enne📚 reviewed He Who Drowned the World by Shelley Parker-Chan
He Who Drowned the World
5 stars
I deeply enjoyed the conclusion to this duology. At times it was bleak and dark, but I feel like my thoughts on the first book continued to ring true in this book more than I had expected.
It's hard to talk about this without spoilers, but the thing I liked the most about this book is when it brings two characters together that are ostensibly similar to each other to highlight their differences. Zhu and Ouyang (both not men in their own way) go on adventures. Chen and Zhu (both pragmatically pursuing greatness) face off against each other. Ouyang and Wang (both focused on revenge) have a showdown. I just love seeing all these characters be such foils for each other.
The finale especially was satisfying emotional closure that brought all these main characters together. Even through sacrifice and suffering, there was more hope than I thought there might be. …
I deeply enjoyed the conclusion to this duology. At times it was bleak and dark, but I feel like my thoughts on the first book continued to ring true in this book more than I had expected.
It's hard to talk about this without spoilers, but the thing I liked the most about this book is when it brings two characters together that are ostensibly similar to each other to highlight their differences. Zhu and Ouyang (both not men in their own way) go on adventures. Chen and Zhu (both pragmatically pursuing greatness) face off against each other. Ouyang and Wang (both focused on revenge) have a showdown. I just love seeing all these characters be such foils for each other.
The finale especially was satisfying emotional closure that brought all these main characters together. Even through sacrifice and suffering, there was more hope than I thought there might be.
(I wrote some longer thoughts with spoilers in this reply).