This was quite good, but the middle half or so didn’t quite hold my attention as strongly as I generally prefer. I’d say it’s 4.5 stars, though if I had to round it I’d round it down to 4 rather than up to 5. (Not to be excessively precise in my gradations or anything.)
This book (first in a … duolgy? Trilogy? Series? I don’t know) is a reimagining of the fall of the Yuan Dynasty (aka the Mongols) and the rise of the Ming Dynasty in 14th century China. As I’ve said before, I know shamefully little about Chinese history, so I can’t comment much on things from that perspective. But from a storytelling perspective, this was great.
The main character is a girl born into the peasant Zhu family. We first see her in the midst of a famine; the land is suffering because the Mongols are losing the Mandate of Heaven, and her family has been reduced to herself, her brother, and her father who places far more value in her brother than herself. A seer promises that her brother is destined for greatness, but for her, just a girl, her fate was “nothing.” Not good, not bad, just “nothing.” She is absolutely unwilling to accept this, and is determined to achieve greatness for herself. When her father is killed by bandits, and her brother just gives up, lays down, and dies, she decides to assume her brother’s identity and claim his fate of greatness for her own.
Plot happens, she is able to disguise herself as a boy, join a Buddhist monastery, and escape starvation. More plot happens, and she (still claiming her late brother Zhu Chongba’s identity) joins the rebellion against the Yuan rule.
Zhu Chongba is a very compelling character, but that isn’t necessarily the same thing as a likable one. She is focused on her undefined goal of “greatness” nearly to the exclusion of all else. I’d go so far as to call her more-or-less amoral. She doesn’t go out of her way to do anything bad, but she only barely hesitates to do “what needs to be done” if something is standing in her way. Some of the things she does in this book are simply awful. This, I think, was my biggest issue with the book. She doesn’t have a defined goal, except to rise, and she wants greatness for its own sake; we don’t even have a fuzzy and problematic notion of a “greater good” to justify some of the things she does.
But that doesn’t mean this still isn’t a great book. Where it comes into its own, and where it really hooked me, is when Zhu Chongba meets Ma, a girl her own age who is every bit as determined as Zhu Congba herself, but also idealistic and with a strong moral compass.
Meanwhile, there’s a secondary protagonist: Ouyang, a general fighting the rebels on behalf of the Yuan. Ouyang’s family was killed as traitors against the Yuan when he was young. Ouyang was able to plead for his own life, and was made a eunuch. He’s been a servant of the local Yuan ruler ever since, and a close companion to the local ruler’s son. But he remembers where he came from, and why he was made into a eunuch, and he is patient.
The book does drag in the middle a bit, I feel, but that’s a pretty minor complaint. Overall strongly recommended.
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