Book Review: He Who Drowned the World, by Shelley Parker-Chan

A masterpiece of politics, people, magic, murder, and war

Cover design and illustration by Lucy Scholes

I almost didn’t read this book. I had enjoyed the first book in this series, She Who Became the Sun (SWBTS), so much, and felt so satisfied by its ending, that I was hesitant to crack open the sequel for fear of a disappointment. But I was not disappointed, my friends! Everything that made SWBTS an outstanding book returned, in spades, in He Who Drowned the World. Twisty turny betrayals? Court politics? Conquest strategy? Tragic character arcs? Explorations of gender presentation? Wang Baoxiang¹? Yes, yes, and yes. Also yes. And, yes, again, yes.

If you have not read SWBTS you need to put down your device right now and go read it. It is superb. It won the British Fantasy Award both for Best Newcomer² (it is Parker-Chan’s debut novel) and for Best Novel overall. It follows the initial rise to power of Zhu Yuanzhang, historically the founder of the Ming Dynasty. However, in this telling, Zhu is not the son of a tenant farmer, but the daughter, so disfavoured that she is not even given a name. In a searing first chapter, relentless drought and famine, combined with a bandit attack, destroy her family, including her brother, who had been given a prophecy of greatness by the village fortune-teller. The girl, whose own fortune was a laconic ‘Nothing’, refuses to accept this future. She takes her dead brother’s name, and with it decides that she will fool the fates and take his fortune of greatness as well; and for the rest of the book she becomes Zhu Chongba, a man whose rise to power you can read about in the history books (or the wikipedia page I linked earlier). SWBTS ends with Zhu’s victory halfway up the ladder to total domination: she has taken the city of Yingtian, changed her name to Zhu Yuanzhang, the Radiant King, and declared that she will lead her people to rout the Mongols from China. 

It is a wildly satisfying ending. I loved it. But it is not the end of the story. The Mongols are not gone yet, and the Ming Dynasty has not yet been founded.

He Who Drowned the World continues that story, from three primary perspectives. All three are familiar from SWBTS, and all three have achieved the first stage of their goals from that first book.

First, we have Zhu Chongba (now Zhu Yuanzhang), who’s doing pretty well! She’s in charge of an army and recognized as the Radiant King of her people in the southern regions of the disputed territory. She further holds the indisputable Mandate of Heaven, which manifests as the ability to generate light and see ghosts. She is also well-supported by her wife, Ma, who has managed to get over a bit of child-murder at the end of the last book. The child in question held a Mandate of Heaven of his own,³ so Zhu had to off him in order to remove a possible rival to her own claim. To be honest, the kid was a bit creepy throughout the book, so his murder didn’t really bother me as much as it probably should have.

Second, we have General Ouyang. Ouyang has also managed to achieve the first step in his life goal. When he was a child, his family was captured and murdered by the Prince of Henan, down to the last man — except him. Him the prince castrated and left alive, and Ouyang has since grown up as a kind of pet eunuch to the family, acquiring enormous skill in murder and warfare, rising to command the entire army of Henan, while nursing in his bosom the desire for revenge. His only goal in life now is to revenge himself upon the Mongols — but he’s not happy about it. He had started building a kind of life for himself, anchored by his deep, agonized, sort-of-but-not-really-but-kind-of sexual-romantic attraction to the Prince’s son,  Esen, who  in turn trusts Ouyang utterly. So Ouyang has been kind of putting off the first step in his revenge, until battlefield losses to Zhu kind of force the issue. By the end of SWBTS he has betrayed and murdered Esen, and feels pretty darn miserable about it. But that’s ok: All that remains for him to do now is to find and murder the Great Khan, and then his life will be complete. He is not in a good head-space, but he’s got his goals and is making progress toward them.

Third we have Wang Baoxiang. Wang was Esen’s brother, and now, after Ouyang’s murder-spree, the Prince of Henan. He is deeply pissed at how everyone has been treating him: they see him as effeminate and unmanly for being bad at stabbing, and refuse to recognize his bureaucratic skills. So he’s decided to use those skills to climb the ranks at court, and become the Great Khan himself. Also, he’s haunted by his brother’s ghost (he may have had something to do with smoothing the way for Ouyang to do the murder), and seems to have some sort of Mandate of Heaven of his own.

