He Who Drowned the World: the epic sequel to the Sunday Times bestselling historical fantasy She Who Became the Sun (The Radiant Emperor, 2)

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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.

As they’re all willing to do whatever it takes to rule, who will have to sacrifice the most, and who will emerge victorious? However, there are two deaths in this book that just did not have the weight and impact I expected them to have.

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. I read She who became the sun, last year and I was highly looking forward for the next one that comes out later this year. In her perspective, we witness how she uses her own body—detached from her mind—to wield other people's desires against themselves. 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.

If She Who Became the Sun was the focus on desire, He Who Drowned the World is the focus on suffering. Even here, far from the sea, the plain beneath the carriage’s hilltop vantage point blazed white with salt as though the wealth of the woman’s kingdom overflowed without restraint. A gripping tale of rise to power, fate, betrayals and the bloody beginnings and endings of dynasties.It was one of those tactics that worked only as long as the calculation underneath it remained unseen. These novels beautifully capture the feedback loop wherein queer-coded characters are reviled, which drives them to unbearable viciousness, which in turn fills them with self-loathing.

Instead of waiting for the Yuan to send their Grand Councilor and that central army of theirs to put us down, we’ll march on Dadu together.Parker-Chan’s characters struggle to break this cycle, and the nuance with which they’re portrayed makes us root for them.