deserved, but the reader still feels sympathy for them. And after disliking Ma in the first book, she rose to be my favourite.

Nevertheless, this wasn’t the mind-blowing experience of the first book. Zhu Yuanzhang has assumed her role as a man so thoroughly it doesn’t cause any internal problems for her, not even when she has to pretend to be a woman. She even thinks of herself as her unlike in the first book.

But she isn’t quite as single-minded as in the first book either, driven by fear of being found out. She grows with her experiences, and learns to question the sacrifices and her destiny, which culminates in the perfect final scene. Had it gone any other way, I would’ve been seriously disappointed. Now I can imagine that as the first emperor of the Ming dynasty she would’ve been both fierce and compassionate.

I received a free copy from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

She Who Became the Sun by Shelley Parker-Chan: review

5/5 stars on Goodreads

She Who Became the Sun by Shelley Parker-Chan

She Who Became the Sun by Shelley Parker-Chan is historical fantasy set in China during the Mongol rule. Famine has emptied villages and the rest are killed in endless campaigns between the Emperor and the rebellious Chinese armies. To survive is to will it happen.

The protagonist starts as a nameless, scorned ten-year-old girl who survives on scraps her father and sole living brother of eight leave her, and her ingenuity. A fortune teller predicts greatness to her brother Zhu Chongba and nothingness for her. But when bandits attack, it’s the brother who dies while she survives.

She’s already learned that a girl is nothing, but instead of accepting it like other women around her, she finds the situation unfair. Spurred on by her will to live, she assumes her brother’s identity and outstubborns monks to be admitted to a monastery as a novice. But she assumes more than his name. She assumes his destiny to greatness too. For it to come to pass, she has to completely believe that she is Zhu and that his fate is hers, to fool the gods to grant it to her.

The story unfolds in a brisk pace. Years are skipped, and only the important scenes are told. Zhu is successful in becoming her brother, resorting to devious stunts to keep her true gender a secret. She’s becoming complacent though, believing that her greatness is found in the monastery. So when it’s destroyed, she needs to find a new way to make it happen.

She becomes a warrior, leading troops to victories against the Mongols. But it’s not enough. She needs to become the leader. And there’s nothing she won’t do to stay on her path to greatness. Nothing can stop her, not even death. It frees her from being her brother, and allows her to assume greatness as herself. The book ends when she’s halfway to her goal, to becoming the emperor.

But Zhu isn’t the only one with fated destiny. In the Mongol army, there’s a Chinese eunuch general, the right-hand man of the warlord’s son. Seemingly working towards the goal of crushing the Chinese rebels, he harbours a hatred towards the warlord and is biding his time to avenge his family’s deaths on him.

Zhu’s actions force him to act faster than he would’ve wanted, but like Zhu, he believes in the inevitability of his fate. And they share a goal: to crush the Mongol emperor.

This was a brilliant book. The pace was fast, the stakes were high, and the historical details wonderful, depicting a cruel, believable world. I wasn’t familiar with the true historical events the book is based on, but it didn’t matter at all.

The characters were oddly likeable, despite being awful people. Zhu especially manages to convey a sense of serene rightness while manipulating the events to her liking or killing people outright. She ends up marrying a woman who she repeatedly hurts by her actions, yet Ma stays by her side. The option would be worse, because at least Zhu understands what it is to be a woman without protectors. 

Not that Zhu quite accepts that she’s a woman, even after admitting to herself that she’s not her brother, nor is she quite a man either. She’s Zhu Yuanzhang, the radiant one, the one who will be the emperor. I’m looking forward to reading the conclusion to her journey.

I received a free copy from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.