The Fierce, Vibrant Optimism of "He Who Drowned the World"

With the sequel to "She Who Became the Sun," Shelley Parker-Chan shows again why they are one of the best voices in fantasy today.

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WARNING: Spoilers for the novel follow!

When I first read Shelley Parker-Chan’s novel She Who Became the Son back in 2021 I was, quite simply, blown away. Their skill with language, their ability to craft compelling (and often reprehensible) queer characters, and their deft weaving of a tragic story all drew me into this fantastic retelling of the rise of the Ming Dynasty and the fall of the Yuan. Now, with He Who Drowned the World, we return to this world, joining five primary characters as they each play their part in the great events of the end of an age and the beginning of a new era.

As with the previous novel, tragedy permeates He Who Drowned the World. Characters undertake actions that they know might be doomed to failure; they watch as those that they love are killed or sacrifice their lives; and sometimes their efforts meet with failure. This latter is particularly true of Ouyang, who nurtures a fierce hatred of the Mongols and everything they represent, even as he also bears the scars of his betrayal of his beloved Esen. Like the other characters, he’s had to contend with the reality that vengeance isn’t always satisfying; indeed, it sometimes exacts its own dreadful cost. While he ultimately succeeds in bringing death to the Great Khan, he finds that his victory turns to ashes in his hands, and he is ultimately killed due to the treachery of Baoxiang. 

From the beginning of She Who Became the Sun it was clear that Zhu was going to have to carry a heavy burden, and suffer extraordinary loss, if she was to claim the Mandate of Heaven and translate that into a throne. If anything, the anguish she endures in this novel is even greater, as she reckons with the sacrifices that those she loves the most are willing to make in order to help her assume the power she knows should be hers. Time and again, the reader bears witness as she endures setback after setback and death after death as she makes her slow, painful way toward the center of power. There are many introspective chapters in this novel but, far from slowing down the action they are instead moments of reverie in which we get to truly experience her state of mind during pivotal moments. As a result, Zhu becomes a character with whom we can fully identify, even if we aren’t ourselves going to forge a new world out of the ashes of an old one. 

Though Zhu is obviously the center of the story, I personally found the chapters from Baoxiang to be some of the most compelling. He is, to be sure, a deeply reprehensible person, someone who has become so consumed by the darkness inside of him that he can’t see outside of it. Parker-Chan’s skill as a writer, however, invites us into his tortured point of view, allowing us to gain a glimmer of understanding of how he has become the monster that he is. After all, it’s not as if Baoxiang isn’t aware of his own depravity; he actively cultivates it, using it as a weapon with which he can counter the world. Forged in a crucible of cruelty and disappointment, he has proven to be a master of manipulation of others, until he finds out that there are some forces even he can’t defeat. There’s a delicious irony that it is Ma’s empathy that ultimately proves his undoing.

Indeed Ma is a fascinating creation in her own right, and in some ways she is the novel’s most important character. More than just a mainstay and support for Zhu, she is the one whose deeply empathetic nature keeps her spouse rooted in the world, who reminds her that there is something worth fighting for, something more than just power for its own sake. Parker-Chan doles Ma’s chapters out judiciously, and this is an effective strategy, particularly since they are so sharply juxtaposed to those of Madam Zhang. Like Baoxiang, she is an inveterate cynic, and her ambitions have curdled into hatred of almost everyone and anyone. Also like Baoxiang, she doesn’t realize until too late how her actions and beliefs have made her into her own worst enemy.

Shelley Parker-Chan, like Guy Gavriel Kay, has that invaluable gift: the ability to weave together strands of fantasy and history into a compelling whole. When, at the end of the novel, Zhu finally claims the throne that she has aspired to for so long, we actually feel as if we are bearing witness to a new birth of history. The China that she will rule over both is and is not the one we know in our own world, just as the Ming Dynasty she founds both is and is not the one with which we are familiar. In that sense, the novel is a truly radical piece of fantasy fiction. Rather than seeing the retrenchment of existing power structures as a political necessity, it instead dares to dream of a different world.  

There is, moreover, a philosophical richness to He Who Drowned the World that elevates it into the realm of truly great fantasy. As cynical as their characters are, the novel itself is remarkably optimistic. It presents us a world in which gender and sexuality are always nothing more than a performance, things that can be taken on or put off at will. Likewise, the novel suggests that the world doesn’t always have to be a place of injustice and brutality, where the strong get to bludgeon the weak into submission and bend the world into their own image. As such, it reminds us all that there is always hope for a better and brighter future, one that each of us, no matter our gender or our social class, can bring into being. It might be difficult, and there might be many sacrifices that we have to make along the way, but Zhu’s story reminds us that it is very much worth it, that at the end of the day it will all be worth it.