4.5 stars
Thank you NetGalley for the ARC.
It's not usually my type of book but I absolutely devoured it. The vibe was really enjoyable and the imaginery was gorgeous. Some of the scenes were so easy to see in my head and they were beautiful.
The writing style of the author was also amazing.

I loved the characters, even the background ones that we didn't see at lot. Xishi is absolutely my favorite. She was using what she had for what she needed to do very well. I wish we could have seen Fanli more. He was great but I just wished we had 10 to 15 pages additional to understand their relationship and feel as deeply as the characters but fortunately, their little moments were very adorable and made me swoon.
I felt very bad for the other main character. I wish that we could have seen more of his supposed cruelty because it didn't really feel this way. I only felt his loneliness which was a bit heartbreaking with what happen at the end.

Thank you again for the ARC. I can't wait to buy the book to read it again !

A Song to Drown Rivers by Ann Liang

“Before the journey down the rivers, before the king’s blood stained my hands, before the kingdom fell. When everything still felt like a story, a romantic myth. When we were together and the air was warm and nothing hurt.”

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

First off, thank you @stmartinspress for the advanced readers copy in exchange for an honest review.

A Song to Drown Rivers is a stand alone epic fantasy, inspired by the legend of Xishi, one of the famous Four Beauties of Ancient China.

I thoroughly enjoyed the aspects of this legend that were woven into the story and thought that Liang did a fantastic job. If you have been here a while you know that I love folk story retellings. While this is just inspired by the legend, and not a full retelling, I do think Liang did a great job of paying homage to Xishi while also making the story her own.

One of my favourite parts of the novel was experiencing the character development of Xishi while she navigated a difficult situation that creates a battle between complex emotions and morals. And the concept of pure “good” vs “evil” that arises from that exploration.

I would have liked a little bit more in regard to world and political building but I do think a lot of people would enjoy the balance that is portrayed in the book.

Now for my feelings on the ending. They are…complicated. I actually really loved how the book ended but felt it dragged on way too long. Without giving too much away, I think it should have been cut at a certain point with a one page epilogue outlining the very last scenario we were given. This would have made the ending more impactful, instead of dragging. But that’s just my opinion.

Over all, I think this is a great read for those who enjoy epic fantasy “light”. Where there is a dash of world building and political intrigue, but it is simple and easy to grasp.

📘: A Song to Drown Rivers- a standalone

✍️ By: Ann Liang-new to me author

eBook 327 pages

🗓️ Publication Date: 10-1-24 | Read: 10-9-24

Genre: Historical Fantasy/Fic, Romance, Mythology

Tropes: slow burn, Chinese lore, military/political intrigue

🙏🏾 Thanks to NetGalley, St. Martin's Press, and Ann Liang for this ARC💛! I voluntarily give my honest review, and all opinions expressed are my own.

🌏Setting: Kingdoms of Yue and Wu

⚠️ TW: misogyny, death of sibling-h, grief, beating-H

POV: 1st person, single

💭 Summary 💭: Xishi is a renowned beauty in her village found by military advisor Fanli to save their Yue kingdom. He offers to train her to betray and avenge the enemy Wu kingdom by becoming King Fuchai's concubine. Along with Xishi another village girl, Zhengdan, will become a palace lady and protect Xishi in her duty.

🚺Heroine: Xishi- 20, a beautiful Yue village girl tasked w/ infiltrating the Wu kingdom as a spy posing as the King's new concubine.

🚺 Hero-Fanli-22, a military advisor to King Goujian of Yue who enlists Xishi to save their kingdom. He offers to train her to conceal her emotions, fight with swords, and seduce the Wu King.

🎭Side Characters

-Zhengdan- beautiful village girl from Yue who agrees to become a palace lady rather than marry an old man her mother arranged for her. She protects Xishi when they arrive at Wu. Self-taught in sword play. Her father was killed by Wu General Ma.

-King Fuchai- ruler of Wu

-King Goujian-ruler of Yue

-Wu Zixu-minister to King Fuchai

-General Ma-killed Zhengdan's father, cruel

-Susu-Xishi's little sister killed by a Wu soldier.

-Luyi-a guard Fanli met when he was 15 and trained in combat.


🤔 My Thoughts: Xishi was a strong heroine I rooted for. Her and Fanli pined for each other but chose duty over their love. I enjoyed the morally grey "bad guy" who didn't behavior as harsh as Xishi thought. He treated Xishi with respect even allowed her to listen in on military strategy meetings. Fanli suffered at King Fuchai's hands by being beaten, stabbed, and tortured emotionally.


