Book Review: “She Who Became the Sun”

Shelley Parker-Chan’s fantasy debut is a stirring and thought-provoking epic that is sure to become a classic of the genre.

I’m always in search of a new fantasy adventure, and I’ve been hearing rare reviews about Shelley Parker-Chan’s She Who Became the Sun, which draws on Chinese history to tell a compelling, brutal, and cuttingly beautiful story about one young woman’s journey and her desire to seize her brother’s fate, left abandoned upon his death. It is, I can say without hesitation, one of the finest epic fantasy debuts I’ve read in quite a while. It’s the kind of book that you can’t put down once you start reading, so swept up in the narrative do you become.

As the book begins, the Mongols have ruled China for quite some time, and while the emperor is not quite the warrior that his ancestors are, his rule is kept intact by his warrior lords. Meanwhile, a group of rebels known as the Red Turbans have in their midst a young man known who, it seems, has the Mandate to take back the rule of the country, though he is largely ruled over by his ministers. Into this toxic cauldron step two main characters, Zhu, a young woman who takes her brother’s identity (and his greatness) after his premature death and Ouyang, a native Chinese eunuch general serving in the Mongol army…