#shelly parker-chan | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

st-just · 1 year

Note

Opinions on the novel and novella categories excluding Elder Race?

Okay so, uh, 3 months late finally answering this (sorry - but I DID read Elder Race in the meantime!)

So, novels-

A Desolation Called Peace by Arkady Martine The central metaphor of how an empire can only understand something by consuming/assimilating it into itself was imo well-done, one of the better uses of a hive mind alien I've seen in a while. Mahit and (especially) Three Seagrass continue to be delightful. The whole palace drama plot in the City leaned a biiiiiit too close to 'the Empress is just and good! Sadly scheming ministers and self-interested officials have attempted to mislead her for their own ends' for my tastes, which absolutely made me start rooting for scheming vizer guy out of spite. Still kind of confused what happened to the Judiciary Minister who vanished 2/3 of the way into the first book without comment. Excellent read, would recommend

The Galaxy, and the Ground Within by Becky Chambers Absolutely my favorite thing Chambers has written, but that is a very low bar. There were a few pages of actual interpersonal conflict that wasn't just a silly misunderstanding! (Even if they had apologized and agreed to disagree by the end of the next chapter). In principle I approve of any sci fi with no human characters in major roles. Aeleon demography continues to give me a headache (how do you spend so much time on worldbuilding and just mess up the basic math?) - though honestly Pei's whole conflict over the societal expectation to have a kid would have had a bit more tension/drama to it in a setting where her species was legitimately endangered and at risk of extinction (the sheer angst potential!) Anyway, yeah, well-executed but Not For Me.

Light From Uncommon Stars by Ryka Aoki I did, uh, not much like this book. In a 'spent a couple hours cathartically ranting about it on discord after finishing it' sort of way. The central romance didn't work, every character arc was perfectly predictable, the whole incessantly hammered home bit about the magic and wonder of home-cooked food just makes me want to gag, I can kind of see what Aoki was going for with the sci fi half of the worldbuilding but it just didn't work at all, and so on. Still not entirely sure what to make of the fact that if you did the 0.5 degree shift necessary to turn the finale into a Christian morality play the quirky alien family plays an identical structural role to where the angels would be. The cursed/demonic-violin repair lady was fun, though.

A Master of Djinn by P. Djèlí Clark This was fun! Nothing hugely ground-breaking and extremely trope-ey, but in a good way? Like the process was clearly 'buddy cop story in into steampunk urban fantasy Cairo' more than anything that evolved naturally out of the characters or setting. But like, eh? The finale involved a giant robot controlled by enslaved ifrit and a mad sorceress trying to restore the British empire attacking the city, nuance and subtlety clearly weren't the goals here. The central mystery was barely a mystery, though. You could pick out the villain by the end of the first act like three or four different ways. Still, yeah, great time. Very pulpy.

Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir If you don't know that this is by the The Martian guy going in, it will be extremely clear by the time you're 50 pages in. It's a writing style with a real personality bleeding through - if you don't like it, the book will I'm sure be torture. But anyway, I'm a sucker for first contact stories and properly weird but still sympathetic and agentic aliens, and that's the beating heart of the story so I mean, of course I enjoyed it. The science also all seemed plausible/not-obvious-bullshit to me, and Weir did a really good job of getting tension and drama without ever making anyone a villain, with all the threats being faced being natural/environmental. Fun read, assuming very high tolerance for technobabble and also magic amnesia that you don't apply anywhere near the standards of the rest of the books' science to.

She Who Became the Sun by Shelley Parker-Chan I mean the whole premise of 'mythic/low-fantasy retelling of the founding of the Ming dynasty but with lesbians' feels like what you'd get if you simmered down my reading consumption of the last year or two and poured out the reduction. So like, yeah, of course I liked it! Probably would have been my vote for winner, though not at all sad that Desolation got it instead. As a character type, I really, really love the whole 'arranges everything to work out perfectly through desperate, furious scheming, then absolutely never breaks character and insists it must be providence and they're but a simple monk/scholar/whatever" so Zhu's whole bit there was just catnip to me. The whole melodrama in the mongol court was great, too. And how can you not love a book that ends with the heroine murdering the messiah in cold blood?

novellas-

Across the Green Grass Fields by Seanan McGuire The only other thing I'd read by McGuire before this was Middlegame, which may have given me unrealistic expectations but, like, this was fine? Or, like, I get the sense that this is very much a YA/Middle-grade book, insofar as it really feels like the literary equivalent of a tv special you'd watch with your kid niece and nephew because hey, it's not painful for you or anything? Really funny that this exists entirely independently of the apparently-a-real-thing cartoon Centaurworld, though.

