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selenakTurns out I could not wait to complete the duology that puts a fantastical and genderqueer spin on the origins of the Ming Dynasty.
It is a very good second novel, and I'm not surprised it stopped when it did. Not just because in general, people love to root for an underdog challenging The Man but lose interest/are disappointed/don't want to know how said underdog is doing when put in charge and being The Man, not least because governing never can deliver all the expectations (be it in a democracy or a monarchy), it even in best of cases has to include compromises, and also, someone else is invevitably the new underdog. In this particular case, there's also the fact that the story itself includes several possible futures via the other characters who reach their goal (whether or not this means supreme power) before our heroine does, and Zhu seeing the effect this has on them is an important part of her story and final character test. Afterwards, her mythic arc is complete, and the actual rule of the Hongwu Emperor (whether or not this version would include the darker parts) would be a different story altogether.
This time, the fantasy elements are somewhat stronger, which isn't a complaint on my part. For example, I was rather crushed when realising that Ouyang had died without one more encounter with Zhu, and that ability for those who have the Mandate (especially Zhu) to see ghosts come in really handy, pun inevitable, in giving me that last meeting wrapping up their relationship regardless; I don't think a strictly historical novel could have pulled that off. (Especially since Ouyang had to die when he did, his survival at that point would have broken any suspension of disbelief.) This being said, I also like the ambiguity about the ghosts, and about what having the mandate (that ability to ignite a flame psychically) actually means. Far more than the first, the second novel implies it's not about the person's ability to govern, not at all, but about that person desiring something strongly enough and believing themselves capable of going for said goal. (Not just via middlemen, but directly, which is why Madame Zhang doesn't have it but Wang Boaxiang does.) And given Wang concludes he never truly saw Esen (as a ghost) but what he wanted to see while Zhu ultimately thinks the ghosts are echoes of the dead people, of their essences, but not exactly the dead people themselves, again the question of whether the ghosts are this or manifestations of the mandate-having people's subconscious fears and desires is up for debate.
Zhu deciding that her road to power can only accomplished via teaming up with her former arch nemesis Ouyang makes for a wonderful execution of the "enemies become (temporary) allies against third parties and while doing that become close" trope, while its ending isn't something fanfiction would have done but what felt right. It's been established through both novels that Ouyang, partly but not exclusively because of his forced castration and a life time of being regarded not a man, really, really, REALLY hates women, and thus him not being able to accept Zhu anymore once he finally is confronted with the fact she is one was the logical outcome, not despite but because they've become close as allies and he really allowed himself to be vulnerable in front of her. Him being able to change his mind at this late point, after a novel in which his self loathing had only grown compared to the previous one, would not have felt right for the character. (Though, again, I was grateful for Zhu being able enlist his ghost/echo's help - and then make her decision, peace and pledge to him - as a goodbye on her part as an end to their story, rather than the breakup.)
Incidentally, I think that's also why Zhu despite her ever increasing ruthlessness retains more humanity than Ouyang, Wang Baoxiang and Madam Zhang (and thus is alive and on top by the end of the tale), all three of whom are her counterparts and What Ifs and possible futures, in a way - a) she doesn't hate herself (all of three of them do), and b) she keeps her capacity for reaching out and forming new human relationships in addition to maintaining the ones she has, while they after losing the ones they had (mostly, though not completely through their own actions) in order to achieve their goal also consider themselves incapable and unworthy of having others. This isn't presented as an inevitable road for any of them - Ouyang had allowed himself to start believing there might be a future with Zhu once he had achieved his supreme goal of killing the Great Khan, Madam Zhang could have broken away from her prescribed feminine role the way Zhu did instead of keeping tying herself to a man through whom to rule -, and Zhu not going down the road of self hatred fueling hate of others is very much due to the fact that at key points in her life, she received love and acceptance as the person she wanted to be by first her friend Xu in the monastery and then by Ma, instead being forced into identities (whether that's the Mongol-style masculinity expected of Wang, the ultra feminity expected of Madam Zhang, or Ouyang's between the genders status as a Eunuch), with any affection conditional on them fulfilling these roles. I.e. it's not all Zhu's achievement, it's also that Zhu lucked out twice. Then again: despite this, Zhu could have chosen to go all Chen (another possible future). Her horror as she realises that Wang and Madam Zhang have accomplished already what she wants to do and that it made them only more miserable, while Ouyang has died with the double blow of first seemingly reaching his life's goal and then being told it's based on a lie, that he sacrificed the only person he truly loved and who loved him for said lie, comes across powerfully and makes it believable that in the end, she breaks the vicious circle by letting Wang go and escape into another identity instead of going the kill-or-be-killed road to the end, as a sign she truly wants to rule differently.
