Ouyang and Zhu’s connection to each other… just wow. I could’ve spent 5 whole books filled with scenes of them being allies together. Ouyang’s seriousness and self-hatred paired with Zhu’s lightheartedness and radical self-acceptance and them being each other’s mirrors and being connected by fate and understanding each other in a way nobody else could like ughhhh!!! The layers in every one of their interactions went so deep! The finger biting scene was so intimate I was nearly screaming out loud when it happened. And how they describe the intimacy of Ouyang stabbing Zhu??? Like y’all are both so unhinged it’s insane.

Baoxiang wields his effeminacy against the Mongol Empire and its warriors like a sword. He becomes the things they think of him, as we have already seen in the first book. He shrouds himself in the worthlessness that they perceive of him. He performs the role that they have given him.In terms of violence, I think of both She Who Became the Sun and He Who Drowned the World as roughly equivalent to the Asian historical dramas on Netflix: you'll see some splatter during fight scenes, but rarely full-on gore. Torture is mostly implied. However, Drowned is substantially darker in tone than She Who Became the Sun and contains one moderately detailed depiction of sexual violence. I have to stress that it is not a young adult book! Here too is the rich and nuanced portrayal of gender fluidity, sexuality, and identity. As a cis-gendered white man I'm not the best person to say that a novel is representative, but what I appreciate here is the lived experience of the characters who struggle with social norms, expectations, and still manage to thrive or despair depending on the character. Zhu in particular manages to inhabit a world that is neither entirely male or female and succeed in part because of that distinction. I read most often to see a world and internal world that isn't my own, to broaden my horizons. In that sense, the novel succeeds immensely, but to someone struggling with their identity I think that this type of book will resonate. I can’t shake the feeling that, if I had been able to read this one immediately after the first, a lot of the emotional beats would have hit more. Not that I was unmoved by the end of part two, but it did feel like this was the emotional crescendo when the plot itself hadn’t yet finished. As such, the final part of the book, instead of being a build up to an explosive ending, was a bit drab and overly extended. Overall, He Who Drowned the World has a taste for the dramatic I don’t share but the last part was addicting enough to leave me with a positive memory. So, while I had several minor problems, this is a series any new author should be proud of. I would recommend this duology to someone who is used to Western fantasy and wants to change scenery, likes when books start very slow-paced and character-driven and get more and more complex the more you read and appreciates having some very dramatic scenes. The woman gave a manicured laugh. “Don’t worry. Your surrender will be given correctly. My husband’s reputation may precede him, but a weak man, well managed, is a woman’s greatest strength.” A shadow rippled against the gauze, as if the woman had leaned close. Her lowered voice issued an invitation for Zhu to lean down from her horse, to let her ear drift so close to those murmuring lips that she might have felt each syllable on her skin had it not been for the thin barrier between them. “I don’t think you’re a weak man, Zhu Yuanzhang. But your position is weak. What hope can you have against my larger army; against my general who was even hailed as an equal by the Yuan’s feared General Ouyang?

I absolutely devoured this story, I couldn't get enough of it and never wanted to stop reading! I cursed my body for needing sleep. I have never loved a series so unfalteringly, there is truly nothing that compares to it. My love for the characters is so exceptionally strong (Xu Da steals my heart as always) and I cannot exaggerate how viscerally I relate to them and how heart-breaking this book truly was. One thing I can say with absolute certainty is you guys are not prepared for this one! In Baoxiang we find an incredibly interesting perspective. What is so brilliant about these characters is that even if you dislike them, they are still riveting to witness and to explore.

I see,” Madam Zhang said after a moment. Her flirtatiousness had taken on a sheen of disdain, and Zhu had the mental image of the door to a private room slamming in her face. “I forgot how young you are. Young people are always too ambitious. They haven’t yet learned the limits of what’s possible.” This shared pain these two characters are plagued by pulls very evocative parallels, but it proves these character's differences more. We see the biting edge of a pain that is weaponised against the world and we see a maddening one that is sure to be their doom. Ma went blank in surprise. Then she laughed and replied in the same language, “Better than you, apparently.”