Elder Race by Adrian Tchaikovsky This was fun classic sci fi. Like, really classic - I kind of thought 'fantasy setting that's secretly a post-apocalyptic sci fi setting where all the 'magic' and 'monsters' are just poorly understood hypertech' went of fashion with the millennium. Anyway I adore things that play with POV and have different people see the same events and process/interpret them radically differently, so the whole book was catnip that way, and it managed to authentically feel like just a small slice of a vaster, weirder universe, and both deuteragonists really work for me. Don't have a solid pick for my preferred winner but this is one of the two I'm torn between.

Fireheart Tiger by Aliette de Bodard First and so far only thing by de Bodard I've read, which I should probably fix given how big a name she is. Anyway, this was fun! Nothing too groundbreaking, but that is 100% down to my reading habits rather than, like, 'lesbian court drama in a fantasy analogue of an asian country under threat of colonization' is an over-filled niche, or anything (really the only surprising thing was that I hadn't read this already).

The Past Is Red by Catherynne M. Valente The other one I might have voted for. On the level of stories she's a bit hit and miss but on the sentence-to-sentence and paragraph-to-paragraph levels Valente is seriously one of my favorite writers working, and this was no exception. Just an absolute delight to read. Also, 'post-apocalyptic magical realism on the city-sized garbage heap floating in the ocean populated by a culture of survivors after the world drowned' is just a great premise. And my shriveled husk of a soul appreciates just committing to the character study and the ruin and the elegy without giving into the urge to make a grand redemptive quest of it all.

A Psalm for the Wild-Built by Becky Chambers I, uh, liked this significantly less than Galaxy and the Ground Within. Utopias are basically necessarily didactic but, like, you really don't have to lean all the way into literally having the heart of the story be conversations between the protagonist and a sacred and innocent alien whose always correct about everything. Also the whole 'we 100% could be immortal but we chose not to because, like, nature or something. Aren't we so amazing?' thing with the robots is bullshit. Which, combined with the entire aesthetic of the world just left be feeling peevish and asking questions which really weren't the point (Where are the mines? The foundries? You can't make solar panels or modern antibiotics in a basement workshop! And you sure as hell can't cobble together and repair fully mobile and sapient robots in a cave with a box of scraps.)

A Spindle Splintered by Alix E. Harrow So it's not that this was bad, exactly. But, like, I feel like it should have come out sometime in the '90s? (Okay without the explicitly gay bits but that's a matter of a few sentences tbh). Like, the deadline for metafictional feminist retellings of classic fairtails being genuinely novel or subversive was sometime before Disney got in on the game, sorry. Also, like, I'm sure it's just down to me being a weird morbid kid, but the whole shocking revelation about how fucked up the original Sleeping Beauty myth is was, like, something I knew before I hit puberty? Only other thing of Harrow's I've read was the Ten Thousand Door's of January and I'm really, really disappointed comparing them, honestly. (Also, as a general rule I dislike anything where it's very clear whether you're supposed to like or trust a character from the scene they're introduced and this is never wrong)

In other categories L’Esprit de L’Escalier should obviously have one novelette, "Where Oaken Hearts Do Gather" short story, Terra Ignota series, and Monstress comic, based off the foolproof criteria of 'those are the ones I've read'

92 notes · View notes

berrymuttbb · 2 years

Text

she who became the sun by shelly parker-chan moodboard

#she who became the sun #the radiant emperor #shelly parker-chan #zhu chongba #ma xiuying #general ouyang #she who became the sun moodboard #the radiant emperor moodboard #shelly parker-chan moodboard #zhu chongba moodboard #ma xiuying moodboard #general ouyang moodboard #my book moodboards #my moodboards

81 notes · View notes

indri-on-ao3 · 6 months

Text

I'm watching Loki and reading She Who Became the Sun by Shelley Parker-Chan. There's a pair of brothers in SWBtS who resemble the MCU Thor and Loki: the older brother is the fêted masculine warrior ideal, while the younger brother is adopted, smart, gnc, despised. I wondered if I was projecting onto the book, but last weekend I attended a talk by the author, who said they used to write queer fanfic to spite Marvel, and they cited Chris Hemsworth as the Australian masculine ideal. They describe their books as about finding queer solidarity in a Chinese historical setting with lots of murders. It's good and it has many interesting queer characters.

