Review: She Who Became the Sun

She Who Became the Sun by Shelley Parker-Chan
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Tragically underwhelming for a story with so much backstabbing and a side of ghosts.

The plot: Zhu is destined for Nothing, but refuses to believe this and instead takes her brother's fate of Greatness as her own. This involves pretending to be a boy and infiltrating an army. YES, it sounds like Mulan, but this is definitely not the family-friendly Disney flick we all know and love, folks.

I enjoyed Zhu's character growth, and how she was so manipulative from the very start. She suffers plenty so you do feel quite pleased when things finally start going her way, but towards the end there is a lot of arrogance which may rub the wrong way if you haven't come to love the character. I did enjoy that she always seemed pretty easy-going on the surface, and I enjoyed her joking around with people.

Ouyang was a fantastic, loathsome character. He's so easy to hate, but there's still an element of sympathy there, too. Mostly I just liked that he was kind of an evil d*ck.

The gay stuff was weird but okay whatever.

The ghosts were more weird and honestly I feel like they were just a bit pointless? They could have just been metaphoric, rather than making them literal and calling this fantasy. It really bothers me that this book was sold to me as fantasy. Aside from ghosts occasionally being present and a bit of fire here and there, this is not fantasy. What a disappointment. And the ghosts were just so wasted. They mostly just hover in the background and they never really do anything.

Then it's all padded out with these boring war moves and talk of politics and there's just too much of it weighing the story down. You get these really awesome backstabbing moments and scandals and then you have to wade through another boring battle and it just slows the momentum of the story. I just was never hooked enough to want to pick it back up.

So I guess it had some really fun moments and the characters were great but the story overall was just a bit slow and bland for my tastes. Ultimately it was disappointing, considering how much attention its been getting. Not for me, I'm afraid.

With thanks to Macmillan for a copy.

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