“Poet Empress”? More like “Plot Contrivance Peasant” 🤡 TL;DR this book killed my crops, made my skin break out, dehydrated my body, ruined my eyesight, devastated my sleep schedule and massacred my circadian rhythm like nothing else. THIS SHIT WAS SO ASS

Important Note: Alright, look, if it wasn’t clear from the facetious one-liner, very low star ratings, and the gif edit: this is a hater review. This is also a lot more technical and in the weeds with regard to the actual craft of writing and developing a story than I typically aim for in my reviews, because I think this book makes for such a fascinating case study on the elements of a good book—in that it ultimately fails to achieve a passable degree of competence in any single one of those elements. So I hope my lovely mutuals will bear with me as I indulge in my absolute favorite activity of analyzing and picking apart why a book was just that fucking bad lmao. If you only care about a more general summary and vibe check, feel free to skip to the end!

Introduction 🙃

So, in the paragraph above I made the claim that this book fails to achieve a basic level of competence in most (perhaps all) of the elements that make a book good. I’d like to qualify that statement a little bit, because I do really believe what I am saying and it’s not just pure hateration:

1- This probably could have been fine as a YA book (like 2 stars from me if it were YA, I guess), if the discussions about sexual assault and “childmaking activities” were removed.

2- However, Shen Tao has been explicit that she wanted this to be an adult epic fantasy set in a second world inspired by historical China (Reddit AMA, 2026†). Also, although the official language does not necessarily delineate this word-for-word, the blurb and pitch gesture toward epic fantasy titles that have some element of political and court intrigue as pivotal plot elements (which is absolutely intentional when it comes to the marketing a publisher puts out) (Reddit AMA & Macmillan Publishers §). Other narrative elements, such as Wei being the POV character/protagonist and the title of “The Poet Empress” colored my expectations for this book.

3- In addition, this is adult epic fantasy with a focus on political/court intrigue. That was great to hear, because I am the exact target audience for political epic fantasy! I read a decent amount of it, I grew up with ASOIAF (which Tao invites direct comparison to based on her social media and Reddit AMA posts † ‡), I am always looking for political fantasy to add to my TBR. I generally have an idea of what other books that would be on the same shelf at the bookstore as The Poet Empress would look like.

4- Therefore, my judgments in this entire review are coming from a place of comparing TPE with other books of its genre and sub-genre, in addition to reviewing its technical qualities based on standards set by the wider "adult epic fantasy with political intrigue" sphere of publishing.

The Main Problem 🫠

About 99% of the issues I'm about to discuss boil down to a single core problem with Tao's writing, so I think it would therefore be more helpful than not to define the unifying idea behind everything to follow:

Everything about this book is so unbelievably shallow.

And when I say everything, I mean everything. Sure, there are Themes and Messages TM that the book tried to demonstrate. Sure, the characters have backstories that make sense on paper. But the number one job of any author is to convince their reader audience to be compelled by the story, to show the reader the feelings, sentiments, and/or philosophies the story has within it. That is not something you can logic your way out of. If an author cannot convince their target reader that yes, this character is not real but they feel like they could be real, or yes, this world is different and removed from ours but it still feels like a world that has been lived in by people of the society presented in the story, then they have failed in their job as an author. Like what the fuck are we even doing at that point. That's writing a plot summary, not a story.

Genuinely, it did not feel like Tao spent very much time thinking about the impact of anything she included in this book at all. It's not just a problem with one or two elements of the book, but the entire weave and architecture of the story itself. The flaws are extremely fundamental, and really can't be fixed with just some kind of surface-level reworking or revision.

As a side note, although I'm choosing to focus this review on the execution of technical and narrative elements, some of Tao's justifications for her decisions on social media were interesting, and I think worth a closer look.

Technical Breakdown 😒

I want to emphasize that in the case of this specific book, a lot of these problems I mention for any single element simultaneously cause and come about as a result of the problems present in every other element. It's a giant compounding feedback loop; the lack of depth demonstrated by one element only reinforces the complete and utter shallowness of the others. It made the entire book feel very flat and soulless, and it's a fascinating demonstration of the author failing to be a competent writer through each and every single component of the story.

