In a famine-stricken village on a dusty yellow plain, two children are given two fates. A boy, greatness. A girl, nothingness…
And the girl refuses to be nothing…
Shelley Parker-Chan’s debut She Who Became The Sun is a booksphere sweetheart and as often is, this hype around the book made me excited about it. And it started great! It gripped me immediately, and I was sure I would love it. But towards the middle, I started to feel undrwhelmed. As the book progressed, I became indifferent to the characters and the story. Such a shame.
The starting point is very solid and interesting. You have everything to root for the main character. We meet her living in extreme poverty, trying to survive in a world where girls mean nothing, living with her father and brother who don’t give a damn about her. She just exists in 14th century China under Mongol rule. Tell me how the reader does not sympathize with her. It is impossible. I was enthralled. The writing is beautiful but not overly flowery; the setting feels real and lived in. Zhu’s decisions and actions made sense. I wanted her to win; I wanted her to reach and grab her dreams. Characters are diverse, which is the biggest selling point of this book, in my opinion. This book ticks all the boxes and, to be honest, I often see ticking all boxes as forced. But nothing about this feels forced. Everything flows naturally and fits perfectly. I thought I was going to read a story about a well-crafted, interesting character. Considering all this, I was very excited to read She Who Became the Sun during the first act.
Then, with the start of the second act, my interest began to fade. I listened to this as an audiobook on my way to work, so there was nothing else to distract me. Right after Zhu joined the war and new characters came into the picture, I felt disconnected from the story and I often caught myself thinking about other things. And even worse, I had to force myself to return to places I had missed. And what was even sadder was that when I rewind to listen to the parts I missed, I saw I didn’t miss much. Zhu became flat and unlikeable and psychopathic. It was impossible to root for her anymore. I mean, Dexter is a psychopath and an anti-hero, but I loved watching him so much. Zhu became an extremely unlikeable anti-hero. Fresh additions, especially Ouyang, the second PoV, meant nothing to me. Maybe Ma deserved better, but at that point, characters blurred into one another. They were just boring.
The other problem was the action. She Who Became the Sun is a historical fiction with elements of military fantasy. In a story about fate I’m fine with getting little action, but it felt more like Shelley Parker-Chan couldn’t be bothered with writing action. Especially after reading the amazing, AMAZING action scenes of The Faithful and the Fallen, action in She Who Became the Sun felt lackluster. Zhu and Ouyang are supposedly very skillful strategists, but we never see them carry their talent into the battlefield. What makes them legends? People talk about fighting, often, they talk very ambitiously about their goals, but this ambition does not spill over the pages. It just feels flat when we don’t see the results on the battlefield. In short, it has a tell don’t show kind of structure and that kills all the excitement. Dialogue is great tho, gotta give the devil her due.
Many people are loving this book and sadly, I’m not one of them. Although there were many aspects that I liked, after a while, things turned bland, including these aspects. I’m disappointed because this could’ve been amazing, but it ended up just being fairly average.
What do you think? Have you read She Who Became The Sun? Is it on your tbr? Let’s chat!
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