What makes He Who Drowned the World just sing is the way each of these characters engages with the same themes from different perspectives. Each has a clear goal which in some way requires taking down the Great Khan. Zhu is the merry warrior, who never doubts the rightness of her path. Ouyang is the tortured warrior, who is fighting the blackness of despair at every step, and regularly doubts the rightness of his path. But — having taken that terrible first step in betraying and murdering Esen — Ouyang cannot allow himself to take any other path. no matter the kinder opportunities that present themselves. Wang, too, is tortured by despair, unable to turn off his cruel, traitorous path to power, despite meeting kindnesses of his own that might, in other circumstances, have made a difference. But for all the similarity between Ouyang and Wang, Wang is not a warrior, so his actions are fundamentally different in strategy from Ouyang's. And all three of them, to one extent or another, must face the question: Is it all worth it? 

Another key theme is the subversion of gender roles. Zhu is the clearest example of this: a woman posing as a man. Or perhaps a non-binary person who takes up whichever gender presentation suits her needs at the moment. She does not envy men their bodies, except inasmuch as their larger size and strength makes them better at fighting; and she does not hate her own, except inasmuch as it poses obstacles to her goals. Honestly, she’s much more inconvenienced by her missing right hand (which Ouyang cut off in SWBTS) than she is by her anatomy.⁴

Not so Ouyang, who is a eunuch, and hates it. He has the manliest of manly roles — the general of an army — and yet everyone describes him as beautiful, woman-like. He is effectively the opposite of Zhu, who approaches gender from a deeply pragmatic perspective: she benefits both from everyone’s acceptance of her as a man as well as her ability to present as a woman when subterfuge is required. She gets the best of both worlds. By contrast, Ouyang, who abhors everything female, is denied maleness as well. Like Zhu, he is mutilated, but unlike Zhu, this obstacle is connected with gender. He gets neither world, and his misery and despair in no small part springs from that.

Wang Baoxiang offers a third perspective on gender roles: he is a man, a cis-het man, with all the relevant anatomy. But he is seen as unmanly (because he does bureaucracy instead of battle), and perceived as being one of those men who sleep with other men. He doesn’t like this perception, which contributes to the general social disrespect that motivates his own actions throughout the book; but he’s not above using it to his advantage, to make alliances and develop relationships that he can exploit and betray when the time comes.

Oh, and speaking of relationships, I’ve got to mention the sexual encounters in this book. Because, dang. There are a lot of them, and not a single one is built on basic kindness or affection. Every single sexual encounter is a power play, a political act, a treachery, a betrayal, manipulation. The degree to which Parker-Chan can construct such a wide variety of unhealthy sexual encounters, all of which are vital to the plot, is astonishing.

Because, yes, they are all vital to the plot. The plot is intricate, subtle, heart-breaking, surprising, inevitable, and deeply, deeply satisfying. The twisty-turny politics, the subtle character studies, the psychology of ambition and regret and sacrifice for a larger goal, are all woven into an astonishing tapestry. It is dark and brutal, with a great deal of dismemberment, but there is just enough hope and goodness that it’s not all awful. Just barely. Maybe. Assuming you don’t need a lot.

1 Wang Baoxiang is the half-brother of the Prince of Henan in SWBTS. He won my heart by being entirely uninterested in battle and manliness, instead turning his considerable brains to the minutiae of administration, supply, and all the other activities that make it possible to feed, outfit, and field an army to do the stabby bits. ‘Moar Wang!’ became my battle cry at my book group meeting. Friends, there is so much Wang in He Who Drowned the World. 

2 Full disclosure: I was on the the panel for that award, and I don’t mind sharing that there was no disagreement at all among panelists that SHBTS was far and away the winner.

3 The Mandate of Heaven hedges its bets. Sometimes as many as three or four people may hold it at one time. It recognizes the potential to be Emperor, but it does not mark inevitability. As demonstrated by the dead kid from SWBTS.

4 Mutilation, in this world, is seen as deeply wrong. Ghosts of mutilated people turn into soul-eating monsters; and even before they are dead such people are shunned and reviled, refused entry into monasteries and other important locations. Actions like, oh, say, sending a jar of pickled hands to your enemy have a very particular resonance in this context.