The book tries very, very hard to be profound, but it really does not have anything interesting to say. It feels like Tao is too incompetent of a writer to do anything but play it safe every step of the way, leading to a book that doesn't feel like it takes any risks, which makes for bland, boring, and uninspired writing. Instead of the dark, lush tale I was promised, I got a tepid, lifeless, soulless husk of a plot outline and character backstory infodumps masquerading as a published book.

Worldbuilding

The worldbuilding reflects this completely. None of the worldbuilding has any real narrative weight or impact beyond what Tao needed for a specific plot beat. It revels in the load-bearing, plot-defining misogyny and paints a picture of pagodas and bamboo forests that readers clearly are meant to use as a tool in order to project their own idea of Generic Ancient Chinese Aesthetic TM onto the world. But the story seems to shy away from everything that makes Tao's setting unique from any other random c-drama - the plant/animal magic, the poetry magic, etc - beyond where it can directly drive a specific plot beat or two, before fading into obscurity until it is next needed for plot convenience. The second world is practically nonexistent; she uses a preconceived idea of Generic Ancient Chinese Aesthetic as a shorthand to indicate to the reader what they should feel, and does not actually do the work of writing the unique feel and atmosphere of her setting into the book.

And, to be fair, this is not a problem unique to this book. But I found it SO ANNOYING when the book would mention some beautiful, strange, fantastical imagery with the same offhanded tone and with the same amount of detail that a different author might use to write that their character got up in the morning, had coffee, and drove to work. It never once feels interested in sinking in the setting and world, in painting a picture vivid enough for the reader to believe it to be real.

"the kind of thing poets have probably been jerking themselves off to before bed every night since dawn of language" (@Farron, 2026 ¶)

The magic is never explored with any real sense of detail; it only exists to prop up the shallow Themes and Messages that the author insists on shoving down our throats. "Poetry is magic", the book says, and then it never goes on to show us how it is magic besides what amounts to the main characters using it to cast DND spells or some shit (IDK, I've never played) a handful of times total throughout the entire book. To add insult to injury, we only really see maybe 3 magic poems total, and none of the magic poems used in the big climactic moments are actually written out. It's merely told to the reader that a poem was written which caused XYZ. We know that the characters use poetry magic; we don't know what it feels like to perform that magic, or how the power itself would work beyond vague hand-waving at "truth and emotion" and just feeling things really hard, because that's just how poetry works right?

I cannot emphasize enough how Tao did not do jack fucking shit with her premise of poetry magic, in a book titled "The Poet Empress"!

I cannot imagine what the world of this book looks like, even within the text of the page. I know vaguely what they eat (Tao was very careful to include lots of Chinese dishes for the characters to be feasting on every couple of chapters, because she has Done Her Research and Readers Need To Know That. In fact, she spends more time and care listing the particulars of these dishes than she does the fantastical plants and magical effects); I know vaguely what the world should look like; I understand vaguely that Misogyny Happens and Men Are Violent and Peasants Are Oppressed and This Is A Grimdark World So Please Take It Seriously Even If The Writing Is Dogshit. But, oh man. I can't imagine this world. Nothing about it makes it unique in the slightest; Tao's attempts to imbue fantasy into the world were extremely trite and ineffective, because she is allergic to describing anything in detail. The one saving grace was supposed to be the poetry magic, except Tao fumbled that one hard. So what are we even left with?

There are a couple of interesting and creative worldbuilding tidbits that, while interesting and creative, completely annoyed me by page 100 because of the sheer dearth of detail describing these interesting tidbits on the page. This overlaps a bit with my critiques of Tao's prose, but I think it is generally understood among those who wish to write well that concrete details and specificity are what brings a concept, feeling, or description to life. And I swear, based on this book alone, Tao could not describe something with more than the barest minimum of detail if someone held a gun to her head.

The logical side effect of this is that whenever these offhandedly-mentioned fantastical details become plot relevant, it feels like everything came out of fucking nowhere. Because the text is so utterly uninterested in providing enough detail for the reader to imagine such wondrous and mysterious things, the reader naturally forgets about them, and then it becomes very jarring when they reappear at pivotal plot points. The narrative never indicated that these things would be significant, so the reader does not treat them as such (and forgets about them, as one does), and so the reader feels cheated when it comes back up again.

