He who Drowned the World by Shelley Parker-Chan

He Who Drowned the World is the culmination of battles fuelled by a desire for survival, power and revenge. Published in 2023, this is Shelley Parker-Chan’s second book in The Radiant Emperor duology. It opens a few months after the close of She who Became the Sun and carries forward the stories of the major characters from the first volume.

The book’s first chapter has Zhu Chongba—having ‘stolen’ her brother’s destiny and fought first, for survival and then, glory— attempting to strike an alliance with her southern neighbour, Madam Zhang as part of her larger strategy to replace the Great Yuan as the next emperor. Her insatiable ambition for greatness and penchant for excavating opportunity out of every obstacle remains unchanged.

“I spent the first part of my life being told I was nothing. The world, never seeing my value, would have thrown me away without regret… nobody would lift a finger to change the world for us. To make a place for us. What choice did we ever have, but to do it ourselves?”

Viewing herself as a force for positive change, standing up for the oppressed and ignored, Zhu has adopted a name of imperial ambition, Zhu Yuanzhang, styling herself as the Radiant King; and proclaiming her possession of the Mandate of Heaven. But she is far from being the only one with the divine mandate.

There’s Wang Baoxiang, a surging ocean of spiteful darkness roiling at being disparaged his whole life. Starved of love and humiliated for falling short of the Mongol masculine ideal, Wang, the new Prince of Henan, seeks to wreak havoc at the Great Yuan’s court.

Wang’s opening move on the chessboard of courtly cunning is to risk humiliation at the hands of his enemies merely to plead for the lowly position of a vice-minister. With a strategy so serpentine and manipulative of others’ deepest desires and insecurities, nobody sees him coming until it’s too late.

“The most dangerous person in a game is the one nobody knows is playing.”

Shelley Parker-Chan’s primary characters all have more or less the same aim – the downfall throne of the Great Yuan. Yet, each of them pursues this goal in ways and for reasons peculiar to them.

Wang uses his bookishness and effeminacy going against the tenets of Mongol masculinity while Zhu Yuanzhang is inventive and flies by the seat of her pants. On the other hand, Madam Zhang is an ice-cold puppet-master, manipulating the minds and hearts of the men she uses.

“They were all pieces for her to use at the right time, to serve her own purpose. And when they’d reached the end of their usefulness, she would discard them… She was a courtesan and a queen, and one day she would be an empress.”

The other contenders for the throne, given their possession of the Mandate of Heaven are Madam Zhang’s brother-in-law, General Zhang and Chen Youliang, the former leader of the Red Turbans who has old scores to settle with Zhu. Both Chen and General are skilled military tacticians with the former being more politically astute.

Another prime mover on this battlefield is General Ouyang, the self-loathing and tortured eunuch warrior. He burns in a constant fire of self-recrimination for betraying his lifelong friend, Esen even as the embers of his father’s killing and his own humiliation continue to scorch his soul. Unlike the other characters who hope to usurp power by killing the Great Yuan, Ouyang seeks to

“…have his revenge upon the one who had written his and Esen’s fates into the pattern of the world and stolen from them their choices in how they lived and died. With the murder of the Great Khan, that one final act of Ouyang’s life, every awful thing he had done—everything he had suffered—would be worth it.”

Parker-Chan uses multiple perspectives to portray not just the viewpoints, emotional stakes and motivations of the primary characters but also illustrate the story’s sweeping scale as a historical fantasy. Switching between perspectives also builds suspense and pace.

The core of He who Drowned the World, similar to its prequel, are its characters whose arcs are integral to the plot. Furthermore, almost all the primary characters in the books are foils to each other.

Zhu and Ouyang mirror each other with their complicated gender identities and overlapping experiences of being considered worthless. They share the ambition of deposing the current monarch but their view of what lies beyond it, is as different as could be.

Being master manipulators is what links Wang Baoxiang and Madam Zhang even if their internal monologues result in the reader having greater sympathy for one than the other.

Compared to its prequel, He who Drowned the World is more expansive in its world-building with characters moving through varied locations and settings including the court of the Great Yuan in Khanbaliq. Shelley Parker-Chan uses the metaphor of a lantern to depict the dangers of opulent echo chambers for a dynasty in decline—engaged in petty squabbles and too myopic to see the uprising of the rejected and shunned.

“Inside the Great Khan’s sheltered world of the Palace City was like the interior of a lantern: light so endlessly reflected from its own surfaces that it was impossible to see what was happening outside. The court of the Great Yuan sat feasting, without any idea of their own coming destruction.”

Power, identity and gender are recurrent themes in He who Drowned the World and manifest in kaleidoscopic forms in the characters’ lives, impacting many destinies.

Even though I enjoyed this book, I felt a bit let down by its protagonist. Even if one ignores Zhu Yuanzhang’s unbelievable propensity to routinely overcome armies larger and more skilled than her own, it’s hard not to view her trouncing the forces of nature and paranormal activity as a case of plot armour. There’s author-backed and then there’s plot-protected. This is the latter.

Furthermore, Zhu’s weakness as a character is her lack of weakness. It makes it hard to root for her. Even the losses she faces don’t really have a lasting impact, making her one of the most static characters in the series. Her internal conflict never feels real, like that of General Ouyang or Wang Baoxiang. And while she often harps about wanting to create a fairer and radiant world, there’s not a single instance of her elaborating on how she plans to do so.

The climax too was a bit disappointing, in my opinion, both in terms of the plot details as well as the mood it evokes. It left me feeling more invested in the vanquished than the victorious.

All in all, He who Drowned the World is an intricately woven tale that has you holding your breath in suspense and sympathising with some of its broken characters even as you’re horrified by the extent of their Machiavellian ruthlessness. A lot darker and more violent than its predecessor, He who Drowned the World is a gripping read with characters that leave an imprint.