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A review by sarahdm
He Who Drowned the World by Shelley Parker-Chan
adventurous
emotional
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
2.5
I’ll start by saying that I did not enjoy “She Who Became The Sun” mostly because it was advertised to me in the wrong way. I thought maybe if I had gone in blind I probably would have liked it. It was well written and I did like most of the characters. So knowing that a second book was coming and seeing potential I told myself I would give the second book a try when it came out.
Positives first:
In the last book, huge important events and choices would be skipped over. Those skipped scenes would be summed up with something like “this happened off screen but it happened, anyway.” Thats no longer happening which I am hugely thankful for.
I also feel like the character interactions in this book were super fun. Ouyang, Zhu, Xu Da, and Ma are all interacting with each other a lot in the first half of the book. Those interactions were honestly so fun to read and gave the book a completely different tone. Wang Baoxiang is also pretty heavily featured in this book. In the last book I felt like I barely knew his character, but he’s got main character status here. I really enjoyed his character here, and all of his weird plotting.
Okay Negatives:
I am not a huge fan of how this book explores gender and sexual identity. I’m part of the LGBT community though I am cis, so take my opinion however you want. I feel Zhu was suppose to be telling a specific type of queer narrative but I could not tell you what that was. This character’s use to tell a queer story feels very incomplete which is a shame because I feel like it would have been really awesome. I actually feel this way about a lot of the characters. There is a lot of queer narratives going on that never concluded or just feels incomplete. Is Zhu man, woman, non-binary, still figuring it out, or something else entirely? I have no fucking clue. I don’t think the reader is owed these conclusions but it just seems weird to start these conversations and not finish them. I think a lot of characters were honestly done dirty. Zhu, Ouyang, Wang, and Ma mostly.
I just don’t think these books are for me. There is a major character death around the 70% mark and I just wanted to stop reading. It was becoming clear to me that even going in with lowered expectations that I wasn’t going to enjoy the book anymore. This character death was done really well and I really felt it concluded their narrative neatly. I realized it was the only character that was going to get a narratively satisfying conclusion that I was gonna be happy with and I just wanted to stop. The rest of the book was a drag to me. Other characters died with little to no ceremony. The ending was anti-climactic.
Its clear to see why people love these books. They are all so well written with interesting characters. But this series just was not for me.
Positives first:
In the last book, huge important events and choices would be skipped over. Those skipped scenes would be summed up with something like “this happened off screen but it happened, anyway.” Thats no longer happening which I am hugely thankful for.
I also feel like the character interactions in this book were super fun. Ouyang, Zhu, Xu Da, and Ma are all interacting with each other a lot in the first half of the book. Those interactions were honestly so fun to read and gave the book a completely different tone. Wang Baoxiang is also pretty heavily featured in this book. In the last book I felt like I barely knew his character, but he’s got main character status here. I really enjoyed his character here, and all of his weird plotting.
Okay Negatives:
I am not a huge fan of how this book explores gender and sexual identity. I’m part of the LGBT community though I am cis, so take my opinion however you want. I feel Zhu was suppose to be telling a specific type of queer narrative but I could not tell you what that was. This character’s use to tell a queer story feels very incomplete which is a shame because I feel like it would have been really awesome. I actually feel this way about a lot of the characters. There is a lot of queer narratives going on that never concluded or just feels incomplete. Is Zhu man, woman, non-binary, still figuring it out, or something else entirely? I have no fucking clue. I don’t think the reader is owed these conclusions but it just seems weird to start these conversations and not finish them. I think a lot of characters were honestly done dirty. Zhu, Ouyang, Wang, and Ma mostly.
I just don’t think these books are for me. There is a major character death around the 70% mark and I just wanted to stop reading. It was becoming clear to me that even going in with lowered expectations that I wasn’t going to enjoy the book anymore. This character death was done really well and I really felt it concluded their narrative neatly. I realized it was the only character that was going to get a narratively satisfying conclusion that I was gonna be happy with and I just wanted to stop. The rest of the book was a drag to me. Other characters died with little to no ceremony. The ending was anti-climactic.
Its clear to see why people love these books. They are all so well written with interesting characters. But this series just was not for me.