From token seeking quest adventure to surrealistic pilgrimages activating the unconscious mind, from plain speak to wild abstraction, from historically relevant reimagining’s to outright fantastical fiction, this book has more layers than a 7-layer burrito.Īnd although I doubt this is the case, it very much seems like Shelley thought she’d have one crack at it and decided to write her opus, and if your Spidey-sense is tingling and you’re sensing the start of a ramble, your instincts are correct. And the reasons can be both straightforward and complex because this is a book that really does work on many levels. Pretty damn auspicious debut from Shelley and I’d be remiss if I didn’t say that She Who Became the Sun, the first book in the Radiant Emperor duology, is the type of book that will have most booktubers, bookstagrammers, and the twitter crowd going absolutely batshit crazy with delight.

So, if Shelley and her lead Zhu Chongba have anything in common, it’s that they’re both ambitious, because how else do you describe the scale of this book and her main character’s pursuit of greatness? More to the point, ambition, the will to act, the refusal to become nothing, and it’s that last point you’ll easily recognize as the primary theme in this journey of a book. When I sat down to write out some thoughts on She Who Became the Sun by soon-to-be-everyone’s-favorite-writer, Shelley Parker-Chan, the word “ambitious” kept coming to mind. There, propelled by her burning desire to survive, Zhu learns she is capable of doing whatever it takes, no matter how callous, to stay hidden from her fate.Īfter her sanctuary is destroyed for supporting the rebellion against Mongol rule, Zhu takes the chance to claim another future altogether: her brother’s abandoned greatness. Desperate to escape her own fated death, the girl uses her brother’s identity to enter a monastery as a young male novice. When a bandit attack orphans the two children, though, it is Zhu Chongba who succumbs to despair and dies. The fate of nothingness received by the family’s clever and capable second daughter, on the other hand, is only as expected. When the Zhu family’s eighth-born son, Zhu Chongba, is given a fate of greatness, everyone is mystified as to how it will come to pass. For the starving peasants of the Central Plains, greatness is something found only in stories.

In 1345, China lies under harsh Mongol rule. In a famine-stricken village on a dusty yellow plain, two children are given two fates. To possess the Mandate of Heaven, the female monk Zhu will do anything… Mulan meets The Song of Achilles in Shelley Parker-Chan’s She Who Became the Sun, a bold, queer, and lyrical reimagining of the rise of the founding emperor of the Ming Dynasty from an amazing new voice in literary fantasy.

She who became a sun