#loki #thor #thor movies #fanfiction #shelly parker-chan #she who became the sun

12 notes · View notes

thelabryslibrary · 2 years

Text

She Who Became the Sun by Shelly Parker-Chan Podcast

Monks? Anti-heroes? SPICE?? This book has everything. Today we dive into the world of She Who Became the Sun by Shelly Parker-Chan. *Spoilers*

10 notes · View notes

bookspls1815 · 2 years

Text

finished reading SHE WHO BECAME THE SUN today and like. oh my god. okay. i can’t catch my breath. but okay.

#she who became the sun #shelly parker-chan #books

6 notes · View notes

thoughtfulfangirling · 2 years

Text

I wanted to read She Who Became the Sun by Shelley Parker-Chan this month, but I couldn't get it on Scribd or thru the library so I went ahead and bought it through Libro and I am SO GLAD I did. What a fucking book!! I am excited for what's to come!!

#Tf reads #she who became the sun #Shelly Parker-Chan #books #reading

6 notes · View notes

hawkwinglb · 8 months

Text

Reviews at Tor.com and Locus

There never seems to be enough time. But while I’m bemoaning entropy, here are some reviews I wrote elsewhere: Hannah Kaner’s debut Godkiller is unexpectedly excellent: First published in the UK in January 2023, it received strong praise (including from Samantha Shannon and Tasha Suri) and rapidly became a UK bestseller. Despite my initial misgivings [about it], I can see why. Blood and demons…

View On WordPress

#Ariel Kaplan #book reviews #books #fantasy #Hannah Kaner #Locus #Melissa Scott #RJ Barker #Shelly Parker-Chan #Tor.com

0 notes

mortifiedpod · 2 months

Text

youtube

Mortified! Episode Episode 157: Blowjob for Revenge (He Who Drowned the World)

This week, @monsterfactoryfanfic and @leylses finish off the Radiant Emperor duology with Shelly Parker Chan's "He Who Drowned the World!" We talked about Normal Bro Stuff, a bunch of complicated gender feelings, and what an evil shonen protagonist looks like.

Mortified! The Friendship Quest is a podcast where two long-distance friends exchange media recommendations and take a dive into things like the Artemis Fowl-to-Sasuke pipeline, making catboys mainstream with James Cameron, and occasionally invite some friends to play TTRPGs or talk about how Yugi Muto inherited male-pattern baldness from Yami Yugi.

YouTube | Spotify | iTunes

#shelly parker chan #he who drowned the world #she who became the sun #mortifiedpod #Youtube

7 notes · View notes

bi4bihankking · 3 months

Text

She Who Became The Sun Duology Summary:

Zhu Chongba is given a fate of greatness, which sounds great right up into he starves to death. But if there’s a great fate to be had seems a waste to let it die too so his sister will just have to fulfill it. A reimagining of the Ming Dynasty’s rise to power that has the gumption to ask ‘is it a woman’s body if a woman doesn’t inhabit it?’

The Traitor Baru Cormorant Summary:

Lesbian autistic accountant infiltrates the evil Empire to take it down from the inside, commits atrocities bc the ends justify the means

4 notes · View notes

himboskywalker · 5 months

Note

Heyy boo, do you have a book that is not star wars related that you wish you could read for the first time or reread all the time?

I am searching for books recommendations and I am pretty open about every genre, maybe not horror but everything else is totally fine.

My number one book recommendation that I will always obnoxiously shove in everyone’s faces is Lord of the Rings. It is my heart and soul and favorite thing in the world and if you’ve never read the trilogy I highly recommend it. But I also have quite a few other recs!

