Hello everyone. Welcome back to Bibliophilia Book Reviews. In this post, I will be doing a wrap up of all the books I read in December.
1. FANTASY AND LGBTQ+: She Who Became The Sun by Shelley Parker-Chan
I first read this book in October 2021 and decided to pick it up again when I bought the second book in the duology a few months ago. Back then, it was a surprising read for me and I included it in my list of the best books I read that year. In my October Wrap Up of 2021 I said, and I quote, “The main character is one of those protagonists that just shines. Told from a very young age that she will be nothing, become nothing, and die as nothing, the last living daughter of the Zhu family refuses to be nothing and fights with everything she has to change the fate she has been allotted. It is her brother Zhu Chongba, the only one of the two surviving Zhu children that has a name, who will become great. But it is him that dies of despair when some bandits kill their father, and it is the nameless daughter, desperate to save herself from certain death, who takes her dead brother’s identity and claims his abandoned greatness.”
But my experience reading this book a second time was different. I already knew Zhu, so she didn’t obfuscate the other characters as she did when I first read this book; in fact, other characters stood out more this second time around and I enjoyed the political intrigue of the story more because of it. However, the book is still very much centered on Zhu and her quest for greatness.
This is a good book, and I gave it an I Really Liked It rating. But it did have a few things against it. First, I was hesitant to pick it up again because of the romance. I don’t have anything against lesbian couples, but LGBTQ+ romance is not my favorite. I will say that the author doesn’t focus on the romance too much, but it was still something that I didn’t feel in the mood for when I picked She Who Became The Sun again. Second, I thought Zhu was selfish. She wants to change her fate and refuses to be nothing so much that she will do anything to achieve it. And this is where it starts to get blurry and messy. She doesn’t care what she has to do to become great, she will always convince herself that it’s the only path to greatness and does it (even if its morally and ethically wrong, IMO). I did not like this, and I reduced my rating for this book because of it.
2. BIOGRAPHY: Empress Dowager Cixi, The Concubine Who Launched Modern China by Jung Chang
I didn’t know who Empress Dowager Cixi was when I picked up Empress Orchid and The Last Empress by Anchee Min in 2022. And I really liked those novels. But I had yet to read a nonfiction account of her life, and that is what this book is. Jung Chang is famous for her book Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China, which I surprisingly could not read and DNF’d after reading/listening to 40% of it. I also could not finish Imperial Woman by Pearl S. Buck, another fictional account of Empress Dowager Cixi’s life. But in reading Jung Chang’s biography of Empress Dowager Cixi, I realized that Anchee Min took some fictional liberties and, I guess, that’s to be expected. However, I was pleased that I could finish this book despite having had a bad experience with Wild Swans, and I Really Liked It.
Empress Dowager Cixi lived in a time when the world was changing, and the new was literally replacing the old. So the book is aptly subtitled The Concubine Who Launched Modern China, because that’s precisely what happened. Empress Dowager Cixi was a woman of the old world who got to live in the years that gave birth to modernity, and it was up to her to transform China into a modern country. Otherwise, China would cease to exist and she knew that despite the fact that she belonged to the old world and couldn’t help clinging to the old ways. But the monarchy and absolutism as a form of government in China was dying, and if things didn’t change, China would die too.
I recommend this book to anyone who is interested in the life of Empress Dowager Cixi.
3. FANTASY AND MYTHOLOGY: The Annotated American Gods by Neil Gaiman
I have a love/hate relationship with Neil Gaiman’s books. The first book I picked up by this author was Good Omens, and I hated it. I couldn’t finish it and I didn’t know whether I would ever pick up one of his other four books on my shelves. And I thought seriously about getting rid of them. These were Norse Mythology, American Gods, Stardust, and The Graveyard Book. And I did. I got rid of all of them except American Gods. But Neil Gaiman loves mythology and so do I. So I gave him a second chance. And picked up American Gods. Granted, I didn’t know if I was going to finish it, like I didn’t finish Good Omens, but I think that two things helped: one, I bought the annotated version and two, I listened to the audiobook at the same time (I borrowed it from my husband’s Audible library).
Neil Gaiman is still not one of my favorite authors and I don’t understand the hype around his books, but I finished American Gods. Did I like it? I’m still debating that. The book isn’t bad, but it’s not the type of book of mythology that I would pick up on my own. I enjoyed identifying each god/goddess that made an appearance throughout the story and I liked that the author tries to answer questions such as where are the Gods today and what are they doing, but I didn’t particularly click with the protagonist and there were times when I was bored with the story. I also hated how the protagonist’s dead wife called him and I didn’t understand what the purpose of her storyline was. I also wasn’t a fan of all the coin tricks. I know that the coins are a symbol for something but I didn’t care enough to find out what that something was. Will I read this again? I don’t think so.
4. CLASSIC: Persuasion by Jane Austen
This is the last of Jane Austen’s completed novels, and the one with which I finished the challenge of reading all of her books in 2023 (except Sandition and her short stories). And I found that Anne is one of Jane’s Austen’s most relatable heroines. Anne Elliot is also the heroine that resembles Jane Austen the most, and I understand now why she is so beloved. As is widely known, this book is about having a second chance at love. Anne Elliott, at 19, was persuaded not to marry the naval captain Frederick Wentworth—the love of her life. But at 27, when he comes back into her life and seeks to marry any woman but her in revenge, she is the quintessential sailor’s wife. She never stopped loving him and in her heart, she is his wife. He, too, soon realizes that he never stopped loving her.
Jane Austen wrote this book close to the end of her life, at 40, and I gather that she must’ve been thinking a lot about love and the love she could’ve had in her own life but didn’t. Hence, the importance of this novel lies in the fact that Anne marries Wentworth when she is no longer in the prime of youth and is now considered too old to marry by the standards of 19th century England. But, Jane Austen says, it is in fact not too late. Love is not dependent on age, and it can come to you at any time in your life.
That is everything for this month. Thank you for reading.
