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The Girl King #2
Empress of Flames
As the late-Emperor's firstborn, Princess Lu knows that the throne rightfully belongs to her. She also can't forget her promise to shapeshifter Nok, the boy she loves, to win justice for his now powerless people. Yet even with an army at her side, Lu must face a major obstacle: the current Empress, her once-beloved younger sister, Min.
Empress Min used to live in Lu's shadow. Now she wields an ancient magic, one she's determined to use to forge her own path for the Empire—even if that means making enemies in court. First though, Min must learn to control her power before it consumes her . . . and the entire realm.
Lu and Min are set for an epic battle, but the Empire faces a threat greater than their rivalry. One that could cost them both the throne—and their lives.
Empress Min used to live in Lu's shadow. Now she wields an ancient magic, one she's determined to use to forge her own path for the Empire—even if that means making enemies in court. First though, Min must learn to control her power before it consumes her . . . and the entire realm.
Lu and Min are set for an epic battle, but the Empire faces a threat greater than their rivalry. One that could cost them both the throne—and their lives.
494 pages, Paperback
First published August 19, 2021
14 people are currently reading
1686 people want to read
About the author
Mimi Yu
3 books173 followersMimi Yu was born and raised in rural upstate New York. Her hometown is the site of both the Women’s Rights Convention (1848) and the largest active landfill in New York State (ongoing).
She currently resides in the SF Bay Area of California, and soon she will live near Chicago. She has never been a midwesterner before, but she does enjoy a good casserole.
Besides books, Mimi likes quilting, gardening, drawing, picking up heavy weights, and pop music. She has four planets in Aquarius. She knows a little bit about a lot of animals, and far too much about cats.
She currently resides in the SF Bay Area of California, and soon she will live near Chicago. She has never been a midwesterner before, but she does enjoy a good casserole.
Besides books, Mimi likes quilting, gardening, drawing, picking up heavy weights, and pop music. She has four planets in Aquarius. She knows a little bit about a lot of animals, and far too much about cats.
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Displaying 1 - 21 of 21 reviews
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September 8, 2020That is one beautiful cover. Wow.
January 15, 2023
A horrifyingly realistic take on politics and the effect of drugs on individuals and a nation. I was shocked throughout the whole book by the gritty realness. Dark, sad (definitely spilled a few tears), but beautifully tragic.
Only thing that might have improved the experience for me is if some characters got a little more fleshed out before their ultimate demise.
Only thing that might have improved the experience for me is if some characters got a little more fleshed out before their ultimate demise.
April 5, 2024
3,5 ✨
June 21, 2022
Rep: Chinese-coded characters & setting, trans side character
December 8, 2023
I decided to restart this with the audiobook after struggling to get through it, the audio book didn’t help however especially with the audio either being to slow or fast I couldn’t find a good speed.
I found this book disappointing I only pushed through as I liked the first one so much. I found the that the story was extremely slow and yet it rushed through a lot of plot points.
I found this book disappointing I only pushed through as I liked the first one so much. I found the that the story was extremely slow and yet it rushed through a lot of plot points.
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July 18, 2022It was too long between reading the first and second books for me to decide if this was fine or bad. I don't know what I expected but I know from the premise and beginning of book one that neither book went the way I'd hoped.
September 2, 2021
Fascinating. Great drug/magic allegory. Sad and beautiful.
February 19, 2025
So, first of all.
This is the first review I've ever written and I only wrote it because I feel so much for this series.
I loved the first book. I hadn't picked up a book in months and The Girl King was the book that broke that streak. It was so vivid and rich with imagery, world-building and characters that it filled that book-shaped hole that had grown within me over those months. After I finished the book I looked at the reviews (naturally) and found it was rated much lower than I had expected. I didn't get it, to me the book was exciting and new - two things reviewers often said the book was not. Other gripes with the queer representation and ethnic superiority complexes still seemed far fetched and exaggerated in my opinion.
Overall I had disagreed massively the those reviews and was eagerly searching for the second book. And I found it, and read it.
And suddenly I understood the first book's reviews.
