I am about the worst possible reader in the world, by which I mean I decided to read this book without first having read its predecessor, the first in the Their Bright Ascendancy series, "The Tiger's Daughter." So yes, I have committed many crimes against both humanity and fantasy, although it's difficult to parse how much my lack of reading scruples may have affected my reception of this particular book.

On which note, the book! It's massive! It's queer! It's a massive massively queer fantasy novel! I can't tell you how excited I am to be living in a day and age when one can accidentally stumble across a queer fantasy book without having to delve through dusty back corners of old used bookstores first. Not only is this a queer fantasy book, but it's a queer fantasy which buries no gays, and which more or less defies all expectations established by (the very small stable) of existing queer fantasy: here be none of those tropes, no sirree, and we'll just saunter along at a languid, luscious, literarily lush pace while we're busy avoiding them. (As an asexual, I was gratified to note that there were none of those "here is some magical lesbian sex which will turn us all into unicorns!" scenes; the intimacy is real but does not rely on titillation or pandering to hetero male fantasy readers—readers who, as history records, rather like lesbian sex but only if it caters to THEM. As an aromantic, I exercised my ability to read books about people who are nothing like myself, and remained calm.) This is not a rapid burn of a book, and plot has very little to do with its pleasure. This is a book, instead, where language is lofted into a position of central importance, and worldbuilding, characterization, and sentence-level craft are empress.

I want to live in this world, which is more than I can say for most books out there in the universe. Do I hate the thought of having to backtrack and read another massive tome before I understand it all? Yes. But I can't resent the author for that; I resent myself instead. Darn you, reader. DARN YOU TO HECK.

I loved the first book but was really disappointed by this sequel..

There were way too many new characters introduced with hard or similar names. I did not see the point of introducing them at the point where they were introduced, and when they were important I forgot who they were.

Also there were so many details, and I just did not care, so skipped over a lot.. And I have to say that I still understood the story, so I guess it was not that important to read everything haha.

In this book they again use the storytelling, which I enjoyed. But they started to switch between storytelling and current time and that confused me quite a bit.

Last complaint, I did not like Shizuka..

Reason for give 2 stars instead of one is Shefali, I really liked her character. And I liked who you could see her trying not to go bad. And I definitely read her chapters with more interest.

I'm pretty sure I will not continue this series..

This book picks up where the first book left off. Both books are well written but full of issues. My main problem with this one is that i got a bit bored, the story wasn't as punchy as the first one was. I don't think i'll keep reading this series.

(Review publishing on October 10th 2018 at https://pagesbelowvaultedsky.wordpress.com/)

The Phoenix Empress picks up where The Tiger's Daughter left off, with Shizuka and Shefali reunited after eight years apart. Shefali returns to find Shizuka crowned empress and drowning herself in alcohol, while Shefali herself is dealing with demons of her own (quite literally) and grappling with the fact that she's dying.

So, despite some issues with The Tiger's Daughter, I did quite like the relationship between the two main characters; while over-dramatic at times, I'd found it romantic and addictive for the most part. The Phoenix Empress, however...well, I think the best thing I can say about it is that it's prettily written.

First of all, much of its first half is devoted to telling the readers what will happen later on in the story--a lot of coy promises that fall along the lines of "this and such exciting things happened to these two characters during the eight years...but we're not there yet, so you'll just have to wait for the details!" It took much of the anticipation out of the story and I found myself penduluming between frustration and boredom.

The other problem I had was with the structure. Whereas book 1 was a straightforward epistolary with brief interludes in between, this one goes back and forth between the present, with Shefali and Shizuka reunited, and the past, which recounts Shizuka joining a temple and becoming the general of an army. This all sounds fine on paper, but then you quickly realize that the structure doesn't allow for any kind of meaningful and continuous character development.

Eight years is a very long gap in a relationship and it's a long time for friction to build up--friction that doesn't really get explored in this book. Just when I thought something interesting was building between the two women--something more than "You're the love of my life"--the narrative jumped back into the past, and when it moved into the present again, all the previous tension dissipated. They love each other, which is great, but the relationship doesn't move beyond that. I can shrug and overlook that in a 200-page romance novel, but in a 500+ epic fantasy--one in a four-part series, no less--I want something more complex and substantial.

