A really great conclusion to an amazing duology. The writing is very clear and descriptive and the plot progression is well paced. The themes in this series and the use of contrasting elements and its relation to history is just so well done. These books are a new all-time favourite of mine and I'm looking forward to whatever Shelly Parker-Chan writes next.

In this sequel, the intricate alliances and conflicts between the various characters add layers of depth to the narrative. Parker-Chan deftly explores the similarities between Zhu and Ouyang, portraying them as two sides of the same coin living outside societal gender norms. The journey of self-discovery, freedom, and the struggles faced by these characters resonates with a nuanced portrayal of queerness. The narrative takes unexpected turns, offering a mix of brutality and sensuality that sets this series apart, promising an unapologetic exploration of the queer aspects of queerness. In its entirety, He Who Drowned the World not only lives up to the intensity of its predecessor but exceeds expectations, making it a remarkable and recommended read.

4.5 stars

He Who Drowned the World is a heart-wrenching study of grief, power, and pain that will keep readers on the edge of their seats from the first page.

Shelley Parker-Chan is a master of making me sympathize with vicious characters. Both Zhu and Ouyang return as main POV characters in this installment. I love that we got to see more of them together in this book. Their banter was so entertaining and they played off of each other really well. Their perspectives on each other provide valuable insight into their characters. Ouyang’s character arc in this book made me incredibly emotional.

Baoxiang’s POV was a terrifying and fascinating addition. I love how his presence in the capital added some court politics to the story. His subtle scheming provided an interesting foil to Zhu and Ouyang’s military campaign. He is such a complicated character to read from. As the reader you want to be able to sympathize with him, especially as you uncover the depth of his pain and rage. But we encounter his POV at the point where he has been drowned by his grief and pain so you can never truly root for him even as your heart breaks.

I love how the three storylines wove together. Witnessing ripples of one character’s actions brush against the POVs of other characters created the perfect amount of tension and suspense. All of the characters in this book are rich and complex providing unique perspectives on how pain, power, and grief can change a person.

He Who Drowned the World is a phenomenal sequel and, overall, an incredibly satisfying conclusion to the duology. For 80% of the book, I was certain I would give this five stars, however, two moments towards the end left me feeling conflicted.

This is a book about war and vicious people doing whatever it takes to claim their fate, therefore, I do not think it is a spoiler to say that characters die. However, there are two deaths in this book that just did not have the weight and impact I expected them to have. When I read the scenes I felt like I had been robbed of certain interactions or developments that I had been waiting for. And in a way it works. This feeling of missing out on something reflects the fact that lives are being ended prematurely in these scenes. But as the reader, I feel a bit unsatisfied. Moments that happen in the last part do work towards providing a more satisfying ending.

I cannot believe that I am saying this, but I almost think that this duology should have been a trilogy. I say this because the ONLY part of He Who Drowned the World that I did not like was the last 80 pages (basically all of part three). Both She Who Became the Sun and He Who Drowned the World have relatively slow pacing as the characters arrange pieces to enact their complicated plans. In contrast, part three of HWDTW moves at a breakneck speed as we see a new plan formed and executed and characters going from strangers to close. Because of this I honestly think the last 80 pages of this book would have made a thrilling third book. The beginning of part three has a line that would have been the perfect cliffhanger ending to this book (I don't know why I would want that but it would have been awesome). Obviously, there would need to be a lot more content added to develop 80 pages into an entire book. But, additional scenes and a slower timeline honestly would have made Zhu’s final plan a lot more believable to me.

Getting into the specifics of what I think could have happened would involve a lot of spoilers. But to be vague I have two main complaints with part three. First, it relies almost entirely on a character that was basically absent from this book and is barely even mentioned outside of the few scenes they appear in. They may be an established character in the duology but I personally think it was a strange shift for them to suddenly be incredibly important at the very end. Second, the ending relies on a bond formed between two characters that felt unbelievably rushed—especially considering who one of the characters is. I would have loved to see this bond built up over an entire book and it would have made the ending even more emotional.

It was unfortunate that a book I was loving so much didn’t quite stick the landing. But at the end of the day, this is 80 pages of a 500-page book and it barely impacted my enjoyment. Overall, I think this is a phenomenal conclusion to the duology.