—

Nerd Coefficient: 10/10, mind-blowing/life-changing/best.book.evar

Highlights:

•     Trenchant psychological character work
•     Betrayal, politics, and manipulation
•     Twisty turny gender stuff

Reference: Parker-Chan, Shelley. He Who Drowned the World [Tor/Mantle, 2023].

CLARA COHEN lives in Scotland in a creaky old building with pipes for gas lighting still lurking under her floorboards. She is an experimental linguist by profession, and calligrapher and Islamic geometric artist by vocation. During figure skating season she does blather on a bit about figure skating. She is on Mastodon at wandering.shop/@ergative.

Microreview [book]: She Who Became the Sun by Shelley Parker-Chan

 A slow, complex reimagining of the founding of the Ming dynasty, with a nameless daughter taking on an identity and destiny that takes her far beyond her origin.

She Who Became the Sun is a historical retelling about a fascinating moment in history: the fall of the Yuan dynasty and the founding of the Ming dynasty in China, and the corresponding rise of Zhu Chongba, a peasant boy from an impoverished family wiped out by famine, to becoming the dynasty's first Emperor. Except, in this reimagining, Zhu Chongba was not born with that identity. Instead, when the real Zhu Chongba dies of famine, it's his nameless sister who takes on his name and everything about his identity, including the prophecy that Zhu Chongba - whoever takes up that mantle - is destined for greatness. By taking on her brother's identity and finding her way into a nearby monastery for the next decade, Zhu survives, but eventually the conflict catches up with her and she ends up joining the Red Turban rebel forces, securing her place in the army through a smart initial victory and rising through the ranks.

Zhu's rise to power - and the way it ties in with a fantasy world that takes prophecies and mandates very seriously - would be a great adventure even without the complexities of her gender - but with it, the story becomes much more compelling. While Zhu lives in a time where men and masculinities are highly constrained, it is also a patriarchal structure where women have almost no agency or power except through making a lucky enough marriage. Zhu is convinced that she can only achieve the destiny attached to her name if she acts entirely in accordance with the way the "real" Zhu Chongba would have done - which means trying to push away any manifestation of her own female identity, and refuse any empathy with the women around them despite understanding their challenges far better than other men can. And yet, as readers, we can see that much of Zhu's brilliance comes from her ability to think beyond the constraints of martial masculinity that most of her comrades are embroiled in, and when she begins to build a relationship with Ma Xiuying (daughter of a dead General and betrothed of another), it's all we can do not to shout at her to stop being dense and go for it. But Zhu's gender journey is nowhere near as basic as "woman in patriarchy doesn't want to be oppressed", and her kindling a connection with Ma is not, in the end, about a shared gender - although it is based on a promise of being able to break with convention. Zhu never stops referring to herself with she/her pronouns (hence why I'm using them here - though the book switches depending on the point of view character) but her path to establishing her own identity involves embracing her "otherness" even as she evolves past the need to perform the best version of her brother that she can.

She Who Became the Sun is one of this year's much-feted golden-covered sapphic fantasies, but compared to The Jasmine Throne and The Unbroken, the chemistry between Ma and Zhu plays less of an active role in the narrative. It's still very much there, particularly in the book's heartbreaking climax, but it's nevertheless a quieter relationship than The Unbroken's Touraine and Luca or The Jasmine Throne's Priya and Malini. Instead, the more tumultous and tragic journey is given to the book's other great relationship: that between Ouyang, a eunuch general in the service of the Mongolian Prince of Henan, and the Prince's son Esen. Ouyang was brought into the service of the Mongols after they massacred his family and mutilated him, so one can imagine he's not particularly happy with the situation. But as a man dealing with plenty of Gender Bullshit of his own, Ouyang is desperate to prove himself as a martial leader, and his actions immediately put him at odds with Zhu as the latter begins to rise. Ouyang's complex, heated relationship with Esen, and Esen's own struggles with both Ouyang and with his adoptive brother Wang, make the politics of the Mongol side just as intriguing as that of the Red Turbans, and Ouyang's own difficult, conflicted role makes it hard not to sympathise even as we hate his actions in opposition to Zhu. Both Ouyang and Zhu end with very morally challenging resolutions in this book (the first of a duology), yet I find myself rooting for and sympathising with both of them, and hoping for at least a shred of mutual understanding to be possible in the concluding part.

