He Who Drowned the World

I put off reading this one for a while because She Who Became the Sun was my favorite read last year and it was just so good that I feared the second half of the duology wouldn't be able to meet my high expectations. Finally got around to it, and thankfully my fears were unfounded. Lightning can strike twice.

Our two POV protagonists from the first book are joined by two more as we enter the endgame of a four-way struggle for supremacy. While individual characters do get a ton of focus, this is ultimately a high-level conflict involving multiple sovereign states, and we do see the effects of all this constant warfare on the populations caught in between these people with near-mythical levels of ambition. But nothing comes easy and even these people with superhuman determination have their resolve tested and show moments of wavering.

There's a balance of wuxia all-out battles and inner-court scheming between consorts, eunuchs, and officials all backstabbing each other jockeying for the emperor's favor. There's also just an impressive amount of interwoven conflicts and interactions between characters that you realize were set up insanely far in advance. One particular chain of events culminates in a perfectly-delivered tragic end for one protagonist that genuinely made my heart drop when I realized what was about to happen.

Like the first one, I have no complaints here other than the fact that it's over and this author hasn't written anything else yet.