yuerstruly

There are certain expectations when you compare something to Mulan, whether it is the original Ballad of Mulan from the 6th century, the 1998 Disney animated film, or the 2020 Disney live action film. It is not just a tale of crossdressing or a woman leading an army—it entails filial piety, patriotism, and honor that comes with protecting a country that has more continuous history than most regions can imagine. This set up some expectations when I went into She Who Became the Sun by Shelley Parker-Chan, and unfortunately none of those expectations were met.

The story follows Zhu (her given name is never mentioned so we shall call her Zhu like guys do in the office and at school), a young girl whose family has suffered from the famine sweeping across China. Her only living brother, Zhu Chongba, is one day given the fate of greatness, something that seems to have fallen magically onto him. He is, however, soon stricken by their father's death and rots away, leaving Zhu the only one alive. She decides to take on the identity of her older brother and steal his fate, leaving her past behind.

The setup is certainly compelling. A tale of stolen fate on the path to the throne is an epic waiting to be told. Unfortunately, the execution falls flat. The concept of greatness is overemphasized, and the fact that this story is a fantasy retelling of Zhu Yuanzhang's journey to becoming an emperor is just … unexciting. Zhu Yuanzhang may have been the first emperor of the Ming Dynasty, but he is not an interesting person. The smidge of fantasy doesn't do nearly enough to elevate the story to another level, and leaves readers stranded with poorly built concepts. I mean, a physical Mandate of Heaven in the form of flames, with the flames being different colors depending on who possesses a portion of it? Awful. The fact that Zhu can see ghosts doesn't exactly count as fantasy because the concept of seeing ghosts has long existed, but seeing ghosts somehow equating to being granted the Mandate of Heaven sounds preposterous. Seeing ghosts in Chinese society? You are most likely a blind fortune teller, not someone about to become an emperor. It is, in fact, probably lunacy.

The minimal fantasy setup has led me to believe that the author is unfamiliar with Chinese culture and the language. All the research went into the historical recounting of Zhu Chongba/Zhu Yuanzhang, the real person, and everything else got thrown out of the window. Remember when I said Zhu's given name is never mentioned? This is fine. We're operating on the fact that she stole her brother's fate, so although everyone in the story calls her "Zhu Chongba," she isn't actually Zhu Chongba. Another major character, Ouyang, is also never presented with a given name. I suspect this has to do with the fact that his family was supposed to have been killed to the ninth degree, but he had been spared (an unlikely thing to happen, but this is something I can suspend disbelief for). Our surnames define our status and our families, and our given names define our fates. Well, where is Ouyang's given name? Nowhere to be found. Bullshit, when you consider the fact that his entire family had been killed and his surname is very much associated with his dead family. Then, we have Ma Xiuying, someone who does get a given name, but is constantly referred to as "Ma." Sorry, but Chinese people just don't refer to people by family name without a title of sorts attached to it. Princess Ma? Yes. General Ma? Yes. Ma? No.

Though I've applauded Shelley Parker-Chan's efforts in their historical research, some aspects stood out like a sore thumb—namely, the caste system used by Mongols during the Yuan Dynasty. Of the four, I'll be focusing on the Semu and Southerners. Throughout the book, Southerners are referred to as "Nanren" while Semu are simply called "Semu." The "-ren" attached describes a group of people, and had the author kept it consistent, it would've been "Semuren" and "Nanren" instead. For people who do not know Chinese, this may simply be a romanization of sorts, and peopele will nod and move on. For people who do know Chinese, this gets awkward. When I read "Nanren," I do not think of "Southerner" first. No, because you know what else is written as "nanren" in pinyin? The word for "man" or "men." So, when I am reading the text, every time a character is addressed as such, I think, "So everyone is just a man…" Of course, had this been written in Chinese, this would not be an issue, but I think it would be nice if Chinese diaspora who actually know Chinese are taken into consideration when assessing the target audience.

Another thing that stood out to me was the Spring Hunt, which was described as a sparring round robin. Unless I am completely wrong about what the Imperial Spring Hunt entails, I am more than sure that it is set up so people can hunt the wildlife in a certain area, and that the winner is often determined by how much they can bring back. Limiting it to just sparring defeats the purpose of the name, does it not?

