Fiction Reviews
He Who Drowned the World
(2023) Shelley Parker-Chan, Pan, £9.99, pbk, 486pp, ISBN 978-1-529-04345-7
Shelley Parker-Chan’s He Who Drowned The World is the second and final part of her retelling of the fourteenth century rise to power in China of the Ming dynasty and the overthrow of Mongol rule.
The first instalment, She Who Became The Sun, followed renegade monk Zhu Yuanzhang’s early years, enlistment in the Red Turban rebellion and advancement to a position to military command. As you may already be aware, it’s an absolute cracker, winning Best Novel in the British Fantasy Awards of 2022 and it was also short-listed for a Hugo, but it needs to be read first as that is pretty much a prerequisite for appreciating the sequel.
Sun ended with Zhu laying claim to the imperial throne itself, which is where World picks up. But between him and his destiny stand not just the Mongol regime but fearsome rivals. These include General Zhang, military figurehead of a rich merchant family masterminded by his elder brother’s wife; Wang Baoxiang, a self-hating courtier undermining Mongol rule from within their own Imperial Court; and eunuch General Ouyang, who simply wants to kill the Great Khan for his own vengeful purposes.
In the main, we’re dealing with classic big picture historical fiction here: there’s civil war, clashing cultures, epic battles, palace intrigue and outsize personalities to match the scale of the story. There’s a strong element of tragedy in the events that unfold that stops the ample violence from feeling merely gratuitous, while the Chinese setting may give the novel an air of freshness for those, like me, whose grounding in history is largely British and European.
So of course we get to see if Zhu can overcome these obstacles and achieve his hoped-for triumph. But two key elements in World take a sharp turn away from this relatively traditional model.
First of all, these books may not have much fantasy in them but what they do have is essential to the story. Potential emperors – those of great spirit – can manifest the ‘mandate of heaven’ as a bright flame, as well as seeing ghosts and other phenomena beyond the material plane. Parker-Chan does an excellent job of making this magic realism intrinsic to the plot and not just a gimmick.
But she is also telling a deeply queer story about identity and self-determination. Zhu was born a woman, but ever since taking their brother’s destiny as their own identifies and presents as a man. General Ouyang strives to protect his masculine self-image against the scorn of others, while Madame Zhang has trapped herself in a performance of traditional Chinese femininity.
Meanwhile Wang Baoxiang, the world-drowner of the title, deliberately remakes himself into the effeminate stereotype the Mongols believe him to be, the better to bring them down, but also as an act of ecstatic mortification.
This may understandably sound like a lot of emotional cargo for one novel to carry. And there is a deliberate intensity to He Who Drowned The World which makes it compelling, if not necessarily the easiest of reads. It makes Sun look positively cheerful by comparison.
But it is worth the investment - not only because it is a great story told extremely well (and it is) -but also because this focus on how the main characters perform their gender or sexuality to the wider world gives the novel profound depth. Parker-Chan brings this theme into the heart of the story in a way that enhances the work as a whole rather than unbalancing it, showing the potential fantasy has for creative approaches beyond the reach of most mainstream fiction.
In a word? Bravo.
Tim Atkinson
[Up: Fiction Reviews Index | SF Author: Website Links | Home Page: Concatenation]
[One Page Futures Short Stories | Recent Site Additions | Most Recent Seasonal Science Fiction News]