But Zhu isn’t the only one with imperial ambitions. Her neighbor in the south, the courtesan Madam Zhang, wants the throne for her husband—and she’s strong enough to wipe Zhu off the map. To stay in the game, Zhu will have to gamble everything on a risky alliance with an old enemy: the talented but unstable eunuch general Ouyang, who has already sacrificed everything for a chance at revenge on his father’s killer, the Great Khan. Thank you so much Charles for buddy reading this one with me. It was quite an interesting one to analyze!💛 This is a masterpiece. I have never encountered a book so visceral, I have never before encountered a book that bleeds.Listeners...will find themselves enjoying a deeply and subtly emotional saga brought to life with passion" — AudioFile on She Who Became the Sun The stump of Zhu’s arm ached inside the too-tight cuff of her wooden hand. But that discomfort, and the daily repercussions of being a one-handed man in a two-handed world, was merely the cost of her desire, and Zhu was strong enough to bear it. She was strong enough to bear anything, or to do anything, for the sake of what she wanted. Ouyang reaches into this place of pain to shield himself from a greater wound weeping inside of him. He is haunted by his duty, by his need for revenge. He drives himself onwards, against reason, running headfirst to his end. He wants to achieve this vengeance and have it be done, he wants this gaping wound inside of him to stop flowing out blood, he wants to reach the end before his pain bleeds him dry. He wants everything that he's done to get there to be worth it.

The book is about Zhu’s struggle against the other main characters, the alliances that are formed and then broken and what happens. There are questions asked about how much suffering is required before an action is no longer worth it? Does your fate seal your future, or is it possible to change fate and become someone else? The sequel and series conclusion to She Who Became the Sun, the accomplished, poetic debut of war and destiny, sweeping across an epic alternate China. Mulan meets The Song of Achilles. The tone is markedly more somber than in the prequel, and the narrative is permeated with a sense of oppressive hopelessness and despair. I can already tell that the main criticism readers will level at this book is that it’s too depressing and cruel. While I understand where this sentiment comes from, I’ll admit that I wasn’t overly bothered by the turn things took. While the story could have come off as voyeuristic trauma porn in the hands of a less skilled writer, Parker-Chan managed to craft such three-dimensional and compelling characters that I found myself morbidly fascinated by their horrifying descent into madness. Zhu and Ouyang have always been the most interesting to me. In She Who Became the Sun we see their similarities discussed alongside their vast differences, but in this book we are allowed to see their connections in an even sharper light. We are allowed the clarity of their sameness, the ache of their joint wounds and sorrows, we feel the reverberations of that string pulled taut that binds them. And so it is with even greater betrayal that we see the jagged edges of their differences once more.I will do my best to be non-spoilery in this review, and hopefully that’ll be quite simple, because a lot of what I have to say I can say in reasonably vague terms. Let me start with this: I did really like this book still. Despite my brain’s best efforts (wtf brain), I enjoyed it! I didn’t love it quite to the extent that I did the first book, for reasons which I might briefly theorise on, but I still enjoyed reading it. When I reviewed Shelley Parker-Chan’s She Who Became The Sun in 2021, I had no doubt it would top all the best books lists of that year. Some books just have a gravitational pull, each sentence drawing you closer to their core. Parker-Chan’s sequel, He Who Drowned the World, matches and at times exceeds its predecessor; its darker tone, deeper intrigue and visceral set pieces more than live up to the promise of book one. Be warned: No one will be left unscarred in the war for supremacy in northern China, even the reader. None of the main characters are particularly likable, nor do they have a single good bone in their body, except maybe Zhu. But even then, some of the things she did had me raising my eyebrows more than once. Despite that, I was rooting for her to win because compared to Ouyang and Baoxiang, she was considerably better. Even though her path to meet her goal was bloody, she was determined to make a world where no one is shunned or ostracized for who they are. To stay in the game, Zhu must gamble everything on one bold move. A risky alliance with an old enemy: Ouyang, the brilliant but unstable eunuch general. All contenders will do whatever it takes to win. But when desire has no end, and ambition no limits, could the price be too high for even the most ruthless heart to bear?