He Who Drowned the World, Shelley Parker-Chan

Book Title: He Who Drowned the World

Author: Shelley Parker-Chan

Series: The Radiant Emperor #2

Date Started: March 2nd  2025

Date Completed: March 16th 2025

Genres: Historical, Adventure, Fantasy

Quality Rating: Three Stars

Enjoyment Rating: Three Star

Final Rating: Three Stars

Review:

◆ Thank you NetGalley for this eBook copy for review ◆

Full disclosure, I didn't love She Who Became the Sun but was fascinated by the way it was telling its story and its LGBTQ+ representation - but despite that still being great in this novel I, somewhat unsurprisingly, didn't love this sequel either.

These books are full of military escapades, deadly politics and domestic strife, and I have no doubt their interpretation of history (that I'm not familiar with) is creative. But I've just found both books too dense for me to really enjoy them. I've struggled keeping track of nicknames and titles on top of the characters' actual names, and the relation of locations to each other on the map - admittedly, made more difficult by reading on kindle rather than a paperback you can flip back to the start for reference.

But I think the fantasy elements are quite a good example of why there's just a bit too much going on for me; they're so light-touch that it almost feels like magical realism and only show themselves in relation to ghosts. I love this idea - and the way it's used in the finale even more so - but you go a hundred pages between instances of it appearing at all in the world. We flip between intense periods of military strategy and war, to extended bouts of martial conflict and back again. I can see where creative license has filled in gaps in a pre-realised timeline, but I found it hard to really immerse myself in.

Credit where it's due, the fluidity and organic openness to gender and sexuality in this duology is groundbreaking and liberating, and I strongly hope Parker-Chan goes on to write more of it - but maybe a little lighter on the strict militaristic records. I'd love to be able to spend time with the characters, but these books so faithfully follow a historical timeline that I find it difficult to spend time with them over their conquests.