SHE WHO BECAME THE SUN | Shelley Parker-Chan
Zhu Chongba is destined for greatness.
It’s his fate – the fortune teller said so. But Zhu Chongba is dead. And his sister – the girl whose fate is to be nothing – makes a decision that will not only change her life, but will alter the course of history.
She Who Became the Sun is described as ‘Mulan meets The Song of Achilles’, which is absolutely true – as long as your idea of Mulan is less the jovial musical of Disney fame, and more of an intense, famine-stricken, political intrigue-filled, military manoeuvring chess game of a tale. It’s everything that it promises to be, and so, so much more. A true fantasy epic, in every sense of the phrase.
I’m not usually a huge fan of stories which go into chapters and chapters of detail about great battles, which is why I love the way Shelley Parker-Chan has written this book. The battles are unimportant. For the most part, the battles themselves get a paragraph; some are just a sentence or two. What is important is the political movements preceding and following them, their impacts on the armies, and their impacts on loyalties. It’s a clever way of writing what is essentially a book about war – to not include the physical war, but to focus on the political and personal impacts, and the characters driving the movements.
The story is a reimagination of the Red Turban rebellion and the rise of the Ming dynasty, with added fantasy elements (ghosts! magic!). It follows two stories, on opposing sides: the first is Zhu Chongba, a girl who has stolen her brother’s fate; the second is Ouyang, a eunuch General for the Yuan faction. Both characters are cunning, manoeuvring those around them. Zhu is fuelled by her desire for greatness; Ouyang by his desire for revenge.
Desire is a core theme of She Who Became the Sun – not only for the lengths people will go to to get what they want, but also for the devastating impacts of not desiring something enough. It’s a full on (I’ll add the author’s provided CWs below) and richly imagined, immersive tale that had me flipping pages whenever I had a spare moment.
If you haven’t already added this one to your TBR (you good?), add it now – it’s sure to become a classic, and I cannot recommend this powerful story more.
Thank you to NetGalley and to Tor/Forge publishers for providing me with this ARC.
AUTHOR’S PROVIDED CWs:
* Dysphoria
* Pre-existing non-consensual castration
* Misgendering
* Internalised homophobia
* Life-altering injury (amputation)
* Ableist language
* Non-graphic depictions of death by torture
* Major character death
* Offscreen murder of a child
* Scenes depicting extreme hunger/starvation
* Graphic depiction of a person burning to death