Readers do not pay attention to things that the text does not spend time on. This is like Writing 101. This is what they tell you on the first day of Writing School. I am genuinely incensed by some of the beginner-level bullshit in this book that has supposedly been professionally edited.

In addition, the strength of some of the ideas Tao included was completely dissolved by the insanely mediocre execution of said ideas. It did not feel as though Tao had thought very deeply about any of these concepts at all. T

So let me be clear: the worldbuilding in this book is so nonexistent as to be insulting. I feel my blood pressure rising every time I think about the absolute lack of care, nuance, or detail given to how the secondary world works in this book. It very much feels like an insult to the reader’s intelligence.

Prose and Writing Style

In a nutshell, the writing was shallow, flat, listless, and underwritten. It had about as much depth as a mostly-evaporated puddle on a sunny day.

Tao is no Sarah J Maas when it comes to mangling the English language; 95% of the actual text in this book is readable and will pass a glancing inspection. The issue is that this is where Tao’s writing starts and ends—it is readable. There are some vaguely pretty lines here and there, overall it passes muster in terms of nothing crazy stupid or weird or unhinged a la the infamous watery bowels or clean Christian romance “wise Hispanic eyes” (though there were a few moments that made me roll my eyes for sure), but the shallowness of the entire narrative is completely and utterly embodied by the actual prose itself.

On a craft level, this was just so fucking ass. We are told that Wei goes through some pretty horrific things, and yet the writing was infused with about as much emotional anguish as a wet paper towel. Or me, when I pretend I care that a work call was canceled.

There are some pretty harrowing and traumatic plot points, and each time, I found myself asking: but where is the emotion? Where is the pounding heart, the shaky breath, the blood roaring in ears, the fear, the thrill, the anger? And after she experiences all of this terrible violence, there never seems to be any lasting mental effect on her psyche? She just continues on as usual?

There is no nuance or subtlety to the writing, although one can tell that Tao thought she was cooking with it. The reader is often told explicitly what the book wants to convey with regard to many of the difficult topics (such as trauma, cycles of abuse, misogyny, corruption, political power, manipulation, classism, etc). There is no depth, nuance, or subtext written into any of these themes either; we are Told that This Is How It Is, and then the story moves on. Tao does an insultingly bad job of trying to convince the reader of what she is actually trying to do or say with each element of the narrative.

The prose just read extremely sanitized and soulless to me, almost like a bullet point outline expanded into 400 pages. Though I know it isn't the case for this book, it really did feel and read as if it had been drafted and workshopped with a corporate focus group, and the story originated from a PowerPoint slide deck about how to write a book that seems like it has a powerful message, when really it has nothing profound or even meaningful to say. Reading a Wikipedia article would have been more engaging.

The descriptive writing also left a lot to be desired. I won't re-hash the whole worldbuilding section, but a lot of similar problems are reflected in the shallow, generic writing. Which then makes the characters and world feel flat and one-dimensional, which makes the plot boring, which makes the thematic underpinnings of the narrative feel trite and meaningless. The key to effective and compelling descriptions is specificity, because a scene can live and die in the finer details, and Tao, as previously stated, does not seem to be a skilled enough writer to execute that.

Characters

Tao's over-reliance on stereotypes and caricatures as a shorthand to signal information to the reader about what they should think, instead of writing convincingly and compellingly enough so the reader will be able to draw those conclusions themselves from the subtext as it is presented in the story, is truly at its most egregious when it comes to the characters.

Wei, the main character, could not have less personality if she tried. She's a poor village girl who sacrificed herself to save her village from starvation. She's brutally mistreated by the prince she marries, and all the other women are scheming against her. None of this makes her feel anything except that she should save other people. And this would be pretty bog-standard and fine, really, if Tao could write with any complexity at all. But no, Wei must be The Perfect Selfless Victim, and she will not do anything wrong ever, and her character arc is not so much an "arc" as it is a flat fucking line. The decisions she makes near the climax of the novel do not make any ounce of sense in relation to the character development she experienced before that. It all comes out of nowhere.