I'll start off with the things I liked - loved even. Yu never fails with her imagery. Her descriptions of events, feelings, scenery, movements and everything else was so visceral and made me imagine scenes with an ease I find rare in most fantasy books. They are unique as well - often using similes and metaphors that I had never read before (though similes were a bit overused at times). I also loved the characters (to an extent - will get to it later), their troubles and traumas seemed so real to me, showing how the same events can effect people so differently, how trauma engrains itself within your bones and can't simply be smoothed over with a few comforting words. I find too many fantasy books have characters recover from devastating events far too quickly - authors give them a few friends, a love interest, a couple character building moments and suddenly they can take on the world. Not in the Girl King. Here, Yu showed how trauma alters your perception of the world and has the capacity to ruin it for you. I found that refreshing.
Until...that's all we got. I'm going to focus on the characters in this review, just because talking about everything would result in a 50 paged essay. Anyways, about a third of the way into the book I felt the plot begin to slow way down. Not in terms of events - there were often so many they almost gave me whiplash - but in character progression. Everyone felt... stuck. They each had one core motive and then maybe another short-termed one because the events of the story called for it but they never seemed to grow and take on new forms in response to events.
Lu wanted her throne back (continuation from the first book) and her friends and family (continuation of the first book also). Then she got in the first half of the book. I can tell Yu wanted to evolve these motives - to show how difficult being empress was but it never hit home for me. I never fully understood Lu's motives when deciding between reopening the poppy trade or the Northern mines. I never felt any sense of indecision or internal conflict when Lu had to choose between the two, she just decided fully on one option, then completely switch to another once she witnessed the consequences of it (consequences she should have considered long before she even made a decision). I never felt the internal struggle, the thought process, the guilt. It felt so one dimensional and I got bored. You're telling me she didn't even consider how detrimental the poppy trade would be for her nation until her best friend died of addiction? She wanted to keep her promise to the Ashina but how could she not knowledge that she was just picking her poison? That both options would harm people. Maybe it was implied or something but that's simply not enough. I know Lu is meant to be stubborn and short-sighted but no one is this unaware, especially someone supposedly educated in her country's history. And then, before anything got interesting, she got her throne taken away again and we were back to her original motives before anything new could evolve out of her. And then she died. And I felt cheated. I felt like a poetic death was forced upon her - trying to show that her life is inextricably linked to death and killing no matter how hard she want it not to be but I didn't feel she tried to be anything different at all. She did the one thing she was good at doing from the start of the book to the end (killing people) while trying to convince me that she was trying to and had changed. The only thing that changed by the end of the book was that she had killed herself instead of others.
Then there's Min. She wanted to be different from her sister, to be seen. She wanted to be strong. And she became strong with magic, subsequently destroyed an entire world, became empress and then got that power taken away again. And so did her prevalence in the book. She literally became irrelevant for most of the second half of the plot. She just sulked and fell back into her old habits - a prominent part of trauma but not to this extent - not in response to such (literally) earth-shattering events. You're telling me after all that she hadn't changed at all? Not even after she nearly died to Brother? We didn't even see her opinions of Set change at all. I truly wished a little bit of that rage that had grown alongside her power had stayed with her after her magic was taken away because then it would seem like the events of the book actually impacted her. The book clearly wants me to think she had changed but she's the exact same. I've never read her doing one capable thing besides make a plan (that mostly failed), talk to her mother and rule a nation because she was literally the only heir left. Surely having experienced insane powers and killing an entire nation would give her the ability to do more than that.
Now Nok. I loved him in the first book because of how real he felt to me. He was a flighty thing, hard to win over and never really had any alliances. Starting the second book, his arc looked promising. He had his encounter with the Our Mother and worked through a large amount of the trauma set up for him through the whole of the first book- and quite beautifully in my opinion. But it seemed that only helped him get his caul back because mentally he was the exact same. He was still shifty and flighty and his self esteem remained depressingly low- right up until the last pages of the book. He wasn't even shown to have any agency when joining the Common Kith, he just went because his sister told him to. There was no true healing, he did the exact same thing he would have done at the beginning of the book while, once again, pretending he had changed. And I'm devastated because of it.
