Reviews with content warning for Slavery - Deep as the Sky, Red as the Sea

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Deep as the Sky, Red as the Sea by Rita Chang-Eppig

14 reviews

starrysteph's review against another edition

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adventurous dark informative reflective sad tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75

A slow-paced, thoughtful portrait that gives a legendary Chinese pirate real dimension & humanity.

After Shek Yeung witnesses the death of her ferocious pirate husband, she steps into his place and fights to maintain her power. But the seas are unforgiving, and the larger world is cracking down on piracy. She has to lead through shaky alliances, a clever nobleman purging pirates on behalf of the Chinese Emperor, and European enemies planning something terrible.

Shek Yeung is a real person, and in Deep as the Sky, Red as the Sea, Rita Chang-Eppig pulls apart legendary feats and hyperbolic statements to show a thoughtful portrait of a leader. She’s clever, and she makes mistakes. She uses her power to alter the world, and she abuses her power in times of fear. She’s intent on forging a different path than the ones before her, but their ghosts haunt her.

I’m bummed that this book has been mismarketed - for instance, “riveting, roaring adventure novel” from the blurb isn’t quite accurate. There’s some action, and definitely tension, but this is not a fast-paced swashbuckling adventure. It’s a slow and sometimes-dense portrait.

Shek Yeung’s story is quite captivating. She’s ripped from her family and powerless at the beginning, and absorbs different styles of leadership as she grows up and takes control over her life back bit by bit. And when she has opportunities for freedom - she can’t quite give up all the power she has fought so desperately to have.

Chang-Eppig explores suffocating gender roles & societal expectations, love & family, leadership, and so much more. And that underneath legends - there are simply humans.

CW: murder, death, blood, violence, pregnancy, rape, trafficking, sexism, colonization, slavery, addiction, torture, war, grief

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elenasperoni's review

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adventurous emotional tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

I very much enjoyed this book. I was drawn to the cover and i enjoy historical fiction so i figured i would like it. Following shek yueng throughout her life makes her a lovable main character, despite her crimes. Seeing into her head makes the reader forgive her for everything she does almost as she does it. My favorite part of this book however is how she weaponized her sex and all the trauma she had endured because of it. It wasnt trauma porn, it simply insinuated most of what has happened to her and there were no graphic descriptions of rape or violence. Of course these occured but almost behind a curtain of what needed to be shared and what could stay vague.

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just_one_more_paige's review against another edition

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adventurous dark reflective 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? No

4.0

I hadn’t heard of this until a few months ago when I randomly came across it on NetGalley. It was the title and cover combination that really caught my attention. Then I read it was about a pirate queen?! And there was no going back. (Also, note: Libro.fm offered it as an ALC a month or so ago and honestly, I loved having both the ebook and audiobook while reading.)

When Shek Yeung’s husband is killed in a battle, she takes immediate action, marrying his second in command (with the promise of bearing him a child, a son, to be his heir, despite having thought herself past the time in her life), in order to maintain her power and position within the fleet. But even with that quick thinking, the fleet remains on the edge of disaster in the face of myriad outside threats. Shek Yeung must navigate through a Chinese Emperor who seeks to eradicate all piracy in the most brutal manner, European powers who are tired of losing resources to the pirates, and an inter-fleet alliance that is shaky at best. Plus, as she faces the vastly different challenges of new motherhood, she begins to question what price she is actually willing to pay to retain control and leadership.

I am not sure why, but I thought there was going to be magic in this story…and there is not. I want to set that out to start, as, since I didn’t know where that impression came form personally, maybe other people are thinking that too. That has no bearing on my enjoyment of the overall reading experience whatsoever, I just felt it necessary to clarify. I will say though, there is a definite vibe that supernatural forces *could* be in play, through fate and fortune-telling and the influence of gods (similar to books like The Fortunes of Jaded Women, The Last Tale of the Flower Bride, The Cloisters, Plain Bad Heroines, etc.). So, it kind of reads like a magical historical fiction in vibe, if not in actuality. And that’s a style I can get behind.

Plot-wise, this was spectacularly written and paced. There was, absolutely, all the ruthlessness and violence one would expect from a novel about pirates, but as it was sprinkled in with stories about Ma Zhou and mythology and beliefs around her godhood, that was balanced out in a way that made it feel less intense or overwhelming. This was aided by the background on Shek Yeung’s life that was developed as the story went, giving us context not only about her own journey to piracy, but for the greater world within which her story takes place. It was tragic, as I believe all “I didn’t set out to become a pirate, but ended up here anyways” tales must be, compounded by her role as a female during this historical time period in Chinese history (but also, as a female in any time period ever, if we’re being honest). Getting to experience the story from her perspective, her own decisions, and with insight into her own thought processes and feelings, was exactly what I wanted. Finally, in regards to the plot, I would be remiss if I didn’t’ acknowledge how wonderful the complexity of the political machinations and power maneuvering were. I always love when those aspects are done with the kind of deftness that Chang-Eppig had here.

