She Who Became the Sun

This is a story that challenges our understanding of identity–Zhu is a girl, and she is a male novice in a monastery. Zhu wears her dead brother’s name like armor and schemes to make his fate hers as well. Zhu is as unapologetically callous as the world that discarded her. Zhu lives as a man and never wishes to live as a woman, but her pronouns never change.

Her story forces the reader to confront the heavy hand of circumstance in our lives and our definition of self. Zhu performs gender without regret or longing, it is a tool of… show more.

This pick made me fall in love with a Mulan-style gender swap all over again. From the moment Zhu steals the fate of greatness promised to her dead brother and takes his place, prepared to use any amount of trickery and the occasionally necessary murder to claim the mandate of heaven for herself, I was ride or die.

I loved the way Zhu molded herself into the perfect person to inhabit whatever role the situation required of her. She was prepared to trick monks, generals, lords, and even the gods themselves into granting her greatness.

I’m a sucker for a Chosen One, and I really loved how this book adds a unique take on this trope. Fate and ambition are tied together with flame magic that literally shines light on the characters marked out for greatness.

The magic has a few other twists, but I actually loved how the magic doesn’t take center stage. This is more historical fiction than epic fantasy, and I was so impressed by the detailed world-building. As serious as the topics that this book deals with, it still managed to make me smile along with the characters as they dared… show more.

I am somewhat cheating here because this book is the first part of a duology (the second book is their He Who Drowned the World), so they are best read together.

Shelly Parker-Chan’s debut novel describes the rise of the Ming dynasty in China, including all the historical characters and major conflicts. Keeping most of the history in place, they reimagine the first Ming emperor as a woman masquerading as a man and writes about all the intrigues and battles that bring her to power.

The books are dark, and part two is even darker than part one. But… show more.

I loved this book for the language, for the mastery with which the author turned the subjugation of women upside-down, and for how the least among us can become the brick over which a society falls upon its face. 

Were Shakespeare alive, he would adore the power that Shelley Parker-Chan takes humanity through the wringer of ambition, need, and love, then kicks their expectations out from under them.

Rich! Poetic! Brutal! Feminist! Queer! This gorgeous historical novel had everything I love – from rich prose to unexpected perspectives.

As a child, the main character watches as her brother receives a prediction: he will be somebody important. Her own destiny? It’s nothing. But when her brother passes, she wonders if she can slip into his, trick the gods into letting her be the important one. What follows is an epic and heart-wrenching journey.

This book is a fantastical retelling of the Hongwu Emperor’s rise to power, with the emperor re-imagined as a non-binary afab person. It’s billed as Mulan meets The Song of Achilles, but I vastly preferred it to both those narratives; the nascent emperor, Zhu Chongba, becomes gloriously ruthless in a way that defies their gender. There’s also a gay eunuch point-of-view character with an incredibly tragic backstory, who almost steals the show.

It’s very character-driven, which helps temper its epic scope. I don’t usually love stories with this much military/political scheming, but I absolutely loved this book. It’s a… show more.

This Asian historical fantasy is no simple Mulan retelling, but a deep dive into fate and desire, and the thin line that separates them from each other. Zhu Chongba disguises herself as a male because she decides to steal her dead brother’s destiny of greatness. Though some elements of needing to disguise her gender come up, the story is centered on a strong-willed character’s determination to become exactly who she deserves and wishes to be – a male warrior who takes fate into her own hands to make the world hers. For her, the male appearance is not a disguise,… show more.