Terren, the prince Wei marries, is just cringelord central. Tao definitely thought she was cooking with him, because he's clearly written in a way where the reader is meant to find him SOOOOO complex and tortured and he has such a terrible past which is why he's violent now blah blah blah blah blah. Beyond the fact that Tao seems to equate an edgy character backstory with actual complexity, this would be fine if Tao could actually fucking write. It's all in the execution, I'm afraid! But instead, we get a cartoonishly evil caricature of the tormented prince Tao clearly wanted to portray. There is absolutely zero nuance or complexity to his "evil"; all the man does is stab animals and go after people who can't defend themselves. Like, are we 12? Be fucking for real. This was stupidly heavy-handed, and not interesting in the slightest.

None of the development in the relationship between Wei and Terren feels earned at all, because neither of them are written with the depth or complexity needed to support good development.

The other characters are mostly fine, on account of being side characters who we don't get much time with. Again, Tao loves to rely on stereotypical tropes as a shorthand for conveying what the reader should think, so we have the conniving concubines who all want to tear down our angel of a main character, the loyal but scheming eunuch, the oh-so-innocent and loyal servants, the corrupt nobles, et al. Whatever.

Where I did see a spark of promise was in the development of the relationship between the two main princes. I thought that was much more interesting than Wei's story, to be frank, which is kind of silly given that this is supposed to be a book about Wei, the titular "poet empress". I think Tao presented some genuinely interesting ideas in how their relationship might have shifted due to external factors outside of their control, and one of the better parts of reading this awful book was seeing how the brothers eventually got to the state they're in now. In the hands of an infinitely better writer, it could have been very compelling indeed. As it was here, it was not enough to really save the experience of reading this book for me.

Plot

This book is if a Tumblr user’s OC backstories were shoved into a YA narrative framework solely for the sake of making it seem like a real book, and then marketed as adult fantasy for the payout/clout, I guess.

The entire point of the book's plot is weirdly centered on the male lead(s), for all that Wei is supposed to be the main character. The progression of the plot is riddled with flashbacks, and the flashbacks are fine, I guess, but I found that they were sometimes clumsily inserted in some places. But overall, they weren't as egregious as most of the other things in this book.

What really annoyed me is the fact that Tao seems convinced that learning more backstory information about the characters is equivalent to meaningful plot movement. But like...that? Doesn't work? When the actual plot itself is just a load of nothing? The information learned via flashbacks rarely has that much to actually do with the main plot/story. So I don't really understand what the point of all of it was.

This book is full of...well, so much plot holes as plot flops. If you’re going to look at it from only the Watsonian perspective of inserting your mindset into the story itself, then yeah, things generally follow a logical and consistent path of cause and effect. Although many, many aspects are underbaked and vaguely explained, there aren’t actually too many holes in the objective logic and rationale propping up the narrative (barring a few exceptions, but even those can be hand-waved away). But as an annoying chronically brain-on reader, I’m here to say that the plot is stupid! It makes sense in context, but also? It’s a giant fucking flop. It was boring, puzzling, pointless, and ultimately did not feel satisfactory in any way shape or form. Frequently I found myself wondering what the point of everything was, a sentiment compounded by the absolutely baffling way the book ended.

Thematic Critiques 🤬

"my poor meow meow...my baby my little baby who hurt so much but treats people with nothing but kindness forgive me for not being able to do more..i tried my best i really did.." (Twitter user @DEMETERJIN, May 31 2020 *)

What do I mean when I say that this book had nothing meaningful to say, one might ask.

First off, the gender commentary was boring and has been done countless times by YA fantasy; like, news flash! It's not really an empowering story if all the women in the book are just manipulative and cruel to the MC who has done nothing to deserve it. I'd rather read about Wei dating one of those women instead of constantly having to scheme against them.

One thing that is emphasized a lot is that Terren is needlessly cruel and violent to random servants, which is why the main character starts working against him in the first place. From a Watsonian perspective, this makes sense for Wei. It’s a noble and honorable sentiment that the main character holds, anyone can agree that killing random people is bad. From a Doylist perspective—

Well. lol. Lmao, even.

