She Who Became the Sun
Shelley Parker-Chan
Let me begin with a confession. My knowledge of Ming dynasty China and its first emperor is pretty much limited to their respective Wikipedia pages. These are mostly consistent with She Who Became the Sun, with two main exceptions. (1) In the novel the Mandate of Heaven is a visible magical flame that may be seen surrounding those who possess it. Those possessing the Mandate have the ability to see ghosts. (2) The first Ming emperor was secretly a woman. So closely does She Who Became the Sun follow actual history that I am inclined to view it as historical fiction, rather than fantasy. In fact, most of the main characters are historical and are given their actual names.
I was disappointed that Shelley Parker-Chan did not include an Afterword describing how their novel compares to actual historical scholarship or containing a reading list. I found no more information on their website, except for a page listing historical figures. I stated above that my knowledge of the Ming is limited to the Wikipedia pages. That was true before I read She Who Became the Sun and remains true afterward, because I know that Parker-Chan altered the historical record in writing their novel, but aside from the two specific points mentioned above, I don't know how. I am inclined to join Vroomfondel in shouting
We demand rigidly defined areas of doubt and uncertainty! (THGTTG)
She Who Became the Sun is a rags to riches story, except that it is really more a rags-to-power story. (For the most part it is, in fact, the true rags-to-power story of the first Ming emperor.) Our hero Zhu is starving to death with her father and brother as the story begins. Father and brother die but Zhu survives, taking on the identity of her brother, Zhu Chongba, and joining a Buddhist monastery in order to survive. Thereafter she does whatever she must to survive and to fulfil her perceived destiny of greatness. Although Zhu is clever, her greatest strength is her fixed will to greatness. Her main opponent is a eunuch general of the Yuan (Mongol) armies, Ouyang. Ouyang is not listed on Parker-Chan's historical figures page and is, I believe, the only important character in the novel who is not historical. After Zhu herself he is easily the most important point-of-view character in the novel.
Parker-Chan expects their readers to know some Chinese, and if, like me, you don't, this is occasionally annoying, though never plot-critical. For instance, they write
Commander Guo was only twenty-two, but the constant action of his eyebrows swooping crossly over his nose had already worn three vertical lines between them like the word “river.”
This one I actually understood, because the same character, 川, is used in Japanese writing. Also this,
The Prince of Henan, Chaghan-Temur, was a squat, frog-cheeked old warrior whose beard and braids had already turned the iron gray of his name.
My attempts to persuade Google translate to explain the relationship of "Chaghan-Temur" to "iron-gray" ended in failure.
The story is powerful, but it is an almost unrelieved expanse of utter dreariness. Ouyang and Zhu make each other suffer and suffer. They also make other people suffer. There are a few moments of joy, but they are very few. In fact, only one comes to mind. Even when Zhu and Ouyang win they do so almost always at the expense of others and although there is triumph, there is no feeling of joy.
I don't think I will read He Who Drowned the World.
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