If she wanted greatness - she was going to have to stand up and claim it.
She Who Became The Sun
by Shelley Parker-Chan
Genre: YA Fantasy
About: Set in 1300s China during a famine, a young girl and her brother are taken to a psychic - their father wishes to know of the boy's -Zhu Chongba's- fate. But while her brother is given a great destiny, the girl, always nothing, is given no fate - no calling whatsoever. And yet she is the only one to survive. Taking her brothers name, she decides to take his fate too and become Great.
The Good
This book is really stunning. The writing is a great example of how to pull the reader into the skin of a character. Zhu and Ouyang are the yin and yang to this world, both grey characters strung together by fate at opposite ends of a conflict. But the battles are nothing to the conflict going on inside the characters. I absolutely loved how important psychology is to this story. The world and character actions are all seen through this deep internal conflict that guides them every step of the way. Parker-Chan does this with each of her characters, even the ones we don't get a viewpoint of we can still feel the complexities of their emotions behind the scenes. Characters like Baoxiang and Chan are fascinating, while characters like Esen and Ma wear their hearts on the sleeves and are utterly endearing. This is a complicated, murky world and the characters are really something magical. I especially enjoyed the dialogue; there are layers behind words, as well as some much needed light-heartedness as friends and lovers are felt with full force. Emotions are captured so brilliantly and the world is just as vividly told.
The Bad
It is slow paced. And while that's not necessarily a bad thing, as the writing is the kind you want to savour, I did find myself putting down the book quite easily. I didn't have that itch to keep going, even that I really loved the characters and interesting things were happening, the pace doesn't inspire that kind of addictive reading that would make me read into the night.
The Somewhat Iffy
Zhu's secret - that she's a girl - is one that I would expect more people to have found out. We're given reasons why it's not discovered at the monastery, and she has her excuse as a monk among the troops why she sets herself apart, but all the same - it doesn't seem like the kind of secret that could be kept for as many years as she does keep it and from as many people as she's able to.
Overall
I loved this. The pull of Fate, the choices we make to achieve our desires, and the cost that comes from it, all of these messages are felt so profoundly on the characters, and the reader as well. Definitely will be continuing the series.
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