Reviewed on my blog:

The follow-up to Parker-Chan's excellent debut She Who Became the Sun, a fantasized fictionalization of the overthrow of the Mongol rule of China and rise to power of the first Ming emperor, continues very much in the vein of the previous novel. Peasant girl turned gender-bending monk turned rebel general Zhu Chongba—now styling herself Zhu Yuanzhang—continues her press towards the Mongol capital, her rise fueled both by a keen strategic mind and an unwavering belief in her own destiny. Unlike the previous volume, however, Zhu takes a step back in the second half of her story, ceding center stage to two other characters from the first novel. Eunuch general Ouyang, whose decades-long quest for revenge came to fruition in the previous novel when he destroyed the Mongol family who had killed his father and brothers, is on his way to the capital, planning to complete his revenge by killing the emperor. Wang Baoxiang, the last surviving member of the same family, also makes his way to the capital, allegedly to take up an administrative post, but really to set in motion a clandestine plan to claim the throne for himself.
The three characters end up in shifting configurations of alliance and enmity as the race for the throne nears its climax. But the shift in protagonist duty also changes the novel's tone. Zhu's matter-of-fact narrative voice, which regards with equal equanimity the magnitude of the task she has set herself and the overwhelming odds she frequently finds herself facing—and then disarming with increasingly involved and entertaining schemes—gives way to the high melodrama of Ouyang and Baoxiang's stories. Both men are tormented by the roles they played in the betrayal and death of Esen, Baoxiang's brother and Ouyang's best friend (with whom he was also in love), and have resolved on their current courses of action as a form of self-destruction. Ouyang intends to die as soon as he kills the emperor, while Baoxiang conceives of his plan as a form of psychic suicide, destroying everything good about himself in the hope of drowning out his guilt. The result is clearly rooted in the Chinese historical soap operas that have inspired this entire duology, but even readers less embedded in that genre will appreciate the effectiveness of Parker-Chan's character work. Without ignoring either character's overwrought self-pity, or the horrific acts they commit in pursuit of their goals, they make you feel how trapped both men are by pain and guilt.

As in She Who Became the Sun, the key to this retelling of the story is gender, both the damage caused by rigid gender roles, and the opportunities offered by queering gender and sexuality. At the root of Ouyang and Baoxiang's emotional turmoil is both men's failure to embody perfect masculinity—the one because of his mutilation; the other because of his scholarly interests and flamboyant personal style—and the hostility and violence they've encountered in response. Even characters who embody gender perfectly, however, are frustrated by the results. A new point of view character, Madame Zhang, plays the demure, self-abnegating wife while cannily advancing the careers of a succession of male partners, only to have them discard her once the power she secured for them is in their hands. Relationships often defy clear-cut definitions. Despite not being attracted to men, Baoxiang decides to play up to the public perception of him by seducing the emperor's son, and discovers an unexpectedly meaningful bond; Ouyang and Zhu briefly forge a powerful, albeit nonsexual, intimacy. In the end, however, most characters in the novel are defeated by social expectations, by their own self-loathing at being unable to live up to them, and by a system designed to benefit only a select few. Only Zhu, who fully integrated her fluid gender identity in the previous book, is able to nimbly evade the traps of gender that constrain every other character, playing up her femininity in one moment, her masculinity in another, in a way that maximizes her power and opportunities.

Most of these ideas about gender and queerness, however, were explored already in the previous volume. If He Who Drowned the World adds something on the thematic front, it might be the debate between Zhu and her wife Ma Xiuying over where to draw the line in her ruthless pursuit of power. The various factions in the novel are stunningly cavalier about violence and collateral damage—Baoxiang betrays those who trust him to their deaths, Ouyang is utterly indifferent to the death and suffering of his soldiers, Zhu's strategizing allows for everything from the sacrifice of allies to arson in a crowded city, and that's before you even get to the villains. Ma and Zhu spend much of the novel discussing the necessity of these choices. Is it possible to go too far in pursuit of one's destiny? Is it possible to hold back in an all-or-nothing conflict? Ultimately, however, this debate is unconvincing. It allows for satisfying conclusions to Ouyang and Baoxiang's stories, but only because we always knew that they weren't going to be the winners in this particular game of thrones. Zhu, whose story is about rejecting the path laid out for her, was nevertheless always aiming to take over the system, not change it, and the suggestion at the end of the novel that she might do so feels rather flimsy (especially if you read about the character's historical inspiration). Happily, Parker-Chan remains a skilled and effective storyteller, and despite this wobble at the end, both the plot and characters make He Who Drowned the World an engrossing read, and a worthy conclusion to the previous volume.

having loved the predecessor to this novel i approached this with sky-high expectations and maybe that was my bad cause this much awaited follow up is a pale imitation of she who became the sun.