Anything written by Andy Weir. “The Martian” is his best known work,which they made the Matt Damon movie of,and while I do love it “Project Hail Mary” is my favorite of his and one of my favorite sci-fi books of all time.

I loved “To Sleep in a Sea of Stars” which was Christopher Paolini’s sci-fi debut a couple years ago but he just came out with its prequel “Fractal Noise” and I liked it even more.

For some good old fashioned space opera brilliance I recommend the “Final Architecture” trilogy by Adrian Tchaikovsky. The last book of the series just came out and I DEVOURED it. Tchaikovsky’s Children of Time,Ruin,and Memory are also phenomenal, you really just can’t go wrong with him.

For more space opera and politics I highly recommend Arkady Martine,she DEBUTED with “Memory Called Empire” which won all sorts of awards. The sequel also recently came out but I haven’t gotten the chance to read it.

I’m in the middle of reading Pierce Brown’s “Red Rising” saga,which I would describe as adult Hunger Games,and have thoroughly enjoying it as well!

For fantasy I love Samantha Shannon’s “Priory of the Orange Tree” and “A Day of Fallen Night”. You’ll get varying opinions of what to read first,I read Priory when it first came out so that’s my biased opinion.

I’m a massive fan of “She Who Became the Sun” by Shelly Parker-Chan and their sequel “He Who Drowned the World” and I want it to go on record I read SWBS when it first came out and before it blew up *flips hair*

R.J. Barker’s “Tide Child” trilogy is awesome,first book of that series is “The Bone Ships.” It’s high seas fantasy with dragon bone ships and epic war and amazing world building.

I always highly recommend “Gideon the Ninth” by Tamsyn Muir and now also the rest of the books in the series. I think the usual pitch is lesbian necromancers in space.

I cannot cannot recommend “The Shadow of the Gods” by John Gwynne enough! It’s quintessential epic fantasy told as a Norse epic and it’s in my top five of modern fantasy books.

While I have serious beef with Song of Achilles just like our fellow obikin Will,I did love and devour Madeline Miller’s “Circe.” In every way I think it’s her superior work.

I can’t recommend fantasy without recommending “The Grace of Kings” by Ken Liu. His entire series will blow your socks off,but the first book won nearly every award for fantasy books that have ever existed.

I’m a huge fan of R.F Kuang’s “The Poppy War” series although I’ve heard this one is a contentious recommendation. I think this series is hate or love it but if for whatever reason you don’t vibe with this series I also highly recommend Kuang’s “Babel.”

If you want something a little less well known I could chew through drywall over Simon Jimenez’s “The Spear Cuts Through Water.” It was in my top five of 2023 release books.

I can also make a separate rec list of less new books and overall classics I always recommend or gift to people,both fiction and nonfiction!

#book recs #book recommendations #science fiction #fantasy #anons

35 notes · View notes

stardustprompts · 1 year

Text

she who became the sun ( the radiant emperor #1 ) - shelly parker-chan change tenses/pronouns as needed !! some lines have been edited for clarity / length / ease of roleplaying tw ; death , war , violence , sexism

‘they say there’s luck in names, and you’ve certainly had luck enough.’

'in my experience, lucky people tend to be the laziest.’

‘where’s the fun in suffering by yourself?’

‘you think you’re that good-looking everyone wants to see you?’

‘desire is the cause of all suffering.’

‘I don’t appreciate being made a puppet for another man’s dirty work.’

‘when I ask myself if future pain is worth it for this life I have now, I always find that it is.’

‘I always knew you had a strong will. but what’s unusual about you is that most strong willed people never understand that will alone isn’t enough to guarantee their survival.’

‘more so than will, survival depends upon an understanding of people and power.’

‘it isn’t strength, but knowledge, that will be our best tool for surviving these difficult times ahead.’

'undoubtedly, chaos brings danger. but there will be opportunities, too.’

‘it’s due to chaos that we’re living through a moment in which even ordinary men can aspire to greatness.’

‘are you going to stab me?’

‘you can’t pray away your fate.’

‘I was merciful. I let you live.’

‘you cause me trouble as well as shame.’

‘you disappoint me.’

‘any power with such comprehensive reach should be understood.’