😭: Emotion 4/5
❤️: Couple 4/5
⭐️: Rating 4/5

A Song to Drown Rivers is a standalone story inspired by the legend of Xishi, one of the famous Four Beauties of Ancient China. Xishi is an exceptional beauty who is plucked from her village and trained by the advisor to the king. She is then sent into a neighboring kingdom with the mission to bring them down from the inside.

I feel as though this is a book that was mismarketed. That is part of the reason for why I didn't like this one as much as I hoped, but this is also an example of a book I should have DNFd. I was probably sitting at a 3 or 3.5 until the end. I was hopeful that it would get better, but overall, it just really killed this one for me.

So to start with the mismarketing. This one is marketed as a romantasy, and it has very little romance and even less fantastical elements. It really read like historical fiction with the names of the kingdoms changed. The writing was very flowery and pretty. There were moments that I think I would have really reveled in the descriptions, but I feel like the audiobook did not do those moments justice. And I love the idea of this story. It's a fascinating premise, but I just didn't love the execution.

I was intrigued to see where it was going to go, and I continued to turn the pages. For the majority of the book, I was thinking that it wasn't bad, but that I also wasn't loving it. The characters all read very flat and two dimensional. And the biggest issue for me was that we were told things and then shown something very different. There were so many moments when I was smacking my forehead and yelling at the audiobook because Xishi was doing something so painfully stupid. And we are told that she was turned into this fantastic tactician who is so cunning and wily and smart. And then all I saw over and over again after the 20-30% mark was that she was making really dumb decisions and mistakes. I am not going to go into them all for the sake of spoilers, but I was super irritated by some of them. There were moments when she would think to herself "oh, I'll have to be careful because this could be bad in the future" and then completely forget about it and be shocked when it came back around.

I think that part of the reason the characters felt so thin though was the way that the plot moved along. I think we covered probably 5ish years in the span of the book. However, there are big time jumps that aren't really called out. So it's hard to say. But basically we are just sort of told a lot of things that have happened and get to see very little, considering how much time passes.

The other big issue for me is the "romance." She spends 10 weeks with this super handsome advisor and falls completely and madly in love with him, and then proceeds to mourn him for the next 5 years. There was never anything between them but attraction - nothing happened, and no words were exchanged on the subject. It was super unbelievable to me. Especially considering her relationship with the Wu king. Supposedly there also was nothing physical really that ever happened there, but she manipulated him into falling in love with her, all while remaining completely aloof. I felt like it was always going to take a turn into enemies to lovers territory or that there would be some sort of a love triangle, but no. It felt icky to me because I feel like his personality and past and motivations were the most well-developed (even though they were still pretty flat), and I didn't like that he was being manipulated into ruin the whole time.

And then the ending happened, and I just could not deal with it. All the pieces that irked me in the first 80% were really amplified in the last 20%. All the characters were making terribly stupid decisions, Xishi and Fanli making some of the worst ones. And the end was supposed to be tragic and beautiful, but I was just so frustrated with how all these people I was told were the most intelligent ever were handling things that I couldn't bring myself to care. I also kept waiting for some of the themes to be explored further. It felt like we were picking up the idea of good and evil in war, the experience of the kingdom versus that of the kings, womanhood and how that was viewed, and some others, but we never really did more than scratch the surface. And the fantastical element only showed up at the very end.

I ranted about this one to my husband for a while, and I could go on, but I don't want to go into spoilers. And overall, this just confirmed for me that I should have trusted my gut and DNFd it. Thank you to Netgalley and St. Martin's Press for an early copy of this book. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

3.75 stars

Based on the legend of Xishi, A Song to Drown Rivers explores war, romance, and womanhood. I am not familiar with Xishi's legend, so this was all new for me! Initially I was unsure if this book was for me, but I'm glad I stuck with it. I think Liang's writing is beautiful - she has incredible prose and really can describe emotions and feelings in such unique ways, and was definitely what I enjoyed the most about this book. I wish we could have spent more time on the page exploring Fanli and Xishi's relationship, it would have made a lot of the tension throughout the rest of the book hit a LOT harder and would have propelled this into a fantastic book for me!

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for providing an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

4.5
Thank you to Netgalley and St. Martin's Press for providing this ARC in exchange for an honest review.

I could not put this down. I was engrossed throughout the whole book and then THAT ENDING happened!!! I was not expecting that and not prepared for it. You can call this beautifully tragic!

*thank you to NetGalley and St. Martin’s Press for an eARC of this book in exchange for my review*

This heartbreaking tale of beauty and devastation enchanted me from page one and had me hanging onto every detail all the way through. Ann Liang has woven a historical fantasy so morally grey and tragic that you might never recover from its terror and wonder.

She claimed it was like a c-drama, and she delivered. This book reads like a tv series with all the intrigue and twists to keep you going from chapter to chapter. And now that it’s over, my heart is broken. What a triumph. This book will wreck you in the best way. All good war stories always do.

