Shelley Parker-Chan: She Who Beame The Sun
Feb. 3rd, 2024 11:35 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
selenakI had osmosed enough good word of mouth about this one to try it. Although I have to say I am glad not to have heard the publisher's pitch - "Mulan meets Song of Achilles" - because that would have put me off, seeing as I couldn't stand Song of Achilles, and that would have been a shame, because I really did like this novel.
It is set during the waning days of the Yuan dynasty, the Mongol rule of China, and thus in the rise of the not yet called that Ming dynasty, and never tells us our heroine's orignal name, for different reasons than the lack of a name for the narrator of Rebecca. The central character in She Who Became The Sun, starting out as a girl in a famine stricken village, picks her (soon dead) brother's name and destiny in the opening chapter. (This is said at the back of the book so doesn't count as a spoiler.) Who she is and who she makes herself into is an ongoing challenge and theme of the book, along with destiny-by-choice. Not for nothing is her primary antagonist and foil a Eunuch, who unlike her did not choose his between the genders fate - but like her actively pursues the destiny he claims to be ruled by. Our heroine's name for the majority of the novel is Zhu, but after an exclusive focus on her for the first quarter or so the novel branches out to introduce other characters - the Eunuch, Ouyang, who fights for the Mongols who wiped out his birth family, the girl Ma, who starts out married to one of the leading rebels, and Esen, Ouyang's immediate superior chiefly among them, and all are interesting and vividly described. Ahead of reading the book, I was wondering how the author would handle the fact that the Yuan dynasty at this late stage was nothing to write home about - there would be fascinating Mongol leaders again, but only after they had lost China -, because obviously you need impressive antagonists if you want your hero(ine) to look even more impressive for defeating them. Cleverly, this is accomplished in a variety of ways - firstly, Zhu has famine and the patriarchy of her own society to overcome, then the strict hierarchy of the Buddhist monastery where she-as-her-brother seeks shelter in order not to starve, and even once she's with the army, she's in an outsider position (as a monk). Secondly, as mentioned, her main foil in the novel isn't one of the Yuan princes but Ouyang, who, like her, has his own secrets and agenda.
The novel provides plots within plots and also great character development all around. Zhu is initially driven by not just the basic desire to survive but also to matter, to not be nothing; it's not like she starts out with a Master Plan to accomplish what she has accomplished by the time. What she wants changes through the book. As does what she's willing to do for it. And the novel doesn't shy away from the fact it won't just be unsympathetic bad guys standing in our heroine's way. Nor does it pull the "evil advisor" card, i.e. puts the blame on another character. By the time the novel ends, Zhu has done something that solidly puts her into solidly into, hm, let's say Caprica Six territory and leave at that BSG allusion.
It's also a novel that fully embraces its genderqueer premise. The two main romantic relationships of the book, one explicit, the other unspoken but very there, are same sex in nature. And it doesn't forget not every powerful emotional relationship has to be sexual - there are also both compelling friendships and enmities.
Lastly: it's classified as historical fantasy by the publisher. The "fantasy" part essentially consists on the "Mandate of Heaven" which the Yuan are about to lose and several possible candidates for future Emperor are able to produce being a literal flame they can psychically ignite - that, and their ability to see ghosts. But that's it; the wars are fought by rl means, no dragons are flying around, and natural castrophes as well as famine can't be solved with fantastical elements, either. All in all, I would call it a historical novel going for a mythic aura myself.
It is set during the waning days of the Yuan dynasty, the Mongol rule of China, and thus in the rise of the not yet called that Ming dynasty, and never tells us our heroine's orignal name, for different reasons than the lack of a name for the narrator of Rebecca. The central character in She Who Became The Sun, starting out as a girl in a famine stricken village, picks her (soon dead) brother's name and destiny in the opening chapter. (This is said at the back of the book so doesn't count as a spoiler.) Who she is and who she makes herself into is an ongoing challenge and theme of the book, along with destiny-by-choice. Not for nothing is her primary antagonist and foil a Eunuch, who unlike her did not choose his between the genders fate - but like her actively pursues the destiny he claims to be ruled by. Our heroine's name for the majority of the novel is Zhu, but after an exclusive focus on her for the first quarter or so the novel branches out to introduce other characters - the Eunuch, Ouyang, who fights for the Mongols who wiped out his birth family, the girl Ma, who starts out married to one of the leading rebels, and Esen, Ouyang's immediate superior chiefly among them, and all are interesting and vividly described. Ahead of reading the book, I was wondering how the author would handle the fact that the Yuan dynasty at this late stage was nothing to write home about - there would be fascinating Mongol leaders again, but only after they had lost China -, because obviously you need impressive antagonists if you want your hero(ine) to look even more impressive for defeating them. Cleverly, this is accomplished in a variety of ways - firstly, Zhu has famine and the patriarchy of her own society to overcome, then the strict hierarchy of the Buddhist monastery where she-as-her-brother seeks shelter in order not to starve, and even once she's with the army, she's in an outsider position (as a monk). Secondly, as mentioned, her main foil in the novel isn't one of the Yuan princes but Ouyang, who, like her, has his own secrets and agenda.