It’s such a childish way of constructing a political plot. Are we 13 years old? Does our entire understanding of “evil” revolve around “randomly stabbing people is bad”? Like yeah sure, everything here is logical. Why Terren is Like That is shown to the reader. Wei’s reaction to it is also explained. But beyond all of that, going back to what the author was thinking while coming up with the ideas…this is just, stupid? There is no message here other than “guy who likes being violent against animals and random people who can’t defend themselves should be stopped”. The whole justification we get is that he’s cruel to the servants, which means he’ll be a cruel ruler, so Wei should stop him. But he’s shown to also be concerned about what the different political figures, people with actual clout and power, might do. He’s not stupid; he explicitly is stated to not kill anyone he couldn’t get away with killing. And we get absolutely nothing about his actual politics, policies, or ability to be a ruler.

So what’s the message here? He kills people for the lolz when he can get away with it and shouldn’t rule because of that? Well, yeah! I agree! We didn’t need to spend 400 pages going over that.

Also, the fact that apparently no one has used his violent proclivities against him in any meaningful way prior to Wei entering the plot is just, shallow. Real courts don’t work like this. Real imperial bureaucracies are a slog of invisible checks and balances and competing forces, in a way that was never convincing here. But though an effort is made, and though the book is absolutely 100% marketed as if it does something deeper, this book never comes anywhere close to mimicking the complexities of actual courts in a compelling manner.

"Imagine that in LOTR, the Hobbits are named Frodo, Samwise, Pippin, and Xi Jinping" (@KokSenWai on X, May 20 2026 ††)

TL;DR: I’m fine with people doing what Tao thinks she’s doing if they can actually write well. Her worldbuilding and prose, however, were on the level of “ACOTAR’s map is just the UK, complete with the evil island of Catholics to the side”.

The elephant in the room: if white authors have been profiting off of an ahistorical mish-mash of medieval European cultures blended into a set of generic but well-understood fantasy aesthetics, why can’t Asian authors do the same thing with the cultures they come from?

This is something I feel a bit ambivalent about. Who am I, after all, to gatekeep Asian authors from getting their bag by adhering to industry-standard mediocrity? Why should I deny them this when the “greats” of fantasy publishing have been doing the same with Western European cultures, visual aesthetics, and lazy but generally understood worldbuilding cues for as long as fantasy has existed as a commercial genre?

I don’t know, guys. I don’t think Asian authors shouldn’t publish works inspired by their cultures. But I can say with extreme confidence that whatever Shen Tao is doing is not the answer.

Like, anyone with two brain cells could have realized that writing a book that wants to deal with poetry, especially poetry in the context of a culture and society that considers poetry to be Very Important, is going to require a great deal of thought about the underlying setting. Culture informs literature informs culture, etc. So I just don’t understand why Tao decided she was going to write a book about magical poetry??? If she wasn’t also keen on worldbuilding the absolute shit out of her setting??? She barely even did the minimum amount of worldbuilding as is, I have no idea what made her think it was enough for writing in-world poetry.

Anyway: Tao has mentioned the amount of research she's done. She has also explained her approach regarding how she formulated the setting †:

"I was aiming more for believable-secondary-world real and not true-to-our-history real. The Poet Empress is probably as accurate to historical China as Game of Thrones is to Wars of the Roses. It captures the atmosphere of the time but should not be taken as a historical text. I feel strongly that culturally-rooted stories should be allowed to have their own fantastical versions instead of always being historical or educational."

I don't disagree with this approach! I think some of the things she said in the Twitter/X thread Tao felt the need to post in response to reader reactions to her book ‡ were actually quite beautiful. I particularly loved what she had to say about culture:

"Because culture isn't static, a rubric to be measured against. It is, by definition, created by us. It's the sum total of all the stories we tell, all the art we make, all the traditions we practice in all the scattered corners of the world. Culture is humans, put together. If adherence to previous tradition is the only metric of literary value, then there would be evolution thereof, no innovation, no blending of philosophies, no old stories told in new places, no magic. Our beloved genre of fantasy wouldn't exist at all."

