Zhu’s POV was weaker in this read as it was more focused on her building up followers and running between different points or on intense bouts of action.

For Baoxiang also desires revenge: to become the most degenerate Great Khan in history―and in so doing, make a mockery of every value his Mongol warrior family loved more than him. Madam Zhang is another POV that I enjoyed reading; in palace cdrama you might find characters that look like her, but oftentimes they are painted as one-dimensional villain. This is really a hard book for me to rate, there are parts of it I adore, but also there are parts that got me thinking, wait a sec, that's how the plot gonna go? I think it’s truly a remarkable feat to keep one’s readers guessing until the last chapter of a five-hundred page tome.But his experience is immensely different to theirs and adds a whole new layer to the fascinating conversation this duology has around gender.

I know this is about the Mongolian takeover of China, but it feels very disingenuous toward the Mongols. Her neighbor in the south, the courtesan Madam Zhang, wants the throne for her husband—and she’s strong enough to wipe Zhu off the map. There were still a lot of names (often the same character with two names) but ultimately I loved watching Zhu fight for what she truly wants and taking down anyone in her way. This is a book about war and vicious people doing whatever it takes to claim their fate, therefore, I do not think it is a spoiler to say that characters die. I recently realised that the way in which I describe Shelley Parker-Chan's books to people is "the best grimdark political fantasy I've ever read, and also it's very queer".A king and queen strolling through their palace grounds proceeded without impediment, since everyone in their way stepped aside and bowed, but the sheer profusion of construction workers in every direction made Zhu think of herself as a boat cutting through a weed-clogged pond.

The scorned scholar Wang Baoxiang has maneuvered his way into the capital, and his lethal court games threaten to bring the empire to its knees. Ouyang wore his anger on his sleeve, and he was so consumed by grief that he couldn’t find an outlet to express it other than resorting to self-harm. We see performance used in Baoxiang's perspective as he fits into the role they have decided for him, we see it in Zhu's perspective as she plays into and adjusts the world's perceptions to achieve her end, we see it in Madam Zhang and her porcelain surface, as well as in so much more. In contrast, part three of HWDTW moves at a breakneck speed as we see a new plan formed and executed and characters going from strangers to close. In the space of a few months he had taken all the remaining cities along the southern reaches of the Grand Canal and moved the Zhang family’s capital to walled Pingjiang on the eastern shore of Lake Tai.What is so brilliant about these characters is that even if you dislike them, they are still riveting to witness and to explore. Nearly mad with the grief and guilt of having killed his beloved Prince of Henan, Ouyang is alive for only one reason: to enact revenge on his father's killer, the Great Khan. To stay in the game, Zhu will have to gamble everything on a risky alliance with an old enemy: the talented but unstable eunuch general Ouyang, who has already sacrificed everything for a chance at revenge on his father’s killer, the Great Khan.

I can just imagine the sets, the landscape, the cities etc, visually I want this book to be made into an anime like Ooku or Blue Eyed Samurai. Ultimately, The Radiant Emperor duology focuses on a collection of different characters who are all people that the world does not want to win. There were many twists and turns throughout the story, but what made them land so effectively was the bleeding heart at the centre of each betrayal. What respect does he lack from the world around him, for his manner, his appearance, his accomplishments?while reading the novel and I'm excited to see what they do with a a story that doesn't feel so bleak.