A few final thoughts. First, I was thrilled to hear that Emily Woo Zeller was narrating – I enjoy her voice talents and this was no exception. I thought it was great, the way Chang-Eppig showed how mythology and folklore take on a life of their own depending on the teller, and how every story is just that because all tales grow and change in the telling. This was demonstrated both though the tales of Ma Zhou and in the ways Shek Yeung chose portray herself and her life.

Overall, what atmospheric and original historical fiction. It was swashbuckling and violent, but also culturally and politically nuanced. Perhaps a slightly slower read than the blurb might suggest, but once I adjusted, it was such a good reading/listening experience.

"Piracy was, more often than not, a matter of convincing the target of the futility of fighting back."

"Women's life stories were written by their men, messily, elegantly, or in the case of violent men, tersely. Now that Cheng Yat was dead, Shek Yeung finally had a turn at dictating the course of things. She might have been born thirty-one years ago, but her story was only now hers."

"But villains waited for no god..."

"There were many gods in Heaven, one for whatever a person lacked (after all, wasn't lack the foundation of being human?)..."

"'Why do you need all this power?' Wo-Yuet had asked her. So that I can have complete control, she should have answered. Because the moment a powerful woman loosened her grip on the reins, even a little, someone immediately tried to wrest those reins from her. This "someone" was usually a man who believed she should never have had them in the first place."

"...acts of disobedience quickly led to unrest, which led to violence, which had to be met in kind. There was no stability without violence, nor was there peace in instability. Where was the line between stability and tyranny?"

"They'd come together to stay alive, which was different from staying together to live."

"In the end, stories were not reality, could not be reality. The storyteller decided where to start the story and where to end it, which parts to sink into and which to skin over."

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kentanapages's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging emotional informative inspiring reflective medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes

4.5

Thank you NetGalley and Bloomsbury for an ARC in exchange for an honest review!

Deep as the Sky, Red as the Sea is an adventurous historical fiction account of Shek Yeung, better known to the histories as “Ching-Yi Sao” or “Zheng Yi Sao,” a legendary pirate queen, 'The Scourge of the South China Sea'.

This is not a pretty tale, yet it’s a beautiful one, a gritty human kind of beautiful. We meet Shek Yeung just after her husband, commander of a pirate fleet, has been mortally wounded. We learn that they have been partners, each running half of the fleet; that a trust has grown between them, that she has fought daily to earn and keep that trust. We see her internal conflict over being grateful for that trust, somehow caring for this man, despite the fact that he purchased her to be his wife from a flower boat, that she had ended up there after being abducted by pirates and sold into sex work years before. She is his partner, she is his wife, she is also his property. The respect she has earned in the fleet has also been granted to her because of him, and now she must figure out how to move forward, how to keep her half of the fleet and her tenuous position, when another younger man is the named successor.

As a work of historical fiction this is fascinating, and I loved learning about early 19th Century pirates and politics and colonialist powers in and around the South China Sea. I enjoyed that the plot doesn’t build to some incredible end, because it’s loosely following a real historical set of events, and the point of it isn’t that story arc. The point of it is Shek Yeung herself.

What I truly loved this novel for is not the history, not the plot. It’s the compelling female perspective, the commentary and discourse on society and roles within it, the examination of gender and empire and capitalism and colonial oppression and patriarchal oppression and power. I love how we are shown Shek Yeung’s perspective as a female in this world, and how self aware and honest and devastating and f*&%ing relatable it is. I highlighted so many quotes, and out of context they could be commentary on our world today, on a hundred other societies and points in history, on this bloody struggle women+ and non-males and non-ruling-class persons have continued to battle decade after decade, century after century. I love that the author, through Shek Yeung’s thoughts and observations, never shies away from reality, from the way the world is, how it’s different for different genders, for different peoples.

Shek Yeung grapples with survival, with womanhood, with freedom, with personhood, with power, with want, with meaning in life. She observes how everything is impacted by societal social constructs, how these expectations and roles permeate and bind us, and internally she questions these things, she chafes at these things. Externally she does what she must to survive.

There are SO MANY quotes I highlighted and took note of and can’t wait to share. I want to be respectful of not posting these before the publishing date, in case anything changes, as I’m reading an Advanced Copy. After May 30th I’ll update this review with some of those quotes. For now here are some notes and themes:

Women are deemed unworthy of power until a man decides otherwise; power is given to women by powerful men, granted to them, and this can be so easily taken away. (This is part of why I hate the word empowered.)
Women are seen as inferior, as lesser than men, because of lesser physical strength (on average), and in no small part due to the debilitating act of childbirth.
Women have to show they can do anything a man can do, constantly prove themselves to be as tough as the man, but they also have to do more, because they are also expected to be women, to be able to turn that womanhood on and off as needed, to “save” men when needed.
Childbirth is a risk but also one of the only bargaining chips for power a woman has.

I'm so glad I read this. It's not what I expected, but it's what I needed.

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