This is such a lovely sentiment, and she expressed it so well. Conformity is the tool of autocrats and empires (i.e., the CCP is infamous for its pushes for homogenization, especially when it comes to ethnic minorities who are not of the Han ethnicity in China); culture and tradition can be used as much to suppress as they can to celebrate and uplift (i.e., the practice of hazing in university fraternities is still culture, even if it is a negative aspect of culture). Art inspires other art, and there is nothing wrong with drawing inspiration from history while making it into your own new thing.

I think what makes diaspora narratives so radical and transformative is how they defy attempts to categorize. People like Tao, and me - to some mainlanders, we will never be "Chinese enough". To westerners, we are defined by our Asian ethnicity. Where do people like us fit in? There is a certain sense of rebellion in choosing that for yourself, in deciding that you do not care about these metrics of being "enough" or not in either direction, and simply existing and performing the alchemy that takes aspects of both worlds and turns them into something new within your art.

But like...let's be real here. Tao did not do any of that in a meaningful way with this book. The things she talks about in her thread, which I won't go into too much detail here (because holy hell this is long), are extremely superficial, shallow, surface-level things.

Tao also invites a direct comparison to George R.R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire series (once on Reddit, another time on Twitter/X), and how it is heavily inspired by the War of the Roses in medieval Europe. Which I think shows how Tao has a fundamental lack of understanding of her own abilities as a fantasy writer, to be completely honest here. I'm not going to go out of my way to defend GRRM, he has enough fans already, but what he has done with his work is that he took medieval Europe, wrote compelling and flawed characters who can exist on their own without feeling like stereotypes/caricatures into his version of the historical events, and added a lot of details about dragons, magic creatures, legends, folklore, etc. Even if there is a direct and obvious historical and regional inspiration, it is also obvious that the guy added a lot of his own ideas to the original source material, in painstaking and exacting detail. This was not the case with Tao's book, where everything - but especially the world - felt hand-waved to the nth degree.

(Also, like, inviting the comparison makes even less sense when GRRM clearly has done some conlang-ing with his fictional cultures, while Tao straight up put Chinese hanzi characters and their pinyin romanizations into the text. It just feels fucking lazy. The biggest problem from a craft perspective, to me, is that she just won’t commit to anything. You don’t get to have “ahistorical fantasy China” and real Chinese as the magic / used for the era names while also writing in English and for an English-speaking audience. I could forgive a lot of these things if she did a better job of making it fantasy. But the thing is that she doesn’t. She picks and chooses which things she’ll use from real life, and which things will exist as simply fantasy anachronisms, and the only thing the decision seems to come down to is whatever’s easiest and requires the least effort to write. There’s no logic.)

To start wrapping this up, my entire fucking problem with the book is that there is barely any substance to it. Her entire book is painted in the vague generic brushstrokes of pagodas and red lanterns and bamboo and cypress trees, like a historical c-drama filter we're supposed to put on in our heads, in the vein of the yellow filter Hollywood will use for move/TV scenes set in "exotic" locales. It's shorthand to convey information about the setting in the most superficial way possible, and it's lazy as hell.

Tao can simply use Chinese aesthetics if she wants to; any author can, if they do so respectfully and conscientiously. But an entire world does not exist around aesthetics. My problem with the way Tao formulated the entire book was that she did not add any true substance to the aforementioned c-drama filter (although she said she tried to via adding the fantasy elements and poetry magic, see my previous section on the worldbuilding for why I think she failed). Instead, she uses these vague, sweeping, non-specific descriptions of Chinese "aesthetic" hallmarks - wooden screen doors, silk robes, traditional foods - as a crutch to lean on because she can't write with the necessary depth to convince the reader of the world she is presenting. It is so utterly soulless, devoid of any passion whatsoever, no matter what she might say in AMAs or on Twitter. She gives readers these sign posts to indicate that this is Historical Chinese Drama Coded, and leaves it there, making no effort to expand upon this visual aesthetic in a meaningful way, or differentiate her imagined world from any TV drama you could find on Viki. There is no "atmosphere" beyond a general sense of "oh yes we are in Fake Asia and you shouldn't worry about the finer details :)". Then, she gets on Twitter to defend herself in response to reviewers who found it jarring to have a guy named Muzha have a son and name him Terren, or to have a main character named Wei take care of a goat named Myrna, with no rhyme or reason or consistency whatsoever.

