She Who Became the Sun by Shelley Parker-Chan

LONGLISTED FOR THE INDIE BOOK AWARDS DEBUT FICTION 2022 This is a glorious tale of love, loss, betrayal and triumph by a powerful new voice. Can Zhu escape what's written in the stars, as rebellion sweeps the land? Or can she claim her brother's greatness - and rise as high as she can dream? So she takes her dead brother's identity and begins her journey. But the girl resolves to overcome her destiny.

And when a bandit raid wipes out their home, the two children must somehow survive. In 1345, China lies restless under harsh Mongol rule. For a family's eighth-born son, there's greatness. In a famine-stricken village on a dusty plain, a seer shows two children their fates. Zhu was the peasant rebel who expelled the Mongols, unified China under native rule, and became the founding Emperor of the Ming Dynasty. She Who Became the Sun by Shelley Parker-Chan is a historical fantasy reimagining of the rise to power of Zhu Yuanzhang. Agent: Laura Rennert, Andrea Brown Literary.HUGO AWARD FINALIST FOR FOR BEST NOVEL 2022Īn absorbing historical fantasy, She Who Became the Sun by Shelley Parker-Chan reimagines the rise to power of the Ming Dynasty's founding emperor. Fans of Asian-influenced fantasy have just been given their newest obsession.

Though Parker-Chan’s unrelentingly grim view of humanity bogs down the middle of the novel, her nuanced exploration of gender identity and striking meditation on bodily autonomy set this fantasy apart. For his part, Ouyang is not about to let a no-name monk distract him from a revenge plot a lifetime in the making, leading to a Machiavellian series of bargains and battles between the two. The new Zhu’s tenacious will to survive and desire for glory leads her to become first a Buddhist monk, then a commander in the rebel army attempting to overthrow Mongol rule of China-and results in continual clashes with an antagonist to whom her fate is inexorably intertwined: the eunuch General Ouyang. Instead, his purposefully never-named sister takes on her brother’s identity-and his fate. After bandits kill Zhu Chongba’s father in 14th-century China, Zhu dies of grief without ever having fulfilled the destined greatness that was foreseen at his birth. Parker-Chan’s fascinating debut, the first in the Radiant Emperor duology, gives the historical Red Turban Rebellion a grimdark fantasy twist.