anon · 1mo
I read your book review and was a little surprised about your reaction towards the radiant emperor duology, but as I read further it made sense to be honest. The elements of it are a hard pill to swallow and it does really take so much out of you while reading. I personally found the sort of dreariness and tragic elements that were compiled within the series highly to my liking because I love stories like that. Like you can sense the doom from far away, on the horizon, and for many of the characters—especially Ooyang(🥹💔)—their personal hangups and goals and identity were very complex and in some cases, harmful to themselves. I cried several times during my read for both books because of some of the characters who ended up becoming their own undoing, or in Zhu's case, someone who sacrificed so many people and so many things to get to where she does in the end. Her resilience and unrelenting—cruel and backstabbing at times—path forward was so interesting to read about. Anyway enough about me, if you don't mind, since you were a little vague about it in your review, could maybe elaborate about your dislike of the series :) also happy holidays <3
hi anon!! thank you for sharing your thoughts, i am always so happy to discuss books and feel like the_school_of_athens.png <3 really my opinion on the radiant emperor duology comes purely down to a matter of personal preference. i wish i had a better time reading them than i did! i think they are objectively excellent books and i wouldn't hesitate to rec them to people who i know are interested in the topics they explore. i also really liked everything you've mentioned enjoying here--the tragedy, the doom, the self-sabotaging behaviour exhibited by so many characters but especially ouyang, zhu's willingness to bear any human cost for the sake of her ambition--but unfortunately the books also ran into so many of my major dislikes in their subject matter that my feelings netted out to a negative. i don't like historical fiction and i don't like stories that focus heavily on characters facing prejudice and oppression whether those attitudes are period-typical or not. however, i think it's so important that these stories are told and that there is space to explore real-world oppressive power structures in fiction. i'll defend the right of those stories to exist until i die. i also accept that it's entirely on me that i was shopping at the landmine store for landmines, i knew more or less what i was going into but as sffliker9000 i hoped it would be worth it and i do think it ultimately was! i enjoyed the characters and the insane cast dynamics and the awful feeling of doom pervading every (beautifully chosen) word. but parker-chan is obviously very interested in exploring gender and sexuality, and i am not very interested in reading fiction that primarily concentrates on those themes. that's really all there is to it.
i hope that explains my views on the books! i did think they were good, i just didn't like them, in a way that casts no value judgment on them. i felt a similar way about the baru cormorant books--i respect them on a craft level and there are discrete themes and aspects that i did enjoy, but overall the story was just not something i wanted to read.
happy holidays & happy new year to you too!!