Reviewing books I thought I reviewed a long time ago

He who drowned the world was not AS good as she who became the sun, but still a solid novel. I feel like it got bogged down in the multiple plot lines sometimes, and I found it hard to get as into it as SWBTS. That being said, I still enjoyed it and found the authors writing and world building great.

4.75/5 stars

An incredible conclusion to this gruesome, heartbreaking story of resilience, determination, and revenge against all odds (especially when the odds are definitely *not* in your favor).

This sequel hit all of the best notes in character development and continuation of the plot. The interpersonal relationships grew significantly and the action scenes where even better (and more gruesome) than the first book. I really enjoyed adding more POVs and really getting into the heads of our main characters.

The "mandate of heaven" was still not super well explained, which I think was probably intentional. Also Shelley did us dirty with the deaths in this one, and I'll leave it at that.

I am a broken husk of a person.

The twists. The turns. The epicness of this book.

What a sophomore novel. What a masterpiece. Literally in awe right now.

A great finish to this duology. It caused me to go through such a range of emotions while I was reading it! I'm definitely going to keep my eye out on what this author publishes next.

4.5 stars — the characters and the insistent tide of cruelty that swept through the whole book were very compelling. SO much happened, though, and i think a consequence of that was that things burned out a little in the last hundred pages or so.

This was an incredible follow up to She Who Became the Sun. I didn't know how I would feel encountering the complex and morally-questionable characters of SWBTS again, but I missed them more than I thought I would. He Who Drowned the World is especially interesting in how it forces these unlikely allies together against their enemies, who do not consider either Zhu or Ouyang alone as threats.

This was an action packed ride, full of conniving strategy, political maneuvering and winning wars with smarts as well as strength. As in her debut, Parker-Chan does such a beautiful job of linking queerness and otherness in society, by using motifs such as ghosts and things not of this world. This duology was a stand out and I'd highly recommend it.

i started ‘she who became the sun’ very early in the year. i was in love and enchanted by the rich historical world and vast reimagining of a time that defined how the world functions as we know it - whilst offering a fantastical element interweaved within.

primarily, i adored the gorgeous writing and worldbuilding. it read quite slowly and for a while, felt like i was pulling myself through it but for a story so fiercely political i knew this would be the case. i knew within the first 50 pages that i wanted to tab this book as much as humanly possible. each line was poetry. with fantastic discussions on gender and identity and masquerading as yourself in a place you’d be shunned to do so. it’s complex, entirely.

the sequel disappointed me slightly but not entirely. i think for this kind of book, the ending each character received didn’t come as a surprise for me. but it did sort of feel like a betrayal to take well shaped characters and make them behave in completely different ways. but, i also believed the authors intention in doing so resounded in how history can never be boiled down to moral ethics of today. there is no justice and no honour and the ending you get is just that, the end.

i wished for more from an ending. but wishing for more is a privilege characters like zhu, ouyang and ma don’t always get to ask for. i enjoyed it! it was just as rich with imagery and adventure and tantalising heartbreaking scenes but there was room for deeper analysis and situations. there was room for this series to be shaped entirely differently.

i loved the subtle magic, i loved the characters, i loved the writing style and writing and this book was gorgeous for that alone. the ending could’ve used work, but when you love the first book So Much, you come in to the sequel with a few preconceptions which i acknowledged.

overall, i loved adventuring with zhu and ouyang again (even if i only gave this book 4.5🌟 instead of 5🌟 like the first! a still really really good rating. i love this duology and would strongly recommend it regardless <3)

I fell in love with the first book of the Radiant Emperor duology, and pounced on He Who Drowned the World as soon as I could. These are thick books, filled with myth and history, and politics--and they wrap you up and carry you with them where ever they go. This book is somehow even more intense that She Who Became the Sun, Parker-Chan has already lured us into this brutal and tender world, and now there is nothing holding back in love or war. If SWBS was an undertow, HWDW is a rip-tide.

Let's get things straight, the writing is really good. I really loved that. I really wanted to read this one after She Who Became the Sun, but I'm just not sure these books are for me. I couldn't really connect with the story.

If you liked She Who Became the Sun, I definitely recommend this one though!

We love a character who knows they don't want to be great. They want to be the greatest. He Who Drowned the World is about ambition and power. About reaching to the stars. There were so many scenes here which have this resonance. One of my favorite is when one of the characters remark that the insults headed their way are ones the attacked always assume will hurt because it would hurt them. About these old wounds, He Who Drowned the World is about the lines of alliances and bargains made, compromises won.

Let me just start by answering the question that’s on everyone’s mind: “Does this second book, does this series conclusion, stick the landing?” Yes, it abso-fucking-lutely does.