‘any power with such comprehensive reach should be understood. perhaps especially if they’re on our side.’

‘in my father’s eyes, I’ll always be the failure.’

‘(name) is an easy person to love. the world loves him, and he loves the world, because everything in it has always gone right for him.’

‘you and (name) are two unlike things. don’t fool yourself that he can ever understand you.’

‘I know what it’s like to be humiliated.’

‘any kind of fool can stumble into success once or twice.’

‘you two are such a bad match. can’t you have a single conversation without fighting?’

‘can’t you have a single conversation without fighting?’

‘clever people know when to give in.’

‘if you join his side, you’ll regret it.’

‘how little lives are worth in this war. theirs and ours, both.’

‘you have a lot of feelings in you.’

‘to win a hundred victories, a hundred battles is not the pinnacle of skill. to subdue the enemy without fighting is the pinnacle of skill.’

‘what someone is means nothing about what kind of person they are. truth is in actions.’

‘I didn’t mean to kill. at first.’

‘I wanted to live, so I took a life.’

‘all that means is we have to make this life count.’

‘who did you become, when we were apart?’

‘I might not know you, but I know what you want.’

‘you’ve opened my eyes. there are so many more options than I thought.’

‘you saw something in me that I didn’t know myself.’

‘what kind of man bothers to see potential in a woman, and encourages her despite her own doubts?’

‘rest assured that the only reason I helped you is because it gets me closer to what I want.’

‘you know what’s worse than suffering? not suffering, because you’re not even alive to feel it.’

‘learn to want something for yourself. not what someone says you should want. not what you think you should want.’

‘don’t go through life thinking only of duty. when all we have are these brief spans between our nonexistences, why not make the most of the life you’re living now?’

‘why not make the most of the life you’re living now? the price is worth it.’

‘maybe your suffering is worth whatever it is you want to achieve. but mine wouldn’t be.’

‘that’s all past history. I never think of it.’

‘do you believe that? that one day we’ll be out of a job, because of peace?’

‘have the courage to take power for yourself! do you think it will come to you if you wait?’

‘do you actually believe the idiocy that comes out of your mouth?’

‘you never accepted me for who I am; you never even saw everything I did for you, all because I’m not like (name)!’

‘you always push everyone away. what do you find in it, the loneliness? I couldn’t bear it.’

‘you trust too much. I admire you for it. that you prefer to drawn people closer, rather than push them away. but it’ll get you hurt.’

‘the worst injury you can do to a man is shame him. he can never forget it.’

‘it must have been painful, learning that true wisdom lies in obedience.’

‘are you always thinking do little of me that my defeats seem inevitable?’

‘i’d have thought you’d be the last to cry about (name’s) fate. why can’t we just stand back and let it happen?’

‘so you’re going to save (name) from himself?’

‘and here I thought I was the only one who got manipulated by pretty girls.’

‘why are you lowering yourself by dirtying your hands like this? let someone else take care of this trash.’

‘you were only ever a pretender. you only sat on a pretend throne.’

‘why do we have to play these awful games? what for?’

‘what does anyone want but to be on top, untouchable?’

‘who do you think I am, to think I can make anything happen in my own life? i’m a woman.’

‘I know you don’t want that life. a different one isn’t impossible.’

‘you have something I don’t; you feel for others, even the ones you don’t like.’

‘you want me to believe you’re different. that you can give me something different. but how can I trust that? I can’t.’

‘are you fool enough to believe the future will match your dream of it, with no consideration of the reality of the situation?’

‘I don’t admit anything! I don’t need to! you’ve already made up your mind!’

‘you can’t reason with fools who refuse to see reason.’

‘he was right about you. you’re worthless. worse than that; a curse.’

‘there are people who say that grief will hurt as much as it’s worth.’

‘there are people who say that grief will hurt as much as it’s worth. and there is nothing worth more than a father.’

‘(name) would never put himself on the line for me, or anyone else. but you, you’d do anything for me, wouldn’t you?’

‘i’ve wanted and struggled and suffered for that fate my whole life. I’m not going to stop now.’

‘you are trouble. I’ve never met anyone more trouble than you,’

‘are you so certain of the possibility of change? it seems to me the outcome is inevitable.’

