Review: He Who Drowned the World
He Who Drowned the World by Shelley Parker-Chan
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
She Who Became the Sun left me feeling raw, unsettled, and strangely changed. There was a hunger in that first book, quiet but unyielding, and it forced something open in me I’d not noticed before. So when I came to this second book, He Who Drowned the World, I carried both eagerness and a heavy sense of dread. I knew already that the price would be high, perhaps too high. What surprised me, though, was the way the story let that cost settle, honoured it, made it not just unavoidable but somehow necessary.
Everything feels different now. Where the first book was all dryness, parched earth and longing, now there is water everywhere. Salt and sweat, blood and tears, the river swollen with rain, the sea always pressing in. Desire sits thick in the air, tightening around every moment, and the tension never quite lets up. I found myself holding my breath, chest aching, as if even the smallest movement might tip everything over; the characters have gone so far there is no way back for any of them. The writing is as clear as ever, but the coldness of it cuts deeper, lands heavier. The sentences come in waves, lovely at first, and then they pull you down.
Zhu’s journey towards greatness feels stripped clean of comfort. There is no gentle heroism here, just a relentless honesty. Watching Zhu shift from that starving child into something immense and frightening, I could not look away. Ouyang’s pain, already sharp in the first book, becomes almost holy in its intensity. His anger, his love, his self-hatred, are drawn so closely that I had to pause, set the book aside, and breathe before I could go on. Madam Zhang and Baoxiang are given the same stark treatment; their choices are not softened or excused, just shown in all their complexity, and that simple understanding is painful in itself.
This duology by Shelley Parker-Chan, and especially this book, asks plainly what it truly costs to exist as oneself in a world that would punish you for it. It is not an abstract question, but one lived in the body, in the bones, in every loss and humiliation. The story offers no comfort or escape, not even to the reader. Still, it never feels needlessly cruel; it simply tells the truth. Queerness is not a theme, not something added on, but part of the very structure, impossible to peel away.
There were times I had to stop, unable to go on for a moment, because the suffering is immense and unyielding, sometimes almost grotesque. Yet every hurt matters, every scar is there for a reason, and every loss lands with weight. At the end, I was left shaking, tears running down my cheeks, feeling as though I hadn’t just read a story but lived inside its sorrow. Even now, I think I would go back and do it all again.
If I loved the first book for how it looked unflinching at power and longing and what it means to survive, this sequel left me undone in the best way. It is darker, sharper, and somehow still more beautiful. It does not simply finish the tale, but answers a question the first book only whispered. I finished it hollowed out, wrecked, and strangely lifted, the way only the most honest of tragedies can leave you.
View all my reviews