“Epic historical fantasy” truly is the best descriptor for this duology. By the time you get to the end of each book, you feel like you’ve lived entire lifetimes with these characters, but there’s these incredibly distinctive, unforgettable adventures and gambits that very clearly punctuate those large swaths of time. I feel like for some people, lengthy epic historical fantasy might be a hard sell, but both of the books in this duology feel incredibly accessible. They’re very grounded in these incredibly human needs and ambitions. You always know what the characters want, what they’re feeling, what they’re trying to accomplish, and there’s never a moment where you’re not completely on edge. Even in the quieter moments, there’s always something happening beneath the surface.

I think in this book, especially, there are so many different camps now vying for power, vying for the throne. There’s so much at stake for everyone involved, and even the smallest choices that all of those players make result in a complete reshuffling of the board. What really makes this series resonate for me is the fact that power in this story is never simply just power. It’s not just about political power, it’s not about fame or riches or palaces. It’s about how power means different things to the different characters, whether that’s revenge, agency, visibility, justice, or respect.

Zhu remains an incredibly compelling character to follow. She has this unwavering belief in herself and her destiny. But what really endears you to this character who might otherwise be read as power-hungry is the fact that the power she’s fighting for is so much bigger than the throne. She is fighting for the power to remake the world into one where people like her can exist, where people can decide who they want to be for themselves.

And while I described her belief in herself as “unwavering” before, I think what’s interesting about this second book is that she's actually questioning herself. Zhu—and all the other players—are having to ask themselves how far they’re willing to go, how much they’re willing to sacrifice, how many people they’re willing to hurt in order to get what they want. And if they get what they want, will the price they paid have been worth it?

There’s action, epic battles, subterfuge and deception, unlikely allies, political and interpersonal drama at the absolute highest level imaginable, but it’s also an in-depth exploration of the difference between obligation and free will, and how belief can only be as strong as the actions and choices that uphold it.

There’s so much I want to say about this book, and I know I’m not doing it justice. It is difficult to read at times—definitely a lot of self-harm, so please tread carefully with that—but the pay-off is so much greater than I could have hoped for. This was, without a question, five stars.

He Who Drowned the World was everything I wanted it to be and so much more, I couldn't hope for a greater conclusion to the series. Thank you so much for Shelley Parker-Chan for that story.

thank you to netgalley for the advanced reading copy. I really enjoyed this and will be getting copies for my shop. fyi this is a sequel

YIKES

It took me forever to finish this book. It's a brutal read. I mean, the first book dealt with some hardcore stuff, but this blows that out of the water. This was rough. It's very different in tone to She Who Became [..], but it was still riveting. If you follow history, you'll probably go into this book knowing how it will end, but I hadn't, so I was on the edge of my seat the whole time.

Thank you so much, NetGalley, Tor Publishing Group, Tor Books, for the chance to read this amazing book in exchange of an honest review,

Zhu Yuanzhang is now the Radiant King and after tearing southern China from the Mongols she wants to seize the throne and crown herself emperor. She's not the only ambitious one, though. In the south, madam Zhang wants the throne for her husband and she's strong enough to beat Zhu. To keep fighting, Zhu decides to risk an unlikely alliance with the talented eununch general, Ouyang, who has sacrificed enough in order to get a chance to avenge his father's killer, the Great Khan. Unknown to them there's a third contender to the throne, the scorned scholar Wang Baoxiang and with his lethal court games not only he wants to bring the empire to its knees, but become the most degenerate Great Khan in history, making a mockery of the Mongolian traditions, in order to get revenge on his family, who valued them more than him.
All three of them are willing to do anything in order to achieve their fates and destinies, but the price could be too much to bear for someone.

He who drowned the world is the brilliant sequel of She who become the sun, a powerful and fierce debut of war and destiny, set in an alternate China. The sequel is, if even possible, even better than the first book. The story is wonderfully twisted and complex, filled with many characters and POVs and, even though Zhu stands out with her cunning, intellingence and fierceness, Ouyang is my second favourite and it's almost impossible not to cheer for Wang Baoxiang too. These characters are complex, filled with rage and humilations, pains and revenge, determined to do anything in order to achieve what they desire and want, in order to follow their fate and they won't let anyone stop them.
It's a crash between titans, between powerful forces, like Madam Zhang, set in an ever expanding world, China, between wars, subterfuges, kidnappings, intense moments, violence and losses.
It's an incredible book. A bit slowed down by descriptions, but if you loved She who became the sun you will love this one too.