The novel provides plots within plots and also great character development all around. Zhu is initially driven by not just the basic desire to survive but also to matter, to not be nothing; it's not like she starts out with a Master Plan to accomplish what she has accomplished by the time. What she wants changes through the book. As does what she's willing to do for it. And the novel doesn't shy away from the fact it won't just be unsympathetic bad guys standing in our heroine's way. Nor does it pull the "evil advisor" card, i.e. puts the blame on another character. By the time the novel ends, Zhu has done something that solidly puts her into solidly into, hm, let's say Caprica Six territory and leave at that BSG allusion.
It's also a novel that fully embraces its genderqueer premise. The two main romantic relationships of the book, one explicit, the other unspoken but very there, are same sex in nature. And it doesn't forget not every powerful emotional relationship has to be sexual - there are also both compelling friendships and enmities.
Lastly: it's classified as historical fantasy by the publisher. The "fantasy" part essentially consists on the "Mandate of Heaven" which the Yuan are about to lose and several possible candidates for future Emperor are able to produce being a literal flame they can psychically ignite - that, and their ability to see ghosts. But that's it; the wars are fought by rl means, no dragons are flying around, and natural castrophes as well as famine can't be solved with fantastical elements, either. All in all, I would call it a historical novel going for a mythic aura myself.
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Date: 2024-02-03 11:27 am (UTC)This sounds really interesting! I might try it.
Just out of interest, what did you dislike about Song of Achilles? (I enjoyed Circe but bounced off SoA and am curious).
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Date: 2024-02-03 02:39 pm (UTC)1) Everything disagreeable about Achilles to the modern reader? His mother's fault!
2) Patroclos and Achilles run a women's shelter in the Greek camp, they definitely are not slave owners
3) To complete the bad fanfic clichés, any woman whom some previous canon has paired up with one half of the OTP is either bad news (Achilles' wife), or doesn't have sex with him at all and is only assumed to (see above: re: women's shelter).
But I think it was bad mother Thetis who put me off the most. I mean, I get the gods, by and large, are an amoral selfish bunch in the Millerverse (valid take, though the first half of Circe had them more like mean girls in a high school movie - I did like the second half, though), but Thetis is a rarely sympathetic divine parent in the myths. She didn't want to marry a mortal in the first place and was forced into it, but once Achilles was there, she did everything she could to protect him, and once he'd chosen to be a warrior anyway, tried her best to support him there as well. Making her evil to justify Achilles' killing rage and glory thirst is just - ugh.
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Date: 2024-02-04 09:17 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-02-05 09:12 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-02-07 07:03 pm (UTC)Aha - yes, I can see that. I’d actually sort of forgotten about awful Thetis (I dropped it after reading about the first third).
I just couldn’t buy the central relationship. The story completely failed to sell me on what was pulling these two men towards each other, other than ‘because the plot demands it’. I remember thinking that I’ve read absolute bucketloads of m/m fic over the years which had done a fantastically better job at showing the reader why two characters are attracted to each other, and for me SoA just completely failed in that regard.
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Date: 2024-02-03 01:46 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-02-03 02:43 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-02-03 03:45 pm (UTC)Oh Lord, if you'd gone in expecting that, this novel would've been a shock!
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Date: 2024-02-03 03:57 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-02-03 05:53 pm (UTC)I liked both books a great deal, though perhaps I liked them differently from each other. I also knew almost nothing about the Chinese history coming in, and I have not done a lot of follow up reading since, but Parker-Chan is clearly coming from a very well-informed place so I felt in good hands.
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