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A review by lindentea
She Who Became the Sun by Shelley Parker-Chan
adventurous
dark
fast-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
3.75
Things I looved:
- writing style! This is a DEBUT?? i literally would not have guessed based on the gorgeous gorgeous writing. i will say there was the occasional metaphor that made me go “??” because it was very Evocative of a Vibe but not based on a frame of reference i had, but this is not a bad thing imo
- the first 30% - i was HOOKED the whole time Zhu was like surviving and being in the monastery, the whole micro-snapshots of her growing up
- OUYANG!!!! a foil of all time actually. and dude do i ever love a foil. but even beyond that he was such a delight to follow to the point where sometimes esp during the middle section id get more hype for an ouyang chapter than a zhu chapter #sorrynotsorry. and like imagine being such a slay foil that you then get your OWN foil
- and speaking of: queer historical fantasy that is both aware of historical circumstance and how someone within a different framework than us might think about their queer identity, AND insightful about that exploration from a modern queer identity pov too. you get what im saying?
things that surprised me, like i didn’t hate them or particularly love them but i think they’re worthy of comment:
- FISTING????
- TRULY a morally gray protagonist on like the darker side. like at the end of the book zhu killed a child to get what she wanted. i support nonbinary wrongs but whoa?
- esen, ouyang, and baoxiang ………….. lowkey welcome back robb stark theon greyjoy and jon snow
things i was not super a fan of:
- pacing was all sorts of fucked up! this is a lot of story to fit into 400 pages imo and you can very much see where the page count could have been much higher: in the military offensives and a lot of the politicking. the thing is that there’s a way to write about huge battles without actually writing a huge battle scene that also isn’t “the siege lasted two weeks, many lives were lost”, which is to write abt the battle from the pov of a character who’s not there…… which in this case is ma!! like not to be too asoiaf-pilled but ma could have easily played catelyn in that zhu would be warring, but like off-page, and ma is left to politic and react and such? Hope that also makes sense. writing this at 2am
- the pacing is such a big thing that im making it two bullet points. huge status-quo changing tide-turning events would happen every single chapter and they’d sometimes be explained with one sentence. I don’t even WANT them described i just wanted to take more time especially because i lost track of everyone’s character motivations around the middle to such a degree that i was like ok damn… i guess we’re doing this
- writing style! This is a DEBUT?? i literally would not have guessed based on the gorgeous gorgeous writing. i will say there was the occasional metaphor that made me go “??” because it was very Evocative of a Vibe but not based on a frame of reference i had, but this is not a bad thing imo
- the first 30% - i was HOOKED the whole time Zhu was like surviving and being in the monastery, the whole micro-snapshots of her growing up
- OUYANG!!!! a foil of all time actually. and dude do i ever love a foil. but even beyond that he was such a delight to follow to the point where sometimes esp during the middle section id get more hype for an ouyang chapter than a zhu chapter #sorrynotsorry. and like imagine being such a slay foil that you then get your OWN foil
- and speaking of: queer historical fantasy that is both aware of historical circumstance and how someone within a different framework than us might think about their queer identity, AND insightful about that exploration from a modern queer identity pov too. you get what im saying?
things that surprised me, like i didn’t hate them or particularly love them but i think they’re worthy of comment:
-
- TRULY a morally gray protagonist on like the darker side. like at the end of the book zhu
- esen, ouyang, and baoxiang ………….. lowkey welcome back robb stark theon greyjoy and jon snow
things i was not super a fan of:
- pacing was all sorts of fucked up! this is a lot of story to fit into 400 pages imo and you can very much see where the page count could have been much higher: in the military offensives and a lot of the politicking. the thing is that there’s a way to write about huge battles without actually writing a huge battle scene that also isn’t “the siege lasted two weeks, many lives were lost”, which is to write abt the battle from the pov of a character who’s not there…… which in this case is ma!! like not to be too asoiaf-pilled but ma could have easily played catelyn in that zhu would be warring, but like off-page, and ma is left to politic and react and such? Hope that also makes sense. writing this at 2am
- the pacing is such a big thing that im making it two bullet points. huge status-quo changing tide-turning events would happen every single chapter and they’d sometimes be explained with one sentence. I don’t even WANT them described i just wanted to take more time especially because i lost track of everyone’s character motivations around the middle to such a degree that i was like ok damn… i guess we’re doing this