He Who Drowned the World Review

How much would you give to win the world?

–GoodReads

MY REVIEW

Content/Trigger Warnings from the Author:

In terms of violence, I think of both She Who Became the Sun and He Who Drowned the World as roughly equivalent to the Asian historical dramas on Netflix: you’ll see some splatter during fight scenes, but rarely full-on gore. Torture is mostly implied. However, Drowned is substantially darker in tone than She Who Became the Sun and contains one moderately detailed depiction of sexual violence. I have to stress that it is not a young adult book!

I choose not to warn for the specific content of consensual sexual encounters between adults.

Please feel free to contact me via my website contact form (not here on Goodreads, which I won’t be checking) if you feel it would be helpful for me to list additional warnings.

*Self harm
*Suicidal ideation 
*Marital rape
*Pregnancy loss
*Drowning 
*Torture (not overly graphic)
*Child harm and death (young teen)
*Internalised homophobia
*Ableist language

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This is the second book in the Radiant Emperor duology, you can find my review for the first book below:

She Who Became the Sun Review

Now onto the review! I had to sit on this a few days, it’s possibly just one of the most detailed and dark political/war books I’ve read. I don’t mean dark like unnecessarily gory but not unnecessarily so. And I don’t know that I can truly do reviewing justice here but I’ll try to give you all some idea. Like the Author content warnings states, this is darker than She Who Became the Sun. I think though that I found a new respect for characters I had otherwise almost written off after the last book. You know what that means? Parker-Chan NAILED the character development for those characters.

There’s less of some of the cast from last time and more from others, I think it was a good balance but it did almost seem disorienting after getting used to some points of views. However some of these cannot be helped if they died in the last book lol, that’s just me being greedy.

This book also didn’t feel as long as its page count suggests. It has such a great flow in pacing. We are building up toward finding out who is going to rule the world, the game isn’t over yet and the stakes are only getting higher and the losses as well.

Wang was probably my favorite contender, now if you’ve read this…hear me out. I loved his development the most and he was also, probably also my most hated character, and uh not the contender I would ‘vote’ for to rule the world, just a fave lol.

Zhu, I felt Zhu was so blithe until a certain event and it was good that this even happened despite my desire to write a tear-stained letter to the author on said event. It was good to see a bit more humanity in Zhu’s approach because at times Zhu could feel almost otherworldly, not because of the determination but the blitheness in such a dark world. Then again Zhu’s POV was also a bit of fresh air at times when everything else is so heavy.

I cannot sing enough praises on the world-building. The details that kept me rapt with attention carried on from the first book and so much was added on and so much was just awe-inspiring to read. I had a massive world come to life and I know it’s going to be an amazing read when the author can so fully conjure a world in my mind. Usually, it’s details that are enough for me to piece something together but with this, it’s all handed to me. UGH SO MUCH TO LOVE AND SO MUCH TO LOVE TO HATE.

I feel like I’m on the verge of giving stuff away so let’s take it back to the basics! Pacing? Great. Characters? Loathable and lovable. Story? Here’s a collection of my tears in a jar, feel free to add your own to it, we can collect enough to start a water reservoir.

5/5 Cups of coffee from me, if I had to say…I’d probably prefer the first book but this book is it’s darker answer to what it all led up to in book one, so I can’t blame it for its inherited darkness and grimness.