Cover of She Who Became the Sun

She Who Became the Sun

The Radiant Emperor seriesbook 1 of 2Next:He Who Drowned the World(2023) →

In 1345, China lies under harsh Mongol rule. For the starving peasants of the Central Plains, greatness is something found only in stories. When the Zhu family’s eighth-born son, Zhu Chongba, is given a fate of greatness, everyone is mystified as to how it will come to pass. The fate of nothingness received by the family’s clever and capable second daughter, on the other hand, is only as expected.

Read more

When a bandit attack orphans the two children, though, it is Zhu Chongba who succumbs to despair and dies. Desperate to escape her own fated death, the girl uses her brother's identity to enter a monastery as a young male novice. There, propelled by her burning desire to survive, Zhu learns she is capable of doing whatever it takes, no matter how callous, to stay hidden from her fate.

After her sanctuary is destroyed for supporting the rebellion against Mongol rule, Zhu is flung back onto a collision course with her lethal fate. Her one chance of escape is to claim another future altogether: her brother's abandoned greatness. Searching for a path to power, Zhu joins the rebellion—only to find it under existential threat from the Mongols’ most feared general: an enslaved eunuch whose beautiful female face conceals a heart as merciless as jade and ice.

For a monk with no martial skills, the front line of a war’s losing side is a bad place to be. And worse yet, Heaven is watching for any sign that Zhu might not be the true owner of the fate she has been audacious enough to claim…

Audience
adult
Length
long · 416 pages

Click a tag to see books like this one that share it. Point at it (on a phone, tap it) for less of it instead.

Read it? Sign in to help tag it.

Liked She Who Became the Sun? Here’s where I’d start.

These suit anyone who liked She Who Became the Sun. Sign in and mark a few books for picks shaped around your own taste.

  1. A Concise History of China Shares history, China
  2. The Long March: The Untold Story Shares history, China
  3. China: A History Shares history, China, British
  4. The Dragon and the Foreign Devils: China and the World, 1100 B.C. to the Present Shares China, history

“If you want more of the same (fantasy), start with these.”

  1. Treason by the Book
  2. Mr. Selden's Map of China: Decoding the Secrets of a Vanished Cartographer
  3. This Is China: The First 5,000 Years
  4. The Lucky Ones: One Family and the Extraordinary Invention of Chinese America

“If it was the history that hooked you, try one of these.”

  1. The Opium War: Drugs, Dreams, and the Making of Modern China
  2. The Great Wall: China Against the World, 1000 BC - AD 2000
  3. China in World History
  4. Beyond Downton Abbey

“These start from a similar idea, even if they go somewhere else with it.”

  1. House of Eight Orchids
  2. Elites of Eden
  3. Rebel Elements
  4. Forest of a Thousand Lanterns