Also, about a third of the way through, I finally figured out what's been nagging at me about the tone of the writing: it feels culturally arrogant. The empire uses 32 honorifics; the brushstrokes of your calligraphy must be crisp and the scent of the paper perfect; the colour of the cord that you use to tie the scrolls must vary from recipient to recipient. It's all so overly grandiose. I don't want to say "fetishize", but it is a level of glorification that goes into weirdly zealous depths. It's like reading about a college exchange student who spent three months in East Asia, came back, and anointed themselves an expert on the cultures. And it's not unlike the feeling I get when I'm being lectured to by a guy on a subject I'm already familiar with. Or listening to someone who feels the need to explain, in painstaking (and sometimes false) detail, the ins-and-outs of Korean culture just because they're a fan of K-pop and K-dramas.

Moreover, the rest of the story felt very shallow. The side characters are present but underdeveloped; Shefali and Shizuka get touted as gods but the story doesn't really go into the details of how or why; and the ending I can only describe as underwhelming. Small spoiler (but not really because the book spoils it for you at the beginning): the latter part of the book sees Shizuka dethroning her uncle and ascending as Empress, but it occurs with such ridiculous ease and any political ramifications and--most infuriatingly--any lasting effects of Hokkaro's imperialism are brushed over. And setting a story in an imperialist nation (based on a real-life imperialist nation) without addressing the deplorable nature of imperialism itself feels like a highly irresponsible decision.

Really, I'm beginning to realize that this series is very much Shefali and Shizuka Versus the World. At the core of the tale is their all-consuming love and every other story element--side characters, magic system, worldbuilding, cultural representation--gets sacrificed at the altar of it. Which makes for a validating F/F story, but not much of anything else.

Very, very good fantasy book, Epic in its story line with characters you will not forget and do not want to leave when the book is finished!!!

An excellent sequel to The Tiger's Daughter. Good pacing, engaging characters, and I loved the ending! Can't wait for more!

Their Bright Ascendancy continues with a slower volume that focuses on its queer women protagonists to the near-exclusion of everything else.



I've been looking forward to The Phoenix Empress, second in the "Their Bright Ascendancy" series by K. Arsenault Rivera, for a while: as a sequel to The Tiger's Daughter, a book that I very much enjoyed despite its flaws, I was intrigued to see where the author would take both the plot and the form of this queer romance-heavy fantasy trilogy. Structurally, The Tiger's Daughter is an odd book, told mostly in the form of a second-person letter from Qorin warrior Barsalai Shefali to her wife, Hokkaran O-Shizuka (better known by the time the letter is written as Empress Yui). Shefali effectively retells the story of her childhood with Shizuka, moving between the steppes on which the Qorin people live and the royal Hokkaran palaces, their cross-cultural friendship enabled by the close relationship their own mothers had at the time of their birth. Shefali and Shizuka fall in love in a society where same-sex relationships are more or less taboo, particularly in Hokkaran culture, and their battles include the fight for acceptance as well as some actual battles with a plague of black-blooded contagious zombies from north of Hokkaro. Spoilers for The Tiger's Daughter will follow, so if you're not caught up, and you want to try a slow-burning epic fantasy with a same-sex relationship between women at its heart, this is the book for you.

The Phoenix Empress pick up almost exactly where its predecessor leaves off, and while the "present" takes up more of the narrative in this volume, there's still a substantial story-within-a-story as Shizuka fills Shefali in on the events that led to her becoming empress, not to mention developing an alcohol addiction and a severe phobia of water. Shefali has returned from her own travels even more changed, following events in that have led to her being contaminated by black blood but not succumbing to the usual progress of the illness, and now expects to die on her next birthday in four months' time. A great deal of the book is therefore based on learning each others' secrets and renewing their relationship, as well as working out what the wider implications of Shefali's return are for the future of Hokkaro and the black- blood plague.