That, if anything, is the thing to be criticized here. Shen Tao just sucks at writing.

TL;DR/Conclusion 🤡

If anyone actually read this entire thing, you have my eternal gratitude lmao. Sorry this is so long, and I'm sure some of it is incoherent; I've been sitting on this for so long, feeling unsure of how to organize the sheer volume of the thoughts I had on this book, and I'm not sure if I was very successful here either way lol. So, even if you just skimmed - thank you for taking the time to visit!

Here's a quick TL;DR/vibe check for those who want it:

• The main issue with the book is that everything is very shallow and superficial; nothing is constructed with any sense of depth whatsoever.
• No poetry in The Poet Empress. It's false advertising, folks!
• Hand-waved worldbuilding, no concrete details, makes for a very lackluster reading experience. There wasn't a huge focus on the political intrigue of it all, surprisingly.
• Prose was flat, dull, generic, soulless. Terrible emotional interiority. Felt like I was reading a corporate PowerPoint about what a marketable bestselling fantasy book on BookTok should sound like.
• Characters all felt like caricatures. The MC is a doormat who does nothing and her arc is utterly incoherent.
• Plot was logical but felt pointless. The narrative weight of different world/character elements is pretty nonexistent. The author seems to mistake flashback info dumps for relevant plot movement. Flashbacks were more interesting than the main story; they were generally okay-ish.
• The thematic arc of the main character we're supposed to "understand" through the plot felt extremely trite.
• At the end of the day, Shen Tao is allowed to be ahistorical and not true to real life if she wants - I do not read fantasy for historical accuracy - but the fact that her actual secondary world is not different nor fantastical enough to stand on its own without constant references to a generic "ancient China c-drama" aesthetic speaks volumes about her ability as a fantasy writer; this is the most obvious in the places where she introduces an original concept, but cannot render it with any amount of meaningful detail. It feels as if she uses her chosen source of inspiration as a crutch to make up for her lack of skill/inclination for worldbuilding, not as a way to create something new, interesting, and compelling.

Acknowledgments

I would like to formally thank everyone who tuned in for my daily crashouts/rants/updates/hatred sessions for supporting me through an extremely difficult time in my life. I wouldn’t have finished this book and lived to write a review without you. A special shoutout goes to @farron, my buddy read partner, who put up with my increasingly unhinged, irritating, emoji-ridden crashouts every five seconds as I was actually reading the book. Truly I would not be here today without everyone who stood behind me. You have my eternal appreciation and gratitude for showing me support through the harrowing experience of reading this book ❤️

References

† Reddit AMA: I'm Shen Tao and my debut epic fantasy THE POET EMPRESS released today, ask me anything! ‡ Twitter/X Thread, posted by @storygoose § MacMillan Publishers ¶ @farron's review of The Poet Empress * Tweet posted by @DEMETERJIN †† Tweet posted by @KokSenWai

This series started out with such a strong opener that I always get a little nervous when I go into the next one - what if the magic (pun intended) has already sputtered out? Thankfully, there was nothing to fear here!

Volume two does a great job of building on the plot of volume 1 while giving us more insight into the other characters in this world. I'm still very excited to see where this storyline goes and I don't think I will be too anxious with the upcoming volumes - the craftwork seems solid!

Similarly to volume one, there are several moments that really touched my inner child! It's rare, but always great to find books that are healing for Big AcidicChaos and Little AcidicChaos!!

My thanks to my local public library for having this available as a digital borrow! Even with the wait time, it was worth it!! GO SUPPORT YOUR LOCAL LIBRARIES!! We are so lucky to have them!