And Nasan. She had two lines in my head. 1. I can't trust you. 2. I'm making a militia. That's literally it. She had the exact same arguments throughout the entire book. 500 pages of "you will never change Lu" and "I promise I'm not using you as a weapon, Nok" and then not doing anything to back up her claims. I had actually gotten into the habit of skim reading over her dialogue because they never brought anything new to the table. Her relationship with Ade was the worst part about this book I think - it does a disservice to both Nasan AND Ade as characters. You're telling me Ade got with someone RIGHT after her fiance was brutally killed in a riot - not with just anyone; her long time crush/near-boyfriend-that-just-came-back-from-the-dead's sister. And with no discussion. You cannot leave a relationship like that in the background. Not even the background - in the far far distance like in this book. Why would Nasan be open to a relationship at all? Her one, explicitly clear motive is rebuilding a Kith to regain her homeland. Why would she trouble herself with a relationship? Let alone with someone she just met and not part of a Kith? You can't write a character who's most prominent trait is DISTRUST toward outsiders and just have that happen, especially without exploring it with the readers. Give us one chapter in Nasan's pov or even a discussion between Nasan and Nok because god knows they need to talk about something other than going home. Don't get me started on Nasan and Nok's relationship, though - never seen anything flatter. Nasan and Ade's relationship honestly felt like it was written in just because of the queer criticism of the first book. Same can be said for the Yuri/Omair thing. Got absolutely nothing out of that.
I don't even want to get into Nok and Lu's relationship. Or any other inter-character relationships, romantic, platonic or familial. Basically they were all stuck at square one, barely any of them developed in a way that made me truly care about them. I just ended up internally begging for one character to do anything different, and was repeatedly left disappointed .
But at the end of the day, despite all this - I'm still giving the book 2 stars because it 1. got me out of a reading rut and 2. because the effort that went into the book is palpable. It's filled with love and beautiful writing, I'm just upset it didn't translate into the plot. I look forward to Mimi Yu's future writing if she does decide to pick up the pen again. Should she take any of the criticism from her first two books, her stories would be everything I know they can be.
This is the first review I've ever written and I only wrote it because I feel so much for this series.
I loved the first book. I hadn't picked up a book in months and The Girl King was the book that broke that streak. It was so vivid and rich with imagery, world-building and characters that it filled that book-shaped hole that had grown within me over those months. After I finished the book I looked at the reviews (naturally) and found it was rated much lower than I had expected. I didn't get it, to me the book was exciting and new - two things reviewers often said the book was not. Other gripes with the queer representation and ethnic superiority complexes still seemed far fetched and exaggerated in my opinion.
Overall I had disagreed massively the those reviews and was eagerly searching for the second book. And I found it, and read it.
And suddenly I understood the first book's reviews.
I'll start off with the things I liked - loved even. Yu never fails with her imagery. Her descriptions of events, feelings, scenery, movements and everything else was so visceral and made me imagine scenes with an ease I find rare in most fantasy books. They are unique as well - often using similes and metaphors that I had never read before (though similes were a bit overused at times). I also loved the characters (to an extent - will get to it later), their troubles and traumas seemed so real to me, showing how the same events can effect people so differently, how trauma engrains itself within your bones and can't simply be smoothed over with a few comforting words. I find too many fantasy books have characters recover from devastating events far too quickly - authors give them a few friends, a love interest, a couple character building moments and suddenly they can take on the world. Not in the Girl King. Here, Yu showed how trauma alters your perception of the world and has the capacity to ruin it for you. I found that refreshing.
Until...that's all we got. I'm going to focus on the characters in this review, just because talking about everything would result in a 50 paged essay. Anyways, about a third of the way into the book I felt the plot begin to slow way down. Not in terms of events - there were often so many they almost gave me whiplash - but in character progression. Everyone felt... stuck. They each had one core motive and then maybe another short-termed one because the events of the story called for it but they never seemed to grow and take on new forms in response to events.
Lu wanted her throne back (continuation from the first book) and her friends and family (continuation of the first book also). Then she got in the first half of the book. I can tell Yu wanted to evolve these motives - to show how difficult being empress was but it never hit home for me. I never fully understood Lu's motives when deciding between reopening the poppy trade or the Northern mines. I never felt any sense of indecision or internal conflict when Lu had to choose between the two, she just decided fully on one option, then completely switch to another once she witnessed the consequences of it (consequences she should have considered long before she even made a decision). I never felt the internal struggle, the thought process, the guilt. It felt so one dimensional and I got bored. You're telling me she didn't even consider how detrimental the poppy trade would be for her nation until her best friend died of addiction? She wanted to keep her promise to the Ashina but how could she not knowledge that she was just picking her poison? That both options would harm people. Maybe it was implied or something but that's simply not enough. I know Lu is meant to be stubborn and short-sighted but no one is this unaware, especially someone supposedly educated in her country's history. And then, before anything got interesting, she got her throne taken away again and we were back to her original motives before anything new could evolve out of her. And then she died. And I felt cheated. I felt like a poetic death was forced upon her - trying to show that her life is inextricably linked to death and killing no matter how hard she want it not to be but I didn't feel she tried to be anything different at all. She did the one thing she was good at doing from the start of the book to the end (killing people) while trying to convince me that she was trying to and had changed. The only thing that changed by the end of the book was that she had killed herself instead of others.