(BTW, that's another reason why the novel had to end when it did, because to write a rule for this version of the Hongwu Emperor that actually sticks to that conclusion would mean going completely AU. Also a possibility, of course! But once I had read the second novel, I did google and saw that while, say, Ma (with unbound feet) the influential and benevolent Empress is actually taken from history, historical!Zhu wasn't nearly done with killing on a grand scale when becoming the Hongwu Emperor.)
(OTOH, it did crack me up that the novel actually used, as I started to suspect it might once it dawned on me who Zhu had to be in "She Who Became The Sun", one of the very few things I remembered about the end of the Yuan Dynasty in China from the Mongol pov, i.e. the legend that the future Ming Empress was for a time the concubine of the last Mongol Emperor which resulted in a child. I always thought that was so sublimely petty a legend - "You might have kicked us out, but FYI, your future Emperors were not descendants from your guy but our guy!" - , and here it gets a completely different twist because evidently Zhu can't sire a child with Ma, so that pregnancy is awfully convenient for her.)
Anyway: the book is a worthy successor to the first and taken together, it truly is an epic. Highly reccommended.
It is a very good second novel, and I'm not surprised it stopped when it did. Not just because in general, people love to root for an underdog challenging The Man but lose interest/are disappointed/don't want to know how said underdog is doing when put in charge and being The Man, not least because governing never can deliver all the expectations (be it in a democracy or a monarchy), it even in best of cases has to include compromises, and also, someone else is invevitably the new underdog. In this particular case, there's also the fact that the story itself includes several possible futures via the other characters who reach their goal (whether or not this means supreme power) before our heroine does, and Zhu seeing the effect this has on them is an important part of her story and final character test. Afterwards, her mythic arc is complete, and the actual rule of the Hongwu Emperor (whether or not this version would include the darker parts) would be a different story altogether.
This time, the fantasy elements are somewhat stronger, which isn't a complaint on my part. For example, I was rather crushed when realising that Ouyang had died without one more encounter with Zhu, and that ability for those who have the Mandate (especially Zhu) to see ghosts come in really handy, pun inevitable, in giving me that last meeting wrapping up their relationship regardless; I don't think a strictly historical novel could have pulled that off. (Especially since Ouyang had to die when he did, his survival at that point would have broken any suspension of disbelief.) This being said, I also like the ambiguity about the ghosts, and about what having the mandate (that ability to ignite a flame psychically) actually means. Far more than the first, the second novel implies it's not about the person's ability to govern, not at all, but about that person desiring something strongly enough and believing themselves capable of going for said goal. (Not just via middlemen, but directly, which is why Madame Zhang doesn't have it but Wang Boaxiang does.) And given Wang concludes he never truly saw Esen (as a ghost) but what he wanted to see while Zhu ultimately thinks the ghosts are echoes of the dead people, of their essences, but not exactly the dead people themselves, again the question of whether the ghosts are this or manifestations of the mandate-having people's subconscious fears and desires is up for debate.
