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. You can feel the weight of the labour and the love that was put into this novel, yet it also reads like we're flying across the pages. 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. I would have loved to see this bond built up over an entire book and it would have made the ending even more emotional.

I think the second time around, my first gut feeling of "okay, this is a three or three and half star one" proved to be correct.At this moment, I can’t even think of picking up a new book because I’m not ready to move on just yet. Mulan meets The Song of Achilles in He Who Drowned the World by Shelley Parker-Chan - an epic queer historical fantasy of war and destiny set in an epic alternate China, and sequel to Sunday Times bestselling She Who Became the Sun.

Zhu, The Radiant King, finds herself feeling unstoppable after her victories and wants to crown herself emperor. Zhu Yuanzhang, the Radiant King, is riding high after her victory that tore southern China from its Mongol masters. And though this is a world where terrible things can and do happen every day, I still came out the other side with a sad glimmer of hope that maybe, sometimes, we still have the chance to change our fate.

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.