The actual writing? Bland could not begin to describe it. It's horrifying, and much of it reads like a stilted and mediocre fan translation, which is probably another level of offense for someone whose only fluent language is English. "Eat bitterness." Too literal. "Useless rice bucket." No one knows what that means. "She turned and delivered an open-handed slap across Zhu's face." A line that breaks down the action so much it destroys the pacing. "Vinegary expression." Not a line I like using to describe jealousy, but even worse since the context does not imply jealousy OR a sour expression in any sense. Someone has to tell me what this means. "What's with the black face black mouth?" Did no one editing this think such a sentence would sound odd to the masses? I could go on and on, but the bad sentence formulation throughout the book contributes to a pretty torturous reading experience. The writing was also so bad that the setup for the one-sided homoerotic tension between Ouyang and Esen that is supposed to cater perfectly to my tastes did not hit. It fell flat. And Ouyang himself? I think I'm supposed to like him, but I just didn't care.

To this day (six months after reading this book), I still cannot figure out whether or not I am part of the target audience. The writing is bad, but I'm supposed to like it because one of the side characters is my type? I'm supposed to like this because it's labeled as lesbian? If I didn't know any better and went into this blind, I would have thought much of the book was a setup for a heterosexual pairing—enemies to lovers Zhu and Ouyang.

Then, should I be clicking with the supposed themes of gender? I could, if not for the fact that the rhetoric throughout the book leaned into gender essentialism. I know I'll have someone in my ear saying it's for the narrative, but I don't think I could expend any more energy justifying the constant repeat of defining men and women by what they do or don't do without any attempt at breaking the norms. Had this been a normal retelling of Zhu Yuanzhang, I would've brushed it off—ideology is, after all, contextual. But this is supposed to be a novel story, with our emperor now a woman. She's just becoming a man, which I don't mind, but the attempts at overexplaining lack of gender tells me that the author was aspiring to write a different story. A story I could have welcomed with open arms, had it not been for the disaster of an interpretation of Chinese customs and culture.

The first offense was the misportrayal of Chinese eunuchs. It's been known since the beginning of time that castration comes along with being one because you cannot be serving an emperor, then getting a concubine of his pregnant! This, however, does not make you an eunuch less of a man. The concept of getting your dick chopped off speaks more to power than it does to perception of gender in this case, though I am sure that 99 in 100 cis men would think of themselves as no longer a "proper man." To add, I don't really understand why a eunuch could just saunter into the living quarters of a woman of high status. Have you never watched a court drama? Unless you're seizing her to the Cold Palace (and even in court dramas, they make it a whole announcement), notify her maid! Don't just walk in! What is weirder is that Madame Zhang tells Ouyang he will be viewed as a woman more than he ever will be as a man, a totally completely made up concept. I don't know how to say this without sounding mean, but he's not even viewed as a human. He's a servant, and nothing more.

The second offense was the Traditional Chinese Medicine angle that felt too modernized of an interpretation in the context of TCM. Just like a doctor should not treat a criminal any different than they would an accountant, the basis of TCM, or modern medicine for that matter, so Zhu's inner monologue in response to Ma Xiuying saying, "Anyone who knows how to read a pulse can tell you have a woman's body," threw me off.

Zhu didn't have a male body—but she wasn't convinced Ma was right. How could her body be a woman's body, if it didn't house a woman? Zhu wasn't the grown-up version of that girl with the nothing fate. The'd parted the moment Zhu became Zhu Chongba, and there was no going back. But now Zhu wasn't Zhu Chongba, either. I'm me, she thought wonderingly. But who am I?

I have nothing to say other than that this is irrelevant. And stupid. And should not exist because as I just mentioned above, the doctor does not give a fuck! There's another bit that goes along with this, tied to having the body of a certain gender, which would have been a great angle, but with the rest of the text, adds to that modernist take, which only appeals to those who do not understand the context of the premise.

It was funny, Zhu thought, to owe her survival to the same body that had been the source of so much terror. She remembered the relentlessness of its adolescent changes, and the sick, desperate feeling of being dragged towards a fate that would destroy her. She'd longed so intensely for a perfectly male body that she'd dreamed of it, and woken up crushed with disappointment. And yet—in the end, she'd survived destruction precisely because hers wasn't a perfectly male body that its owner would think worthless the minute it was no longer perfect.

No one should ever be invalidated for how they feel about their gender, about how they are presented, but I thought the author went about this the wrong way. Perhaps this premise was not even the right place for it because this book isn't likable in any sense.

From the boring setup to the bad writing to the sprinkles of Chinese culture that scream "I never actually connected with my culture until I was 25 and realized it was cool to do so" desperation, I cannot believe this book was hyped the way it has been. At least, I am not the target audience of it, and no one could convince me this is good! I'll have to read more before I fully decide the mainstream sapphic SFF genre needs an overhaul, but before that, I must say She Who Became the Sun cannot and should not be everyone's top three in this area.