‘what I want has nothing to do with who wins.’

‘every time the world turns its face from you, know it was because of me.’

‘stop blaming yourself and let yourself want it.’

‘stop blaming yourself and let yourself want it. i’ll give it to you.’

‘I have everything I need. whereas you, — you still need me.’

‘nobody expected anything of me. nobody ever cherished me.’

‘I cherish you.’

‘you think you understand me. but don’t forget it goes both ways. like knows like; like is connected to like. I understand you, too.’

‘pure emotions are the luxury of children and animals.’

‘more fool I am, to hope against hope for a change in his nature, that he might actually try to be useful.’

‘I presume you’re not here to kill me.’

‘you think you have power over me because you know a secret. but you don’t.’

‘how can something like that stop me, destroy me, when nothing else has?’

‘look at me and see the person who will win. the person who will rule.’

‘I presume you realize how much I dislike you. wasn’t the last where I said I wanted to kill you clear enough?’

‘you betray you ignorance in less than a sentence.’

‘how willing you were to think the worst of me. why aren’t you happier? i’m just being who you’ve always though I was. i’m giving you the ending you believed in.’

‘the times and means of our deaths have always been fixed, and this is yours.’

‘even the most shining future, if desired, will have suffering at its heart.’

‘i’ll follow you, as far as you want to go.’

‘I wasn’t born with the promise of greatness either. but I have it now. because I wanted it. because I’m strong, because I’ve struggled and suffered to become the person I need to me, and because I do want needs to be done.’

‘you said you’d be different. you lied to me.’

‘when you did this, did you even stop to think about how it might make me feel to bear witness for what you think is justified?’

‘I want what I want, and sometimes I’m going to have to do certain things to get it.’

‘you have two choices. you can rise with me, which I’d prefer. or if you don’t want what I want— you can leave.’

#rp sentence starters #rp prompts #rp memes #literature sentence starters #literature prompts #she who became the sun prompts #she who became the sun sentence starters #the radiant emperor prompts #the radiant emperor sentence starters

99 notes · View notes

biboomerangboi · 1 month

Text

Okay so finished book one and ugh spoiler free review as best as I can. First of all 9/10. I would say 10/10 but it’s very clear that this book is like set up to be a duology so like it’s very slow build with a lot of the meat of the story happening in the later half. Which just means that while the beginning is written beautifully is just a little bit meaty to get through cause there’s not that much going on plot wise.

Character wise though there’s a lot. Zhu is such a wonderful protagonist and narrator truly the way she sees the world is so vibrant and they have like an insane fairytale trickster energy to them that I adore. Also despite this not being like a clear genderqueer story (as in it’s not modern so that understanding of gender isn’t really said) she is such amazing representation and I related to her a lot! Her dialogue is so bright and vibrant and full of vitality even in the darker spots it’s great!

Meanwhile Ouyang is this wonderful foil. He’s so deep and angry and bitter and jaded and instead of it feeling like a slog to get through your chomping at the bit reading it. Great unreliable narrator I never knew entirely what he was thinking because even he was so conflicted about it. (For my TGCF girlies he’s extremely He Xuan coded and it’s great).

I can’t wait to see them interact more in the next book. I stand by my statement that their dynamic is gender euphoria sword fighting body dysmoria in a parking lot

Also Ma Xiuying you’re so wonderful and compassionate and angry and full of fire and life I am so so in love with you please yell at more people it’s so sexy of you. It’s so great to get a POV character that is just as intelligent as the other protagonists but while they are both cold thinkers she’s like full of empathy and emotion. I adore her I need more of her in the next book.

Also thank you Shelly Parker Chan for giving me two wonderful insane queer relationships I was surprised by the sex scene (if you know you know but good for her) but it was so well written and perfectly fit in with all the politics and scheming and war.

Anyway on to book 2 but if you haven’t read this yet you should it’s great!

#the radiant emperor #she who became the sun #zee reads #zee rambles #zee reviews books now??#zhu chongba #zhu yuanzhang #general ouyang #Ouyang #ma xiuying #he who drowned the world #next tag will be a hinted spoiler - >#esen temur #my babygirl esen 💜💜💜#fly high king #hospital posting

16 notes · View notes