I kept putting this off for way too long. And for no good reason, because I got sucked into the atmosphere of the world quite fast. The charac4.35/5 ⭐
I kept putting this off for way too long. And for no good reason, because I got sucked into the atmosphere of the world quite fast. The characters were sweet and cute, but also they had a roughness I couldn't explain. It was both intentional and unintentional which made me categorise the narrative sometimes as a bit silly here and there, but it was a very good and thoroughly enjoyable read overall....more
It is an unbelievable feeling when you discover a debut novel of a writer and it simply slaps, just like this book here did. If there was a hy4.25/5 ⭐
It is an unbelievable feeling when you discover a debut novel of a writer and it simply slaps, just like this book here did. If there was a hype, it was real and it deserved it and it lived up to it.
This is a wonderfully and artfully mastered reinterpretation of Mulan, set in the Ming Dynasty when famine, war, poverty and thievery were thriving. The book is heavy, loaded with lots of really serious subjects, and written in an grown-up manner that's harsh and unforgiving, but the storyline itself is very cleverly executed.
The story follows, in the beginning, a family of three, father, daughter and son, who were living in a village and were suffering from poverty. The boy, Zhu Chongba, has been predicted greatness while his sister remained a no one. The real tasteful manner in which the writer changes the faiths in this story comes in spectacularly, right when the village is being attacked and destinies swap. The father and Zhu Chongba die faster than you'd expect whilst the girl survives and mostly thanks to her will to live and her stubbornness. She decides to take matters into her own hands and take her dead brother's name and fulfil the prophecy the name was tied to.
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The characters in this book are really well described not by their physical traits, but by their actions throughout the book. In my opinion, Zhu is a very well-developed, cunning and brave character, with a brilliant mind and a strong will and her capacity of being so chameleonic and achieve her ultimate goals is spectacular.
I loved how the historical names of battles and ethnic group names haven't been changed. There was indeed a historically accurate rebellion called the Red Turban Rebellion, where uprisings against the Mongol-controlled Yuan dynasty in China occurred in the mid-1300s.
Brilliantly executed and fabulously told, She Who Became the Sun is packed with political intrigue, warfare schemes, history, fantastic elements and, a very important aspect, queer love, that I really thought it gave a special spice to the story that set it even more apart than it was already. This is now definitely on my top best East-Asian history-inspired books, right amongst The Poppy War and Daughter of the Moon Goddess....more
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