He Who Drowned the World

by Shelley Parker-Chan

Hardcover, 400 pages

Published Aug. 22, 2023 by Tor Books.

ISBN:: 978-1-250-62182-5

What would you give to win the world?

Zhu Yuanzhang, the Radiant King, is riding high after her victory – one that tore southern China from its Mongol masters. Now she burns with a new desire: to seize the throne and crown herself emperor.

However, Zhu isn’t the only one with imperial aspirations. Courtesan Madam Zhang plots to steal the throne for her husband. But scorned scholar Wang Baoxiang is even closer to the throne. He’s maneuverered his way to the capital, where his courtly games threaten to bring the empire to its knees. For Baoxiang also desires revenge: to become the most degenerate Great Khan in history. In the process, he’d make a mockery of the warrior values his Mongol family loved more than him.

To stay in the game, Zhu must gamble everything on one bold move. A risky alliance with an old enemy: Ouyang, …

What would you give to win the world?

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?

3 editions

Flauschbuch reviewed He Who Drowned the World by Shelley Parker-Chan

Kind of disappointing

3 stars

As opposed to what's kind of teasered at the end of "She Who Became the Sun" there's very little of Ma in the sequel. Instead, we spend a lot of time in the heads of Ouyang and Biaoxiang with their relentless hatred of themselves and almost everyone else. There's also a lot of misogyny and homophobia being reproduced in the book as a consequence. As I had expected/feared, Zhu's descent into immoral and very objectionable decisions for the sake of power continues at a quick pace so the clever tricks she comes up with lose the appeal they still had in the first book when I was still rooting for her. At the end, I wasn't even sure what the general message of the book is supposed to be.

I'd almost recommend just sticking with the first book and forget about this one.

Jaelyn reviewed He Who Drowned the World by Shelley Parker-Chan

Review of 'He Who Drowned the World' on 'Storygraph'

5 stars

It’s certainly a worthy sequel to this blend of real history and transmasc Mulan and the fraught relationship between Zhu and Ouyang takes centre stage for me. Zhu as always brings intelligence and brash confidence to every confrontation while in the background the court politics of the Great Khan begin to overtake events.

el dang reviewed He Who Drowned the World by Shelley Parker-Chan

Couldn't hold my interest like its predecessor did

3 stars

Content warning Spoilers for all over both books

When I finished She Who Became The Sun, I was disappointed to have to wait for this sequel, I had loved that volume so much. But this one really didn't draw me in in the same way.

I'll start with parts I did enjoy. Parker-Chan is a great writer, both as a conjurer of scenes, and in the way they draw characters richly by switching between interior perspectives and the perceptions of others. The arc of Zhu and Ouyang haltingly moving towards understanding each other is compelling until it's cut short, and the "Zhu's capers" scenes are just as much fun as in the first volume.

But I found the shifting motivations of the characters took a lot of interest out of this oen. Wang and Ouyang felt flattened by their hyperfixation on revenge at all costs. Madame Zhang's fixation with the self-imprisoning role of Empress when she had so much real power as Queen makes no sense. Zhu's shift from desperate, audacious attempts to survive to grasping at "greatness" apparently for its own sake had the odd effect of making the stakes seem smaller even as the story gets bigger, which makes the violence feel gratuitous in turn, in a way that it never did in the first volume no matter how grim things got. And Ma and Xu both seemed shrunk by their portrayal as basically martyrs for the revolution.

I spent much of the book wondering why Zhu and Zhang couldn't just come to some detente and enjoy their successes, and why anyone other than Xu Da and maybe Ma Yinzi followed Zhu with such loyalty. Towards the end Ma has some lines which seem to explain it in a sort of social justice way, but coming so late in the book they felt tacked on.

I'm still looking forward to the next thing Parker-Chan writes, but found this one kind of a let-down.

#SFFBookClub