Reading this book, I felt so torn, and I can’t imagine how Xishi felt as she had to face her task. In a war like this one, it really is hard to say who is right and who is wrong when both sides have hurt so many and been so brutal. She had to make her choice, and I experienced SO many feelings about it.

This is not my first Asian historical war fantasy of the year, but it is most certainly the best.

A Song to Drown Rivers tells the story of Xishi, one of the Four Great Beauties of China. Xishi lives in a Yue village with her parents where she is discovered by Fanli, a great military advisor to the Yue King Goujian. Known for her beauty, Xishi is recruited along with her friend to train to behave as noblewomen and infiltrate the enemy Wu Kingdom. Xishi's job is to distract the Wu King Fuchai from his duties and help Fanli and King Goujian invade the Wu Kingdom to take it back for their people. Xishi will have to contend with members of the court being distrustful of her, making it difficult for her to get close to the king, hiding her true purposes in the Wu Kingdom, and dealing with her growing feelings for Fanli.

The writing style of this book was really beautiful and lyrical, which made it a quick read. However, it felt like the writing also kept the characters at a distance a bit. This might be in part due to the fact that Xishi and Fanli are away from each other for much of the book, so it is a bit difficult to understand their connection to each other. I was also a bit confused by the way that this book is being marketed as a fantasy book when there really isn't any fantasy elements to it, unless they were so subtle that I missed them. As a historical fiction book, I found the story and the conflict interesting, I'm just not certain that it is a fantasy novel. I would recommend this to people who enjoy beautifully written historical fiction.

A Song to Drown Rivers takes a story you might think you know - a beautiful woman sent in as a spy - and portrays a story of love, sacrifice, and war. It's a story that touches upon, and begins conversations, about the 'casualties' of war. The innocent lives, civilians, that hang in the balance that rulers and kings never think about. The dehumanization, and perceived monstrosity, of our enemies which, as shadows, all look the same. A Song to Drown Rivers is also a story about love struggling to remain beating despite all the odds against them.

I have mixed feelings about this one. There were some aspects I liked a lot and some aspects that I didn’t care for at all. Also, in case nobody warns you, this book is a tragedy. I would place this novel as a historical fiction novel than a fantasy as there’s no magic or anything fantastical about it at all. And I’m mad about the ending. Big mad. Anyway thanks to NetGalley for early ARC access.

Unfortunately, I did not finish this book. I do plan to try again in the future, but it may not have been the right book for me, and that’s okay! I thought Ann Liang’s writing was very descriptive, allowing me to see each scene, it felt like there was almost too much description for me. I felt like I was getting bogged down in the details instead of enjoying the flow of the story. I can see where others would absolutely love this story and from the portion I did read, it would probably make a great tv show because of the added details. Unfortunately for me, it was just too many details and a bit slow.

With beautiful and evocative prose, A Song To Drown Rivers is an enthralling and tragic novel that teems with intrigue, yearning and the heartbreaking consequences of ambition and war. Peasants, women and those who simply lose favor with a king are depicted as potentially disposable and the the precarious nature of Xishi’s position as a concubine within a court that mistrusts her adds to the tension of the story. For even as she seems to win King Fuchai’s affections, there is always potential for a deadly misstep.

Present throughout most of the novel, Xishi and King Fuchai’s relationship receives much of the attention, though there are still brief moments where her longing for Fanli and his own restrained desires serve as a source of pining and even danger for the characters. As I am not very fond of love triangles, I appreciated that A Song To Drown Rivers depicts the complicated aspects of these relationships without becoming tedious.

I did find myself wishing that there were more scenes with minor characters, especially since one was given such an abrupt departure and that Xishi was able to exercise her training beyond acting elusive at times and merely requesting that Fuchai did what she wanted. I also felt that the story leaned more towards historical fiction than fantasy, but that may simply be my own impression.

But, oh, the ending! What is the reward for those who sacrifice everything? While I harbored some suspicions regarding how things might unfold, I was slightly disbelieving of what I was reading nonetheless. Days have passed and I am still contemplating it, which is a credit to its effectiveness.

Thank you to St. Martin’s Press and NetGalley for access to this ebook. All opinions expressed are solely my own.

This book absolutely wrecked me; enough said. I'm writing this almost exactly four months after I finished it, and I still remember that day vividly. It's really once in a lifetime that you're in the office on an ordinary Sunday afternoon, reading a book, all of a sudden you reach the end and you're bawling your eyes out uncontrollably. That all happened, folks, and A Song to Drown Rivers is the book that did that to me.

Have you ever wished you could read a C-drama? Well, you're in luck, because this is probably as close as you'll ever get to that experience. The imagery is so beautiful it made me want to gasp. The best books are the ones that transport you to the place and time they're set in, making you feel like you're right there with the characters, and ASTDR did exactly that. Even without music, I might add!