I suspect that the unusual structure of these novels is playing an important trope-subverting role as well as being a narrative choice. It allows Rivera to incorporate a long, traumatic separation into Shizuka and Shefali's story without turning the relationship itself into a tragedy, particularly during the ending of The Tiger's Daughter (Shefali's letter ends with the separation of the two lovers; the plot of the frame narrative, eight years later, with their being reunited). By averting a "bury your gays" moment, Rivera definitely wins my trust as a reader on one level, but it does also change my relationship to the tensions in the novel. Despite Shizuka's trauma and Shefali's impending doom, part of me is convinced from a meta-narrative sense that we are reading a story where the pair will triumph in the end, and all that matters is how. Unfortunately, there's not much in The Phoenix Empress that really invests me in that question, and I suspect this is largely due to the happy couple themselves.

Shizuka and Shefali are entirely consumed by each other, and while in The Tiger's Daughter that made for an interesting romance plot, by The Phoenix Empress, this feels more like family drama than the trials of star-crossed lovers. Their relationship blazes so bright that a lot of other story elements are obscured or left blank, with worldbuilding and characterisation outside of the pair often feeling sketchy and two-dimensional. It's worth noting that some concerns were raised about cultural appropriation in the Tiger's Daughter, and while I'm not personally sure how fair that claim is - this is a secondary world fantasy, after all - I don't think there is any change in The Phoenix Empress that will mitigate that concern, and there's a lack of overall depth to the world Shefali and Shizuka inhabit in this volume which is likely to frustrate readers invested in these aspects. Insofar as Hokkaro, Xian (a former territory of Hokkaro recently given independence) and Qorin are undergoing their own political transformations, this all seems to happen off-screen, or in the time between Shizuka's past and Shefali's present. There's also almost no queerness represented in The Phoenix Empress beyond the main pair: our elite battle wives find themselves in a world that's otherwise oppressively heteronormative at every level. In addition, some elements of Shefali and Shizuka themselves - like, say, the fact that they are both superpowered Gods - is taken bizarrely at face value by the narrative.



What frustrates me most is the treatment of Shizuka's past arc, which involves her precipitating a major un-natural disaster after a narrow escape from a river spirit whose agreement she breaks. On its own, the tragedy of this story doesn't prevent us from being sympathetic to Shizuka, who is horrified and traumatised by what has happened and was only trying to do her best to protect her people from the black-bloods. However, the narrative treats this as if the most important thing for Shizuka to gain is Shefali's forgiveness, and through that, her own peace of mind. I couldn't help but compare the way this element was treated to the atrocities which take place in R.F. Kuang's The Poppy War, where the first-person protagonist reacts to war crimes in a way that is personal but centres the crimes and the death themselves - a distinction which is even more important because Kuang is writing about fictionalised versions of real historical events. In The Phoenix Empress, the tragedy isn't really allowed to stand on its own: it's all about how Shizuka and Shefali's reconciliation might be affected by its aftermath.

At this stage, it feels uncomfortably like I have been railing at a book for not being what I wanted, rather than not being "good". I have to acknowledge that, while I love a queer romantic subplot, the slow burning soap opera at the heart of The Phoenix Empress was always going to be a hard sell for me. However, if that is a selling point for you, there is definitely an accomplished and unusual story here, and Their Bright Ascendancy is still a valuable addition to a still-too-small canon of wlw fantasy novels. There's an intriguing quest set up in the last chapters of The Phoenix Empress and while the jury's still out on whether I'll be along for the ride, I'm very glad that Shefali and Shizuka will be setting out on their final adventure together regardless.

This book was one my most anticipated release of the year. I fell into this world with full force when I picked up the first book last year and have been missing this world and these characters every second.

The Phoenix Empress blew me away much like I was expecting, but not totally surprised me at the same time. The story is constructed in a way that pulls the read to seek more and more information, constantly expecting events to unfold a certain way only to find oneself witnessing a completely different turn of events.

The story, the life that these characters share is presented in a way that can only humbles the read. Love, hate, hope, despair and everything in between links the characters to each other in a beautiful tale of self discovery.