She Who Became the Sun is, in short, an impressive book. On a personal level, it didn't work as well for me as it seems to have done for other reviewers - perhaps because it's so slow, I found myself appreciating it in a distant way rather than being as emotionally drawn in to Zhu's journey as I had hoped. The relatively low magic also took some adjustment after spending a lot of time in more fantastic worlds more recently: as noted, the Mandate of Heaven has a very physical manifestation in this world, and there are ghosts and other supernatural elements, but the war being fought is very much one of the historical time. Those are not criticisms of the book itself, though, and as historical fantasy that stays (I think!) relatively true to the historical record, She Who Became the Sun is a brilliant example of how the genre can turn those events on their head and bring readers a narrative that is both instructive of the period while imagining complexity and challenge in places that the historical record inevitably flattens (or overlooks altogether).

Posted by: Adri, Nerds of a Feather co-editor, is a semi-aquatic migratory mammal most often found in the UK. She has many opinions about SFF books, and is also partial to gaming, baking, interacting with dogs, and Asian-style karaoke. Find her on Twitter at @adrijjy

Microreview [book]: The Burning God by R.F. Kuang

Fang Runin's journey comes to a fitting close

Look, if you're here reading this review of the third book in a trilogy, especially one that's had the reach and popularity of The Poppy War trilogy, one of three things is probably true: you've read the previous books in the series and are looking to confirm whether the last one is going to live up to the expectations you've already developed about the series; you've avoided or bounced off earlier books and are wondering if my opinions are going to change your mind about if the series is for you; or you've read the book and you're wondering if I can a) contextualise what just happened or b) otherwise add to your reading experience with my #opinions. Let me put you all out of your misery quickly: Group A, the answer is yes, Group B, the answer is no, and Group C, I have no idea but I'll do my best for you. The Burning God brings to a close a very particular series in a way that stays very true to its core themes and aesthetic. If its what you're here for, you're going to like this one very much.

The Burning God picks up right where The Dragon Republic leaves off, with Fang Runin - a shaman able to harness the power of a super destructive god called the Phoenix - having thrown in her lot with a Southern Rebellion after being betrayed by the other rebellion forces she had helped to overthrow the Empress Su Daji. From that starting point, The Burning God proceeds to cover so much ground that it's hard to know where the scene-setting stops and the spoilers begin: there's the return to reclaim her southern home from foreign occupation by the remnants of the Mugenese troops who Rin and co. fought off in The Poppy War; her attempts to build relationships with rebel leaders who refuse to see her as anything more than an inconveniently powerful young girl; the reconnection with former enemy powers and the attempt to harness them to her cause; and of course, the reckoning with the forces of the Dragon Province, led by sometimes-ally mostly-enemy awkwardly-also-a-love-interest fellow Sineguard graduate Yin Nezha. Also thrown into the mix is the ongoing agenda of the Hesperians, the more technologically advanced, scientifically racist foreign power which has thrown its lot in with the Dragon's elites in order to further their own religious and cultural agenda. And, of course, the effects of the previous two books, including Rin's connections with the Cike, the Empire's now decimated shaman forces, her reckoning with her legacy as the last surviving descendent of the Speerly ethnic group, and her relationships with the few remaining allies she has from her time at the Sineguard academy. Getting through all of that is a serious undertaking, and while none of the events of The Burning God feel rushed, per se, there's certainly a relentless sense of action driving things through to their conclusion, and there were certainly emotional moments (particularly those involving Chen Kitay, Rin's oldest friend and ally) which could have benefitted from more space to breathe. I also suspect that the amount of shifting scenery in The Burning God was what allowed a transparent Tibet parallel called "Dog Province", complete with a reference to its people as "Dogs", to slip through sensitivity reading without challenge: an uncomfortable moment of unexamined, throwaway chauvinism that sailed far too close to oppression in our own world for my liking.