What an absolutely special book to experience, made all the more special by the fact that I got to buddy read this with my bestie, @demon, who is from the very place at the heart of this epic. Ultimately, as described by its Pagebound summary, Hula is a sweeping saga about three generations of a family, its premise centered around various notions of inheritance - what we inherit from our family directly, from our blood, from our upbringing, from the historical context around us, and from the ʻāina itself. Jasmin ‘Iolani Hakes explores how love, grief, resilience, and trauma can be carried through the generations, replicated down one’s lineage, buried deep within those that may not fully understand where this hurt comes from or why they possess it. This story asserts how the personal and the political are irreparably intertwined for all of us, but most acutely for those who have faced (and continue to face) repression and subjugation. These wounds become part of our identity and follow our descendants unless they are healed.

Hula’s power and effectiveness is solidified by the way Hawaiian history is so deeply interwoven into its narrative. The fight for sovereignty and against American colonization both are not mere historical backdrops to the main plot, but deeply important aspects of the characters’ own lives, family history, and identity. This historical context has shaped the Naupaka family, their Hilo community, and their relationship to the island they call home. It is a part of who they are. The resulting effects of colonization become another means by which generational trauma gets passed down. The past is something brought alive in the present. It was incredibly fascinating to read and dip my toes into these aspects of Hawaiian history, while also reinforcing how underrepresented and under-taught Hawaiian history, culture, and customs are to those of us on the mainland. I aim to continue my own personal education in this subject going forward.

I was especially moved by the novel’s reverence for the ʻāina, the clear devotional heart and soul inherent to Hawai’i and its culture, the same beating heart at the center of Hula. The islands are living, sacred beings that carry memory and meaning, breathing life into those born from that land. With this sanctity comes responsibility, and Hula also raises important issues about protecting, respecting, and stewarding the land we’re on for generations to come. These issues feel inseparable from the novel’s central themes of cultural (and familial) preservation and sovereignty, but also strike a more broad chord for all of us existing on indigenous land that has been colonized by a government that continues to oppress its native people. It’s a dark history but one we all must confront.

It is also very apparent how special and meaningful this subject is to Hakes; Hilo is obviously somewhere very near and dear to her heart, and the preservation of both the land for natives and its traditions is paramount. Hula as a representation of this culture and tradition feels so apt and particularly well done here. We were not given a history on hula as an artform, but instead shown its metaphorical presence as vehicle for those tied to Hawaiian land, how hula's preservation lends itself to the broader cultural preservation, how it can be used as an act of protest and a means of bringing oneself back home.

Hakes’ reverence for the subject matter is also evident in the uniquely beautiful way the story is told. The prose is lush and dreamlike, its flowery language inspiring such vivid descriptions that evoke a sense of mysticism and memory. It is just incredibly well written and captivating from a reader’s standpoint. The way the perspective and timelines both shift throughout its duration serve to mimic human memory and family history, forcing the story to overlap, fragment, and reach backwards and forwards through time. As anyone who has read any of my reviews before this may know, I am a big fan of utilizing a nonlinear narrative in this way, especially when it comes to representing various generations within a family. Similarly on the subject of diction, using the ‘we’ pronoun across the story felt particularly special; rather than focusing on a specific subject, our narrator was the entire Keaukaha community of Hilo. I also really appreciated the use of Hawaiian vocabulary and pidgin throughout - elements of the book that forced me to step outside of my anglophonic sphere and expand my own mind. I learned so many new things by way of this.

Fundamentally, Hula is a story about what it means to inherit a place, a culture, a history, and the responsibility that comes with carrying these things forward through the generations.

This series started out with such a strong opener that I always get a little nervous when I go into the next one - what if the magic (pun intended) has already sputtered out? Thankfully, there was nothing to fear here!

Volume two does a great job of building on the plot of volume 1 while giving us more insight into the other characters in this world. I'm still very excited to see where this storyline goes and I don't think I will be too anxious with the upcoming volumes - the craftwork seems solid!

Similarly to volume one, there are several moments that really touched my inner child! It's rare, but always great to find books that are healing for Big AcidicChaos and Little AcidicChaos!!

My thanks to my local public library for having this available as a digital borrow! Even with the wait time, it was worth it!! GO SUPPORT YOUR LOCAL LIBRARIES!! We are so lucky to have them!