It's not just the setting that's astounding, the tropes and storyline had me hooked from start to end. The angst, the longing, the forbidden romance... Yes, this is a retelling, but it's so much more than that. Whether you're familiar with the legend of Xishi or not, prepare to be devastated. Another aspect of the book that drew me in was the exploration of grey. So much of the story considers the morally grey, and, when you stop to think about it the line between good and bad is extremely blurred. Who is the real villain of the story?

ASTDR is one of those books that's best experienced firsthand, rather than described, so let me conclude by saying that this a book you will end up thinking about for a long time. All it took was one sentence, and I couldn't stop reading.

Truly an astonishing piece by Ann Liang. A Song to Drown Rivers follows Xishi, one of the 4 great beauties of Ancient China as she is trained by Fanli to go into the enemy king's kingdom and seduce him a one of his concubines. With two love interests for the female lead, the readers are left rooting for one and feeling bad for the other. Nevertheless, I finished reading this book in less than a day and I can say that it indeed, led me through a whirlwind of emotions. From the tension between characters to the plot twists, I could not put this book down. Liang gave truly vivid, picturesque descriptions in both the settings and with the events occuring in the book. This is perfect for fans of the Untamed and people into Chinese Historical Dramas.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publishers for this ARC!

I’m a huge fan of Ann Liang, so I was really excited to get an ARC for this book. I didn’t expect this book to absolutely destroy me, but I loved it so much! This book is a historical romance inspired by the legend of Xishi. I was unfamiliar with the legend it was inspired by, but that didn’t take away from my enjoyment of the story.

I was a big fan of the romance in this book. I didn’t expect there to be a love triangle, but I didn’t mind it. I thought the love that Fanli and Xishi had for each other was so sweet. I also didn’t expect to love Fuchai as much as I did, but I would give anything for him. He was such a sweetie and so misunderstood. I also liked Xishi as a MC. I thought she was so strong and brave to do what she did for her kingdom.

Also, the ending? The way I sobbed as soon as I finished reading. I was not prepared at all for that ending!

In A Song to Drown Rivers, Ann Liang weaves an intricate tale inspired by the legend of Xishi, one of the Four Beauties of Ancient China. This historical fantasy immerses readers in a world of war, sacrifice, and espionage, with political intrigue driving much of the plot.

The story’s focus on using beauty as a weapon, combined with Xishi’s mission to infiltrate the enemy palace, was both intriguing and unsettling. Liang skillfully portrayed the high stakes, making the plot gripping, but the intense political schemes and brutal consequences made parts of it hard to read. The darker aspects of war and sacrifice pushed me out of my comfort zone, but I still appreciated the rich exploration of themes like womanhood and power. The complex dynamic between Xishi and Fanli added emotional depth, though it was the constant danger of her mission that kept the tension alive throughout the novel.

Though not an easy or light read, A Song to Drown Rivers is a compelling, epic fantasy that showcases the strength and resilience of its heroine. For fans of historical fantasy with a political edge, this is a story worth delving into.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the advanced reader copy.

A Song to Drown Rivers by Ann Liang is about a beautiful young girl name Xishi whose people were defeated and she witnessed firsthand the brutality of that on her family and village. She's chosen and trained (by a very handsome soldier name Fanli) to use her beauty to gain favor with the King while playing double agent in order to overthrow their oppressors.

I enjoyed this very much. In fact I enjoyed it much more than I expected. It has this Nikita element to it, where Xishi elicits both desire and respect, while maintaining her virtue which in fact makes her even more powerful because she’s more of a fantasy.

Yes, it's a romance, but not what you'd expect, because the mission is always the priority. There were some brutal scenes, but they were quite lovely in the way they were presented.

This book is about war, love, and sacrifice and one I won’t forget anytime soon. The ending was surprising but I liked it. Sometimes a book seems to end too soon, and I love how we get to see the aftermath of everything. So if you like historical fantasies, double agents/spies, forbidden romance … I highly recommend.

I am enjoying Asian themed book and this one did not disappoint. I have been enjoying talking about this book with other readers.

When authors know how to do young adult books you get one beautiful piece of work. It feels almost artistic. Love this book and the special edition just adds to it.

First, I think the cover deserves a round of applause; it is gorgeous!

This story is a mix of historical fiction, mythology and romance based on Xishi (one of the Four Beauties of Ancient China) who uses her beauty as a weapon to take down a kingdom and avenge her sister's death.

I loved the story, the setting, and the character development. The prose is beautifully written which gives a glance to and helps draw out the emotional depth of the story. You may or may not be shedding a tear...or two... by the end.