Enthralling, adventurous, and addictive. The Phoenix Empress is what speculative fiction needs right now, and will appeal to a wide range of readers.

I adored this next installment. I loved this book but for very different reasons than The Tiger's Daughter, which is an incredible thing to accomplish as an author.

Drunk review link to come soon.

An excerpt of my review, in which I explain why I did not finish this book.
You see, I read the first and enjoyed it enough. I hadn’t read any wlw centered high fantasy, and it definitely dragged for the first half but I was intrigued and finished the book
Quick disclaimer, I am white, 20 years old, and bisexual. I have no wealth of knowledge by any means of the source/inspirational material of this fantasy world outside of what was taught in school (which is a pitiful amount but I won’t rant about that)
After reading the first book in this series and receiving the sequel for review, it came to my attention that many readers were offended by this book and the way it misrepresented the cultures that it drew on for inspiration, and I will link the review that educated me on this here.
This was enough for me to decide that if readers who do belong to the culture that is being (mis)represented in this novel have said that this is offensive, then I (as someone who has no say in whether this is representative or not because it is not aiming to represent me!) will not continue to read or support the novel. It simply didn’t sit well with me.
I believe that representation in fiction is incredibly valuable and important, so I cannot in good conscience read and review a book that is appropriating a culture it claims to be drawing inspiration from. I understand that fantasy can draw inspiration from the real world, but I must listen to the own voices reviews here and base my decision on that, as the novel itself is not own voices rep.

Book 2 in the Their Bright Ascendancy series, starts with Barsalai Shefali finding her way back to her wife's side after eight years away. Previously exiled, she has spent this time doing whatever was necessary to get back. She doesn't find the wife she left; Her wife, now Empress, spends more time drunk than sober, she screams herself awake every night and she seems to have forgotten the plans they had made to help their people.

The Phoenix Empress switches between two points of view, but the two points of view are told in different tenses. Majority of the story comes from Shizuka telling Barsalai about her life while she was away. She is laying in bed talking to her, but it feels a bit weird. She often reminisces about their years together as children and the tone of her story telling doesn't change when she switches back to describing the war. It all bleeds into one big long ramble. I found it very hard not to skim read past big chunks of it. At one point I skipped over five or six pages of Shizuka rambling about the march to war and I didn't seem to miss anything. While the characters themselves were somewhat interesting, I was so bored. Nothing actually happens in the book until over 75% in and even then it's still things that have happened in the past. Also there was a lot of repetition when Shizuka was talking about stressful things, I think it was to show how hard it was for her to discuss it, but if you cut it all out, the book would have been over a lot quicker.

One of the best moments in this book was when the two women realised that they couldn't just have eight years apart and then jump back into a relationship that was going to be exactly the same. They had to allow for the others experiences and the way they have shaped them, they had to be understanding and patient. They couldn't just ignore these things, they had to sit down and have an actual conversation. This concept was given barely a page. Also eight years apart and no sex when they get back together. That just sounds odd.

I honestly love a great character driven story, this was just not written in a style that let the characters shine. I feel like they were smothered.

I love these books. I have been lucky enough to read both thanks to Netgalley and the publisher, and I'm so grateful. The way the prose is written, I just find very beautiful. I find that the story truly immerses me in the worlds that Rivera has created with distinctive cultures, traditions, and stories.

I enjoyed being able to learn more about the Traitor in this book, and the role he has played in shaping the land and the blackbloods.

It was also nice to see how both Shizuka and Shefali have both changed and grown during their time apart.

I can't wait for the next one.

The only thing I will say is that because this is an unedited version, there were several typos throughout that did pull me from the story at times.

Full review to come nearer the release date. I enjoyed this one even more than The Tiger’s Daughter. There was more character development for Shizuka for one thing. I still love the world building and the prose. It does still suffer from a few of the things that put me off the first book – lack of accurate fight scenes and weaponry knowledge, very slow pace etc. Having said that, this doesn’t in my opinion deserve the charges of racism levelled at it by some. I can understand how taking from both Chinese and Japanese culture mixed together in a fantasy setting is problematic for people of those ethnicities but I don’t think it was done maliciously.