She Who Became the Sun by Shelly Parker Chan Spoiler Free Review

Check out this spoiler-free review of the highly anticipated Asian-inspired fantasy book, She Who Became the Sun by Shelly Parker Chan.

If you are anything like me, you love Asian-inspired fantasy books. Over the past year, they have really become my favorite type of fantasy. Because of this, She Who Became the Sun by Shelly Parker Chan was one of my most anticipated reads of the year.

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She Who Became the Sun Review

I read it and honestly, I have some feelings about it. This book took me so many places that I was not expecting. Honestly, I have pretty mixed feelings on this one, but overall, I will say it is worth the read for sure. Though, I think there are a lot of things to talk about if you are considering picking this one up for yourself.

If you want to see my raw thoughts, I highly recommend watching my video book review above. But if you want my more concise thoughts and feelings, then keep reading because we have quite a bit to cover. 

The Pros and Cons of She Who Became the Sun

I am going to go over all of the pros, and cons of She Who Became the Sun by Shelly Parker Chan. We will start with the pros, end with the cons, and give you a full wrap-up of how I feel after reading this book. 

There are a lot of good and bad points to this book. Which makes it pretty divisive in my opinion. There are also some misconceptions that I want to clear up in this review as well. Going into this book, there were a lot of things I didn’t know and I think part of the issues lay in how this book was marketed.

A Quick Summary

Let’s jump in with a quick summary. This book is a historical fantasy book set in China. We follow a young girl who is destitute and living with her brother and father. Boys are held in high regard in this world, where girls are seen as expendable. 

The family is living through great famine, sometimes all the girl gets to eat are lizards she has captured herself in secret. For if her father or brother knew, they would take her food for themselves. 

One day, the father takes the kids to a fortune-teller who states the boy will rise to greatness, but the girl is not so lucky. he sees that she has no future at all.  Not long after, they are attacked by bandits who kill the father, wound the brother, and take what little they have. The boy succumbs to his injuries and starvation, leaving only the young nameless sister alive. 

This is when she takes up the name of her brother and is determined to not only take his name but take his destiny as well. She joins a monastery to which he was promised under his name, and so our story truly begins. 

The Pros, Let’s start with what I loved about this book.

There are a lot of great things that this book does right. For one, I absolutely love the trope where a girl pretends to be a boy. It is one of my favorite fantasy book tropes. And this book does it extremely well. 

We follow the girl, Zu, through her life. I really enjoyed the time where she was in the monastery. It shows her struggle to hide her femininity pretty well. She grows and learns, and even makes a friend in her time there. We get to see her ambition as well. She is shown as smart and cunning and willing to do anything she has to in order to succeed. 

After the first half of the book, we open up to new perspectives. This is a bit jarring at first. But the two new perspectives really open up the story. My favorite perspective is that of an opposing general. Zu is on one side of the war, and this general is on the other. He is a very complex character as well. Not only is he an enemy general, but he hates the people he is fighting for. They killed his family and made him a eunuch as a child. This conflict within himself really adds a lot to the story. 

Then our last perspective is a young girl in one of the war camps. She meets Zu and they have a wonderful relationship. She is actually the only feminine character in this book. This character shows us how a female truly experiences this man’s only world. 

She Who Became the Sun does an excellent job at exploring gender, war, and what ambition and the fight for power can do to a person. 

Now for the Cons

While there are a lot of things I enjoyed about this book, there are quite a few things that just didn’t hit. 

For one, this book is pretty much not a fantasy book. It is, in my opinion, completely historical fiction with the exception of a few ghosts mentioned here and there. This is where I think there was a problem with the marketing. If this book would have been sold to the masses as historical fiction, I think it would have landed better. People are going in expecting the spic Asian fantasy like in The Poppy War, but that is not what we are getting. 

Another con of this book is the jarring shift from part one to part two. We start out following only Zu, but in part two we jump around quickly to new perspectives. While I like the perspectives themselves, it did end up being a bit of a shocking change. 

Through the book, my favorite character started to change. Zu started off great, but as the book went on, she starts to become irredeemable. Now, I like a morally grey character. I even like unlikeable characters, but she did some things at the end that just can’t be forgiven.

Overall Thoughts

Overall, I did like this book. There are things that bothered me, things I loved, and things that confused me. All in all, though, I feel like if you enjoy historical fiction and highly political wartime books, then this may be one that you want to pick up. While there are very few fantastical elements in this “fantasy book”, I still think it is worth your time. I for one, will be reading book two when it comes out for sure.