Eryssa’s Reviews > She Who Became the Sun > Status Update

How are you liking this one?

I'm liking it I'm very curious about what's gonna happen and the time period is super interesting but I quite dislike how often the book talks about physical aspects of gender it is upsetting they really just didn't have to

I remember being somewhat surprised about that mainly bc I know it won so many awards and the author is trans, but I didn’t feel qualified to have an opinion on it myself. I guess when I saw the reviews that the book dealt with gender themes is a new way, I expected it to do something super unique for Zhu. I felt like it was more unique to me to have a protagonist like Arcady where their physical descriptions are so purposefully vague, which I’d only ever seen before in Realm of the Elderlings. But I still thought this was really intriguing premise and overall I really liked that it had realistic characters and world. It did get so dark especially in book 2 that it was kind of difficult for me to read except in smaller chunks, even though I still thought it was really good

agreed! I loved the way Arcady and also Dex from the monk and robot books were portrayed and I wish it was always like that ngl.. it got better in this book it hasn't been shoved down my throat this second half so far but I don't know how I feel about a character "finding out the truth" about mc Zhu and then immediately switching up pronouns to she/her :/ I'm not sure how I feel about the pronoun usage in general but it's too early to say seeing as Zhu is clearly not entirely sure about their identity

also giving me even more reasons to start reading Realm of the Elderlings