Then there's Min. She wanted to be different from her sister, to be seen. She wanted to be strong. And she became strong with magic, subsequently destroyed an entire world, became empress and then got that power taken away again. And so did her prevalence in the book. She literally became irrelevant for most of the second half of the plot. She just sulked and fell back into her old habits - a prominent part of trauma but not to this extent - not in response to such (literally) earth-shattering events. You're telling me after all that she hadn't changed at all? Not even after she nearly died to Brother? We didn't even see her opinions of Set change at all. I truly wished a little bit of that rage that had grown alongside her power had stayed with her after her magic was taken away because then it would seem like the events of the book actually impacted her. The book clearly wants me to think she had changed but she's the exact same. I've never read her doing one capable thing besides make a plan (that mostly failed), talk to her mother and rule a nation because she was literally the only heir left. Surely having experienced insane powers and killing an entire nation would give her the ability to do more than that.
Now Nok. I loved him in the first book because of how real he felt to me. He was a flighty thing, hard to win over and never really had any alliances. Starting the second book, his arc looked promising. He had his encounter with the Our Mother and worked through a large amount of the trauma set up for him through the whole of the first book- and quite beautifully in my opinion. But it seemed that only helped him get his caul back because mentally he was the exact same. He was still shifty and flighty and his self esteem remained depressingly low- right up until the last pages of the book. He wasn't even shown to have any agency when joining the Common Kith, he just went because his sister told him to. There was no true healing, he did the exact same thing he would have done at the beginning of the book while, once again, pretending he had changed. And I'm devastated because of it.
And Nasan. She had two lines in my head. 1. I can't trust you. 2. I'm making a militia. That's literally it. She had the exact same arguments throughout the entire book. 500 pages of "you will never change Lu" and "I promise I'm not using you as a weapon, Nok" and then not doing anything to back up her claims. I had actually gotten into the habit of skim reading over her dialogue because they never brought anything new to the table. Her relationship with Ade was the worst part about this book I think - it does a disservice to both Nasan AND Ade as characters. You're telling me Ade got with someone RIGHT after her fiance was brutally killed in a riot - not with just anyone; her long time crush/near-boyfriend-that-just-came-back-from-the-dead's sister. And with no discussion. You cannot leave a relationship like that in the background. Not even the background - in the far far distance like in this book. Why would Nasan be open to a relationship at all? Her one, explicitly clear motive is rebuilding a Kith to regain her homeland. Why would she trouble herself with a relationship? Let alone with someone she just met and not part of a Kith? You can't write a character who's most prominent trait is DISTRUST toward outsiders and just have that happen, especially without exploring it with the readers. Give us one chapter in Nasan's pov or even a discussion between Nasan and Nok because god knows they need to talk about something other than going home. Don't get me started on Nasan and Nok's relationship, though - never seen anything flatter. Nasan and Ade's relationship honestly felt like it was written in just because of the queer criticism of the first book. Same can be said for the Yuri/Omair thing. Got absolutely nothing out of that.
I don't even want to get into Nok and Lu's relationship. Or any other inter-character relationships, romantic, platonic or familial. Basically they were all stuck at square one, barely any of them developed in a way that made me truly care about them. I just ended up internally begging for one character to do anything different, and was repeatedly left disappointed .
But at the end of the day, despite all this - I'm still giving the book 2 stars because it 1. got me out of a reading rut and 2. because the effort that went into the book is palpable. It's filled with love and beautiful writing, I'm just upset it didn't translate into the plot. I look forward to Mimi Yu's future writing if she does decide to pick up the pen again. Should she take any of the criticism from her first two books, her stories would be everything I know they can be.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
October 6, 2021
I'm really disappointed. I was really looking forward to this book and I loved the first one. There was so much plot that just didn't need to be there. The book should have ended pretty much half way through and even that felt dragged out and like barely anything was happening. The end also just didn't feel climactic at all and it wasn't satisfying. I'm just incredibly disappointed.
August 20, 2022
Ending was weird and felt strange. Certain characters like Nok also acted out of character at the end.
