A review by just_one_more_paige
She Who Became the Sun by Shelley Parker-Chan

adventurous dark reflective slow-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? It's complicated

4.0

 
This duology - a queer magical historical fantasy compared to Mulan - is one I've absolutely had on my TBR for awhile now. You know I can basically recite that movie word for word. Classic. Plus, since its publication, it has won, or been a finalist for, so many awards. And its moment, for me, is now. 
 
Blurb supplied by Goodreads: " In a famine-stricken village on a dusty yellow plain, two children are given two fates. A boy, greatness. A girl, nothingness…  In 1345, China lies under harsh Mongol rule. For the starving peasants of the Central Plains, greatness is something found only in stories. When the Zhu family’s eighth-born son, Zhu Chongba, is given a fate of greatness, everyone is mystified as to how it will come to pass. The fate of nothingness received by the family’s clever and capable second daughter, on the other hand, is only as expected. When a bandit attack orphans the two children, though, it is Zhu Chongba who succumbs to despair and dies. Desperate to escape her own fated death, the girl uses her brother's identity to enter a monastery as a young male novice. There, propelled by her burning desire to survive, Zhu learns she is capable of doing whatever it takes, no matter how callous, to stay hidden from her fate. After her sanctuary is destroyed for supporting the rebellion against Mongol rule, Zhu takes the chance to claim another future her brother's abandoned greatness." 
 
Well, this was absolutely as epic and superbly wrought as promised. The writing is expert level. The details are so, so good. In particular, the descriptions of the small things, which are the things that really make a realistic rendition of a setting/situation, are phenomenally observed and conveyed. And the politics are incredibly complex. Like, damn. It's clear in every moment how much care Parker-Chan put into the crafting of this story. I mean, the depth of research it must have taken to have this level of conception of the rise to power of the Ming Dynasty's founding emperor, and the preceding struggle against the Mongol empire...extraordinary. And even more so because Parker-Chan is not only able to tell this tale convincingly, rivetingly, with pacing that is a solid pacing balance of slower intrigue/character build (it does lean towards this aspect a bit, heads up) and moments of shock and action (there is definitely no holding back on the violence of war and the violations that come from abuses of power/trying to access power...brutal and brutally accurate). But they also do so while deftly adding magical and gender-bending aspects of this retelling, without a single perceivable loss of grounding in the "truth" of the history. 
 
The other major thing I want to note in this review is the finely tuned way in which Parker-Chan writes about Zhu's experiences with gender. And the way, in the development of their characters, Ouyang plays a counter perspective/experience of gender and its performance. Zhu uses her gender to her advantage, the authority/respect given to someone outwardly a man, and the internal experience of womanhood to connect with allies that need a different touch. She wields both without mercy, and finds power in the fluidity of that. A power that slowly starts to also include a sense of greater comfort, personally, as she has some time/space to explore and come to terms with her own body and her own relationship with it (helped greatly, it should be added, by having one external person who accepts/knows her fully). I loved every bit of it, especially when, by having this equanimity about her identity, she is able to overcome what, in another body's experience, would have been...its end. Oh, and I also loved the way Zhu's presentation as a man, and the power/opportunity that gave her, that a (externally) woman could never achieve, combined with her ability to "tap into a woman’s desires," as it were, allowed her to create the space for other women to recognize what they really wanted, and to reach for that, and become more. And isn’t that SUCH a meaningful example of what male allyship *could* look like, IRL, with just a *little* effort?! Anyways, it's all written with deep emotion, in the uncertainty of it and in the joy...deep in the way that feels personal, and I can only assume reflects, at least in parts, the author's own emotional journey with gender. On the other hand we have Ouyang. Absolutely mired in shame and self-disgust because a societally important aspect of his own gender has been taken from him, and that affects so much of his existence, from his internal understanding of himself to his external treatment. What a juxtaposition. What an exploration of what makes a person who/how they are. Literary excellence.       
 
Just, an incredible first installation of an epic historical (retelling) fantasy, intertwined with a profound coming of age and identity. 
 
“The body became used to exercise, particular sounds and sensations, or even physical pain. But it was strange how shame was something you never became inured to: each time hurt just as much as the first.” 
 
“What someone is means nothing about what kind of person they are. Truth is in actions.” 
 
“But if everything in your life was as preordained as your fate, what point was there in wanting?” 
 
“I thought monks teach that desire is the cause of all suffering. / It is. [...] But you know what's worse than suffering? Not suffering, because you're not alive to feel it.” 
 
“…he had always believed revenge would change something. It was only in having done it that he understood that what had been lost was still lost forever...” 
 
“Not-wanting is a desire too; it yields suffering just as much as wanting.” 
 
“…she saw someone who seemed neither male nor female, but another substance entirely: something wholly and powerfully of its own kind. The promise of difference, made real. With a sensation of vertiginous terror, Ma felt the rigid pattern of her future falling away, until all that was left was the blankness of pure possibility. [...] She was yielding to it, being consumed by it, and it was the most beautiful and frightening thing she'd ever felt. She wanted. She wanted everything Zhu was offering with that promise of difference. Freedom, and desire, and her life to make her own. And if the price of all of that was suffering, why did it matter when she would suffer no matter what she chose?” 
 
“There was no regaining the past.” 
Expand filter menu Content Warnings