Zhu deciding that her road to power can only accomplished via teaming up with her former arch nemesis Ouyang makes for a wonderful execution of the "enemies become (temporary) allies against third parties and while doing that become close" trope, while its ending isn't something fanfiction would have done but what felt right. It's been established through both novels that Ouyang, partly but not exclusively because of his forced castration and a life time of being regarded not a man, really, really, REALLY hates women, and thus him not being able to accept Zhu anymore once he finally is confronted with the fact she is one was the logical outcome, not despite but because they've become close as allies and he really allowed himself to be vulnerable in front of her. Him being able to change his mind at this late point, after a novel in which his self loathing had only grown compared to the previous one, would not have felt right for the character. (Though, again, I was grateful for Zhu being able enlist his ghost/echo's help - and then make her decision, peace and pledge to him - as a goodbye on her part as an end to their story, rather than the breakup.)
Incidentally, I think that's also why Zhu despite her ever increasing ruthlessness retains more humanity than Ouyang, Wang Baoxiang and Madam Zhang (and thus is alive and on top by the end of the tale), all three of whom are her counterparts and What Ifs and possible futures, in a way - a) she doesn't hate herself (all of three of them do), and b) she keeps her capacity for reaching out and forming new human relationships in addition to maintaining the ones she has, while they after losing the ones they had (mostly, though not completely through their own actions) in order to achieve their goal also consider themselves incapable and unworthy of having others. This isn't presented as an inevitable road for any of them - Ouyang had allowed himself to start believing there might be a future with Zhu once he had achieved his supreme goal of killing the Great Khan, Madam Zhang could have broken away from her prescribed feminine role the way Zhu did instead of keeping tying herself to a man through whom to rule -, and Zhu not going down the road of self hatred fueling hate of others is very much due to the fact that at key points in her life, she received love and acceptance as the person she wanted to be by first her friend Xu in the monastery and then by Ma, instead being forced into identities (whether that's the Mongol-style masculinity expected of Wang, the ultra feminity expected of Madam Zhang, or Ouyang's between the genders status as a Eunuch), with any affection conditional on them fulfilling these roles. I.e. it's not all Zhu's achievement, it's also that Zhu lucked out twice. Then again: despite this, Zhu could have chosen to go all Chen (another possible future). Her horror as she realises that Wang and Madam Zhang have accomplished already what she wants to do and that it made them only more miserable, while Ouyang has died with the double blow of first seemingly reaching his life's goal and then being told it's based on a lie, that he sacrificed the only person he truly loved and who loved him for said lie, comes across powerfully and makes it believable that in the end, she breaks the vicious circle by letting Wang go and escape into another identity instead of going the kill-or-be-killed road to the end, as a sign she truly wants to rule differently.
(BTW, that's another reason why the novel had to end when it did, because to write a rule for this version of the Hongwu Emperor that actually sticks to that conclusion would mean going completely AU. Also a possibility, of course! But once I had read the second novel, I did google and saw that while, say, Ma (with unbound feet) the influential and benevolent Empress is actually taken from history, historical!Zhu wasn't nearly done with killing on a grand scale when becoming the Hongwu Emperor.)
(OTOH, it did crack me up that the novel actually used, as I started to suspect it might once it dawned on me who Zhu had to be in "She Who Became The Sun", one of the very few things I remembered about the end of the Yuan Dynasty in China from the Mongol pov, i.e. the legend that the future Ming Empress was for a time the concubine of the last Mongol Emperor which resulted in a child. I always thought that was so sublimely petty a legend - "You might have kicked us out, but FYI, your future Emperors were not descendants from your guy but our guy!" - , and here it gets a completely different twist because evidently Zhu can't sire a child with Ma, so that pregnancy is awfully convenient for her.)
Anyway: the book is a worthy successor to the first and taken together, it truly is an epic. Highly reccommended.
no subject
Date: 2024-02-10 02:50 am (UTC)IMHO Shelley Parker-Chan, Rebecca Kuang, Xiran Jay Zhao, S. L. Huang are, by writing feminist re-workings of Chinese history, doing truly revolutionary work, some of the most important SFF ever written.
no subject
Date: 2024-02-11 04:32 pm (UTC)omg, I have been following this, and... yeah. I mean, I'll nominate this anyway as I loved it and thought it was interesting (the two are not necessarily the same), but that's a great additional incentive!
no subject
Date: 2024-02-11 06:30 pm (UTC)