She Who Became The Sun by Shelley Parker-Chan Audiobook Review

I liked this one a lot. It held my attention from the beginning to the last sentence. The characters were great, it was refreshing to have complicated women with feelings and thoughts. The author did a great job of explaining the setting without going into too much or too little detail, this isn’t always done well in historical fiction. The magic system was cool but slightly too thin, I wanted to know more but I’m also fine not knowing. I would maybe recommend reading the physical copy, I found it challenging to keep discerning some characters names based on pronunciation (Zhu and Xu specifically). Although, keeping track of characters is a problem I frequently have when listening to Epic Fantasy in Audiobook format. Also the cover art is amazing, it’s half of the reason I picked it to read. It was a solid book but it didn’t blow me away, there was room to expand. I also feel like some of the consequences didn't exactly line up with my expectations, I want my characters to earn their wins and suffer their losses. I would recommend this to you if you like complicated characters being forced to make difficult decisions. Godfather II meets The Poppy War 4/5