I did love the sisters reconciliation though, and the context about Rinyi was good (would have been nice to have that fleshed out more).
Ultimately it was okay and I enjoyed it enough so long as I don’t dissect it too much.
I did love the sisters reconciliation though, and the context about Rinyi was good (would have been nice to have that fleshed out more).
Ultimately it was okay and I enjoyed it enough so long as I don’t dissect it too much.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
September 24, 2022
I feel so disappointed with the book.
I devoured The Girl King & ordered this straight after finishing it. There was so much that could have been done, so many different ways this story could have gone and it just fell so flat.
Lots of pointless plots and such a dissatisfying & anticlimactic ending.
I devoured The Girl King & ordered this straight after finishing it. There was so much that could have been done, so many different ways this story could have gone and it just fell so flat.
Lots of pointless plots and such a dissatisfying & anticlimactic ending.
February 5, 2023
2.5 stars.
I really enjoyed the first book, but unfortunately this one felt quite dragged out, a little repetitive and I found myself quite bored and disinterested. Some of the events where interesting just too drawn out and the ending was ok, and somewhat emotional. Overall it felt relatively 'meh'.
I really enjoyed the first book, but unfortunately this one felt quite dragged out, a little repetitive and I found myself quite bored and disinterested. Some of the events where interesting just too drawn out and the ending was ok, and somewhat emotional. Overall it felt relatively 'meh'.
April 15, 2023
Such an incredible book!
The thing I loved most was that it didn't end with the coup. The coup happens and you're only halfway through the book, because that's never the end of the story, there's always more, and this book shows that so well. A brilliant continuation of the story, fabulous and realistic character development, more twists and turns than you can count, and that ending!!!
The thing I loved most was that it didn't end with the coup. The coup happens and you're only halfway through the book, because that's never the end of the story, there's always more, and this book shows that so well. A brilliant continuation of the story, fabulous and realistic character development, more twists and turns than you can count, and that ending!!!
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
December 31, 2023
The sequel of the girl king was very similar to the original, and I felt like once again it could have expanded on the characters so much more. Relationships and personalities weren't explored enough, and if they had been, I would have liked the book a lot more.
August 31, 2022
It was a good book but
Why did she die at the end? T-T
WHYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY
NOK IS SAD
Why did she die at the end? T-T
WHYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY
NOK IS SAD
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
December 1, 2023
It took me a very long time to finish this, and I wasn’t very satisfied by the ending.
December 7, 2023
Took a little while to get into this one. But a great follow up, left me feeling a little sad when it was over.
April 28, 2022
3.5 stars, a great follow up to the girl king and it went in such an interesting direction!
July 18, 2022
I had forgotten so much since the first book that I spent the first few chapters reading with a super confused look on my face. Once things clicked back into place, I couldn't put it down. Hated the ending though. It felt rather anti-climactic which is ridiculous considering what happens but
December 1, 2021
5/5
Probable spoilers ahead!
What. An. Ending! I did not see that coming!
This was a beautiful end to the series, a culmination of all the events from the first book.
Min does show her real power, and we get an explaination of where this power comes from. Her arc in this book is really something I was hoping for, for her to become more than just her sisters shadow and a little girl who is manipulated by those around her who pretend to care. I feel so sorry for Jin, he really gets done dirty in this book, after losing everything he knew.
Nok has a great progression as well, with his caul and accepting who he is. Lu is pretty annoying for most of the book, but she does seem to come slightly undone and then make up for it in the end.
The villains are pretty convincing, and Lu's fight between the choices posed to her is well written.
All the magic switching got confusing though, I had to re-read those parts to work out what exactly was going on.
Probable spoilers ahead!
What. An. Ending! I did not see that coming!
This was a beautiful end to the series, a culmination of all the events from the first book.
Min does show her real power, and we get an explaination of where this power comes from. Her arc in this book is really something I was hoping for, for her to become more than just her sisters shadow and a little girl who is manipulated by those around her who pretend to care. I feel so sorry for Jin, he really gets done dirty in this book, after losing everything he knew.
Nok has a great progression as well, with his caul and accepting who he is. Lu is pretty annoying for most of the book, but she does seem to come slightly undone and then make up for it in the end.
The villains are pretty convincing, and Lu's fight between the choices posed to her is well written.
All the magic switching got confusing though, I had to re-read those parts to work out what exactly was going on.
Displaying 1 - 21 of 21 reviews