“I refuse to be nothing…” In a famine-stricken village on a dusty yellow plain, two children are given two fates. A boy, greatness. A girl, nothingness… In 1345, China lies under harsh Mongol rule. For the starving peasants of the Central Plains, greatness is something found only in stories. When the Zhu family’s eighth-born son, Zhu Chongba, is given a fate of greatness, everyone is mystified as to how it will come to pass. The fate of nothingness received by the family’s clever and capable second daughter, on the other hand, is only as expected. When a bandit attack orphans the two children, though, it is Zhu Chongba who succumbs to despair and dies. Desperate to escape her own fated death, the girl uses her brother's identity to enter a monastery as a young male novice. There, propelled by her burning desire to survive, Zhu learns she is capable of doing whatever it takes, no matter how callous, to stay hidden from her fate. After her sanctuary is destroyed for supporting the rebellion against Mongol rule, Zhu uses takes the chance to claim another future altogether: her brother's abandoned greatness.
Don't look down as you're flying, or you'll realize the impossibility of it and fall.
She Who Became the Sun follows one girl's journey from nothingness to greatness and one man's journey to avenge his murdered family. Born a peasant girl in a starving village experiencing a famine, she hunts crickets and lizards to survive. Even being so young she is determined to survive; in fact, my favorite characteristic of Zhu is how tenacious she is against every single thing that threatens her existence. Such is her determination to live that upon her brother's death, she steals his identity and the promise of his greatness and joins a monastery. It also follows Ouyang, a eunuch general who is very accurately described as having “a wound for a heart.” Zhu and Ouyang are two sides of the same coin; beauty and ugliness, shame and acceptance, cold and warmth. Much of their experiences mirrors the other, and for me that was the most interesting part. They are intensely similar characters and yet...not the same at all. Zhu's journey is uplifting and positive whereas Ouyang's tale begins at his zenith and very quickly plummets. I'm interested to see what will become of him in the next book, and while I don't think it's likely or possibly even possible, I want him to find peace. Again though, considering the burdens he carries, I know it almost definitely won't happen.
Every time the world turns its face from you, know it was because of me.
This is one of those books that feels as though it's several in one; by that I mean that the characters overcome so many trials and tribulations and evolve so much that at times it feels as though they are completely different people than they were at the start of the book. It's such a cool feeling for me to have halfway through and to realize how much growth or devolution has taken place. The choreography of the action sequences are beautifully executed and the prose is often so pretty that I had to pause and make note of it in a notebook so that I could go back and re-read them. I was disappointed by the ending but only by a little because it seemed incredibly anticlimactic. I recognize that the next in this series will likely pick up where this one stopped but it felt a bit rushed to me and that's why I've docked a star. I was pretty happy overall with the way the characters interact with each other and with the world around them, especially Zhu. She frequently uses the environment to her benefit and I absolutely loved that because she is a monk, it kind of seems that she has some kind of spiritual power that isn't common. This is one where I will definitely be continuing on with the series and I really enjoyed my time in this brutal world where women are bad-asses in disguise. I also really found the relationships to be splendidly complex and driven by motives that weren't always noble or logical but that made sense culturally. I'm hopeful that the sequel will delve more into Zhu's ability to see ghosts because it seemed to be a bit of a sidenote and I would very much like to learn what it means or if she can harness this ability to do more than make people sick. Ultimately, I really liked this story but I don't really agree that it is similar to Mulan. Perhaps at face-value.
