Recent reading
Dec. 16th, 2021 11:26 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
luzulaShe Who Became the Sun by Shelley Parker-Chan (2021)
For book club. This is a well-written book which I enjoyed in the beginning, but which left me increasingly cold as it went on. I was totally into Zhu taking on her brother's identity in order to survive, and her experiences in the monastery. But I just did not care about the person she became towards the end of the book: if someone murders people (including a child) to further their ambition, that just makes me go "I don't even want to continue reading about you". And for Ouyang...that moment came earlier, when he put an incompetent subordinate officer from a privileged family in his place (that in itself I didn't mind) in a way that predictably led to the unneccessary deaths of a number of his common soldiers. Gah! /o\ That said, I finished the book, and there were definitely aspects of it that I enjoyed. But amoral characters driven by ambition or revenge just aren't my jam. One person in book club absolutely loved the book, four people more or less shared my feelings.
For book club. This is a well-written book which I enjoyed in the beginning, but which left me increasingly cold as it went on. I was totally into Zhu taking on her brother's identity in order to survive, and her experiences in the monastery. But I just did not care about the person she became towards the end of the book: if someone murders people (including a child) to further their ambition, that just makes me go "I don't even want to continue reading about you". And for Ouyang...that moment came earlier, when he put an incompetent subordinate officer from a privileged family in his place (that in itself I didn't mind) in a way that predictably led to the unneccessary deaths of a number of his common soldiers. Gah! /o\ That said, I finished the book, and there were definitely aspects of it that I enjoyed. But amoral characters driven by ambition or revenge just aren't my jam. One person in book club absolutely loved the book, four people more or less shared my feelings.