In-keeping with the rest of the trilogy, there are historical parallels here to the war between the Nationalist and the Communists, including a surprisingly understated (mild Cannibalism notwithstanding) version of the Long March from Rin's forces. There's also depictions of famine brought on by the war, and scenes of villagers turning on and punishing collaborators after occupation in various creatively brutal ways. Most of the descriptive brutality takes place at the beginning of the book, and I definitely felt there was a difference between the various horrors depicted, particularly towards the end: large-scale destruction seems to pass almost without comment from Rin, entire armies and cities just disappearing into the maw of destruction, whereas the pain and death inflicted on individuals outside the main battlefields is far more detailed and emotionally affecting. It's a difference that's very much inkeeping with Rin's emotional arc, as she progresses from a frustrated general trying to undo the horrors of war in her own home, to a leader drawn to increasingly bold and high-risk tactics to turn the tables on her enemies and secure herself enough power to do things differently. To me, it quickly became clear that it's Rin's emotional journey that provides the storytelling beats here rather than any hope of systemic change. Readers who know my tastes will know this isn't really where I personally wanted things to go, but that's really besides the point: The Burning God has always been clear that this is Rin's story, albeit one that draws heavily on its backdrop to inform who Rin is and why her journey takes place in the way that it does.

The way that this series takes on historical events in Sino-Japanese history has been extensively covered elsewhere, and I recommend this particular primer to understand where Kuang draws parallels not just from 19th and 20th century events but from classical Chinese stories as well. Having studied a bit of 20th century Chinese politics, what intrigued me most about the character work in The Burning God is how, more so than the other two books in the series, it plays with parallels between the characters of the series and the major historical figures whose cults of personality dominated what came next in our own history. Rin's attempts to establish herself as a leader in the rebellion - first one among many, and later as its head - are easy to compare to Mao Zedong, leader of the Chinese communist forces and ruler of the People's Republic of China from the end of the civil war until until his death in 1976. But Rin has been through a great deal of other experiences, not least those shaped by her identity as a Speerly and a woman, both aspects which are absent in her historical counterpart. It's that tension between the historical record and the character's experience that made The Burning God's ultimate dilemma so compelling: when faced with a choice between embracing the feeling of total power over her people bestowed upon her by her god, or following the forgotten heroes of her own heritage along a different path, it's impossible to know what Rin will do until the book's last, dramatic pages.

I can't call The Burning God satisfying - it's not meant to be. It tells the story of a society that was broken from the very beginning, and whose subsequent experiences have only driven it further into ruin, and of a character whose attempt to escape poverty within that society turns into a desperate, miserable struggle for survival that was never going to turn out well. I come away from the Poppy War feeling I've read an important series, one that is likely to be talked about for a long time to come, and which readers should go into with their eyes open to the difficult subject matter it covers and the historical context on which it draws. For those who have been waiting for this moment: you're not going to be disappointed, but you are going to need a calming beverage and something to cuddle afterwards. Good luck.

The Math

Baseline Score: 8/10

Bonuses: +1 character work that blurs the lines of historical events and the book's own powerful mythology to great effect

Penalties: -1 There's so much ground to cover that some secondary characters don't get much time to breathe

Nerd Coefficient: 8/10

POSTED BY: Adri, Nerds of a Feather co-editor, is a semi-aquatic migratory mammal most often found in the UK. She has many opinions about SFF books, and is also partial to gaming, baking, interacting with dogs, and Asian-style karaoke. Find her on Twitter at @adrijjy

Reference: Kuang, R.F. The Burning God [Harper Voyager, 2020]

Interview: R.F. Kuang, author of The Burning God

photo credit: Kobi C. Felton

Congratulations to R.F. Kuang, for her Astounding Award win, at the Hugo Awards last weekend.  I highly recommend watching her powerful acceptance speech, in which she talks about the stark realities of how new authors and "bright new talents" are "welcomed" into the genre.

The Burning God,  the third book in Kuang's Poppy War series, will be available this November,  which means you have plenty of time to read the first two books in the series, The Poppy War, and The Dragon Republic. The series follows an orphan named Rin, who earns her place in an elite military academy. When a brutal war lands on their doorstep, the students realize how ill prepared they are to make the decisions necessary in a war. Sure, any soldier can fight, but it takes a different kind of strength to face collective decisions and collective trauma.  When interviewed at RT Book Reviews about the first book in the series, she said of The Poppy War: "I chose to write a fantasy reinterpretation of China's twentieth century, because that was the kind of story I wasn't finding on bookshelves".

For those of you who are caught up on the series and eagerly awaiting The Burning God, you can look forward to untrustworthy political allies, Rin's return to her roots, and the difference between who wields the power versus where the power actually lies.  This last installment in the trilogy promises to be an emotionally brutal experience for readers. The gorgeous cover art for all three books was done by the incomparable JungShan Chang, whose ink artwork could easily inspire a thousand more novels.

