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He Who Drowned the World
4/5. Sequel to She Who Became the Sun, concluding this duology about the girl who dresses as a man – becomes a man, in most ways – to found the Ming dynasty.
Woof, this is a ride. I kept thinking, in mingled admiration and confusion, I don’t like this sort of thing, why do I like this so much? This is a violent, lurid, tragic seething psychosexual drama. Emphasis on the psychosexual. And the drama. And – well, really all of it. None of those are big draws for me.
But the thing is, there is a deftness, a depth to the way these books peer into unfittingness, and a complexity they afford themselves by way of having all of the central players be variously engaged in defying/escaping/suffering/manipulating/enduring/subverting/destroying their gender and sexuality. None of their modes of being would be particularly notable by themselves, but together they illuminate. Bloodily. Furiously.
Content notes: Um. A lot of death in horrible ways. Masochism. Homophobia and cisism. Domestic violence. Some complicated consent stuff.
4/5. Sequel to She Who Became the Sun, concluding this duology about the girl who dresses as a man – becomes a man, in most ways – to found the Ming dynasty.
Woof, this is a ride. I kept thinking, in mingled admiration and confusion, I don’t like this sort of thing, why do I like this so much? This is a violent, lurid, tragic seething psychosexual drama. Emphasis on the psychosexual. And the drama. And – well, really all of it. None of those are big draws for me.
But the thing is, there is a deftness, a depth to the way these books peer into unfittingness, and a complexity they afford themselves by way of having all of the central players be variously engaged in defying/escaping/suffering/manipulating/enduring/subverting/destroying their gender and sexuality. None of their modes of being would be particularly notable by themselves, but together they illuminate. Bloodily. Furiously.
Content notes: Um. A lot of death in horrible ways. Masochism. Homophobia and cisism. Domestic violence. Some complicated consent stuff.