Dysphoria, Pre-existing non-consensual castration, Misgendering, Internalised homophobia, Life-altering injury (amputation), Ableist language, Non-graphic depictions of death by torture, Major character death, Offscreen murder of a child, Scenes depicting extreme hunger/starvation, Graphic depiction of a person burning to death
*Above listed warnings directly from author
Genderqueer, Chinese, Mongolian
Hey everyone! I’m back with another book review. I want to make sure I write this down before I forget because this one was pretty intense. It felt like a similar intensity as The Poppy War by R. F. Kuang, and I have yet to write my review for that one, so that goes to show that I have a hard time writing reviews for intense stories. I’m going to try with this one though, without separating it into any categories. Let’s see how it goes.
First of all, I really truly feel like this was such an amazing Mulan-inspired novel. I say inspired because it’s not a retelling per se, and it was marketed as Mulan meets The Song of Achilles. I also didn’t see the author mention that it was a retelling in any of their wording, so I’m going with inspired. Not only was this a brilliant historical fantasy of China during the 1300’s, but adding the extra element of Zhu seeing ghosts was also very interesting. It didn’t take away from the storyline at all, and honestly I wanted to see if that would play into Zhu in the second novel – so of course I’ll be figuring that out when I read it.
There was a post that I saw on Goodreads that Parker-Chan posted about their use of names throughout the novel, and they mentioned how Zhu’s dead name was never told throughout the entire novel. Before she goes by Zhu, before she takes her brother’s identity, she is referred to as “the girl”, and I think it was pretty brilliant. Her name before she became Zhu Chongba honestly wasn’t important to her, and while maybe it would have been interesting to know what it was and why she was destined for “nothingness”, it doesn’t take away from the story not knowing what it was.
I can see why it’s hard to give due justice to a novel like this, because I feel like no matter what I say, it won’t accurately portray just how much I loved this book. I think this is one of the books that I would probably take my time to reread again and annotate, so that I can relive the journey that we experienced and see how Zhu came from “nothing” to being a force to be reckoned with.
"Remember me, and say my name for ten thousand years."
You can feel the power emanating from that line alone, and understand everything Zhu had to go through to get to where she is at the end of the novel. And to think that it’s just beginning, that there’s another book where there’s more violence, more political intrigue, more adventure. More players enter the game in the second one. Will they meet the same fate as those that opposed Zhu in this novel? Will Zhu finally meet her match? Who knows? But that’s what makes it so exciting.
We already know based off the synopsis that the Zhu daughter is already better than her brother that was destined for greatness, and that she would do whatever she had to to survive. So going into this story knowing that, and being prepared to see her take whatever action necessary to keep going is what will transpire. Gosh, I don’t even know how else to say this. It was just that good. It’s as epic as The Grace of Kings by Ken Liu, Jade City by Fonda Lee… which I highly recommend both of those! I anticipate Parker-Chan’s future novels to be nothing short of amazing, because that’s what they do. Nothing else to say about it.
Sometimes Leelynn Reads 