Kuang took the time to answer my questions about her writing process,  the pressure of writing this last installment, her future projects,  her interest in diaspora literature and translation studies, and more. You can learn more about Kuang by visiting her website RFKuang.com  or following her on twitter, where she is @kuangrf.  She has been nominated for the Nebula, the Locus, and the World Fantasy award, has won the Astounding Award, and The Poppy War won the Crawford Award and the Compton Crook Award for Best First Novel.

spoiler alert:  While this interview does not contain any spoilers, I can not guarantee the same for the articles and websites I have provided links to.

(this interview was conducted prior to her Astounding win,  which is why mention of the award and the acceptance speech is absent from our conversation)

NOAF: When you first started outlining and writing The Poppy War, did you know how the trilogy would end?

R.F. Kuang: Yes, I knew the ending before I knew the beginning. I always come up with the ending first. I'm a pantser rather than a plotter, but I can't get started on a story unless I know where it's all going; I need to give some direction to the story engine. I've been picturing the final scene in my mind for years and years, so it's a relief to finally get it down on paper. So yes, I actually always conceived of The Poppy War as just the prequel material to the stuff I really wanted to write.

NOAF: You wrote The Poppy War when you were nineteen. How has your writing style, and your writing goals, changed since then, if at all?

R.F.K: Probably the most positive change is that I don't sound like a teenager anymore. I think my writing has matured simply because I've matured. I've (hopefully) gotten rid of a lot of the tell-tale younger writer quirks. I've worked very hard at my craft through a combinations of workshops (I can't recommend Odyssey enough), craft books (have currently acquired Wonderbook, edited by Jeff VanderMeer under enthusiastic recommendations), and reading everything I can get my hands on. I'd like to think my prose has gotten sharper and leaner in the past five years.

My writing goals haven’t changed–all I want is to write great books that lots of people read. But I have found myself moving away from epic fantasy. The next project, set in Victorian Oxford, is more of an alternate history, and the project after that will likely be a contemporary thriller. Maybe I'll come back to fantasy at this point; I'm just getting a bit tired of it at this point in my career. I'm ready to stretch my wings and see what else I can do.

NOAF: You mentioned in an interview you did at Tor.com that the "whole trilogy has been about cycles of violence, abuse, and responses to trauma".  Was writing this trilogy emotionally taxing for you?

R.F.K: Of course it was.

NOAF: Across the whole series, who has been your favorite character to write?

R.F.K: This answer changes every time I give it. I've become so fond of all my main characters' voices; it feels like they've really become a part of me. In The Burning God, I think I had the most fun writing Master Jiang's scenes. Some of them were extremely fraught and complicated, but others were so lighthearted and funny. I think he's the character with the most radically different sides (literally), so balancing those shifts in personality was challenging in a very fun way.

NOAF: Without giving too many spoilers, can you tell us which scene was the most fun to write? Which scene was the hardest to write?

R.F.K.: The last scene was the hardest to write by far. Aside from the obvious emotional heft, there was just a lot of pressure. This is what I've been building up to for three years, so of course I wanted to get it absolutely right. It's also a rather complicated scene – a lot of emotions shift in a short period of time, and the characters have to make incredibly difficult decisions – so it took a lot of tries to get right on a technical, craft level. Once I was structurally satisfied with it, I still spent months poring over every last sentence, particularly the dialogue. It was difficult to write and difficult to let it go.

NOAF: You're currently pursuing a MSC in Contemporary Chinese Studies at Oxford. "Contemporary Chinese Studies" sounds, um, huge and nearly all encompassing. Do you have a particular focus? Why did you choose that as your focus?

R.F.K.: Well, Contemporary Chinese Studies is just the name of the program. I focus on modern Chinese literature. Right now, I'm working on a thesis on Chinese sf novels by Liu Cixin and Chen Qiufan, focusing on the ways they deal with the anxieties about colonial modernity. I don't know if sf will remain my focus when I transition to doing my PhD, but generally I'm interested in diaspora literature, translation studies, and representations of war and violence.

NOAF: Thank you so much for doing this interview, and congratulations again on your Astounding Award!

POSTED BY: Andrea Johnson lives in Michigan with her husband and too many books. She can be found on twitter, @redhead5318 , where she posts about books, food, and assorted nerdery.