She Who Became the Sun
- 416
- Pages
- about 8 h
- Reading time
- Sydney J. Bounds Award For Best Newcomer
- Robert Holdstock Award for Best Fantasy Novel
Affiliate link: buying through it supports BookRank at no extra cost to you.
Our view
“She Who Became the Sun” is a dark, tense historical fantasy, strongest in its prose and in what it does with gender. It reimagines the fourteenth-century rise of the Hongwu Emperor. Some readers find Zhu, whose single aim is greatness, less absorbing than Ouyang; others feel the Mongol characters fall into familiar warrior archetypes. The story concludes in a second volume.
The view of the BookRank editors, written from readers’ ratings and comments. It does not affect the score or the book’s place in a ranking.
About the book
She Who Became the Sun is a 2021 historical fantasy novel by Shelley Parker-Chan. Parker-Chan's debut novel, the work is a re-imagining of the rise to power of the Hongwu Emperor in the 14th century. A sequel, He Who Drowned the World, was published in 2023; the two books form The Radiant Emperor Duology.
Reading order · The Radiant Emperor
Full order & progress →- She Who Became the SunThis book
7.67.6 / 10 - He Who Drowned the World
8.28.2 / 10
Where the score comes from
The sources average 7.5 across 381 ratings — not yet many, so the reader vote carries 72% of the weight and the rest pulls toward the Fantasy average of 8.0. That is how 7.6 comes out.
| Source | Average | Ratings | Weight |
|---|---|---|---|
| Open Library | 8.4 | 5 | 1% |
| Hardcover | 7.5 | 376 | 99% |
Frequently asked
How long is She Who Became the Sun?
It has 416 pages — shorter than 73% of the ranked books in Fantasy.
In this book
Themes this book shares with others — each leads to the best books on it.
If you liked this
Same shelf — Fantasy — with scores between 7.6 and 7.7, closest to this book.
