The Poet Empress: Review of the Anti-Romantasy

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/231127166

A cruel prince needs a concubine, and a starving peasant girl needs a meal. The result is her offering herself up for a chance to win small favors for herself, her family, and her village. But as she begins to witness and experience the prince's cruelty, the shifting allegiances in the palace, and even the ire of the existing Empress, her goals shift as she fights not just to survive but to prevent a monstrous prince from becoming Emperor. Unfortunately, due to the prince's magic, the only way to kill him is to craft a specific magical poem, which will require her to both 1) learn to read and write (illegal) and 2) power the spell by learning to love this monstrous abuser (impossible).

I've been aware of this book for months thanks to five-star reviews mentioning heartbreak and pain and darkness. I was never someone who had the impression of it being a romantasy. In fact, based on pre-release impressions, I was pretty sure I knew how the book would end and why some reviewers were so careful to repeatedly state that this was not romantasy. But despite my confidence going in, by the time I reached those last chapters I actually had no idea how things were going to turn out

This book does a lot of things right, but I have a few quibbles.

Pacing: Fast. This book is 380~ pages with 71 chapters - averaging around 5.4 pages per chap. We get a feel for Wei's life before she makes her decision to fight for something more (like a full meal) within 10 pages. We first set our eyes on the cruel prince Terren and start dealing with political intrigue within 50 pages.

But here is also where I noticed that the author would gloss over details that would've helped me be more grounded in the world. This was actually something that continued on route the entire book: days and weeks would pass off-page, which could be fine in a vacuum, except we'd get information about shifting character relationships occurring during this time. Essentially robbing me of the emotional investment and payoff of getting to watch those gradual shifts. >!This even happens occasionally for the main relationship between Wei and Terren!!<

So I was intrigued at the start, but not fully hooked. Not until a character who was introduced one way and then makes a heel turn once they sensed an advantage. I wanted to see more character moments like that. And I certainly did.

Characters: pretty much all of them keep you guessing as to how they'll react to things. But they all make sense. Each character seems to have their own story going on, including having their own philosophies and warring emotions and different tactics to take to reach their goals. This made it a lot of fun to see how Wei would react to them, and how they would react to her reactions in turn.

They were also a little heightened. I saw one reviewer compare this book to C-Dramas. I've never watched C-Dramas in full, but I have seen clips from them from time to time. I will say they were definitely character moments that felt like they had that same sort of heightened energy, a little more dramatic than maybe a normal interaction would be.

Themes: Probably the best part of this book. This book does not lose sight of the themes that it's bringing up: famine, poverty, sexism, classism, literacy and its impacts on stories and poems and how they're told and who gets to tell them, abuse, duty, power (and its corrupting influence), family, hate, love. It explores them all through multiple angles, often interweaving them. By the end it's clear the author had strong opinions on all of these, and it's nice to have the sense that they were able to work them into the characters and story in ways that felt true to how these individuals would feel based on their backstories and experiences.

Plot: The actual plot of the book unfolds very nicely, with the main character Wei naturally moving from one goal to learning new information and slightly shifting her goal, and on and on, as she faces various deadly challenges once she arrives at the palace. There's a lot of backstabbing and being tested but not knowing what exactly the test is, forcing Wei to adapt in the moment or lose her life. There's also her interactions with Terren, which... definitely leave no doubt what a horrible abuser he is. Wei is really put through it in the book, and watching the only her actions but her thoughts as she plays power games were very interesting.

Also: this book has flashbacks. I really enjoyed the flashbacks. If you knew me and my stance on hating flashbacks, you'd know what a big deal this is.

All that said, I did have cons:

1. The aforementioned Telling over Showing moments. While I could accept some of this towards the start of the book to sort of get us into the story quicker, this would occur at strange moments throughout the book. Moments that would've been way more effective if we had been shown the scenes playing out. The notable exception is >!Terren's abuse, which, after we see it a few times, I was fine with just getting the cliffnotes versions.!<

2. The lack of poetry. This is a funny one. There is some poetry in this book, make no mistake. But there's not as much as I would have expected, and there are also strange moments where we are told about poetry rather than seeing it on-page. This happens even when you could argue it's a critical moment/important poem and we really should actually see it. None of the poems featured in the book are particularly long either. And sometimes we'd see poetry at the start of a chapter early on in the book, but this seemed to gradually fade away as the book went on. To be perfectly honest, it came across a little like an element the author decided to slack on to me, especially when considering many other elements in the book felt like they had been given the appropriate amount of consideration and emphasis. In contrast, the lack of poetry in a book called The Poet Empress stuck out even more. And speaking of incongruity in a book called The Poet Empress...

3. The prose. I honestly expected the prose to be a lot more lyrical and beautiful and maybe even leaning towards being purple prose. Ironically, I would have been much more likely to shy away from that sort of book. I can also recognize that a book following Wei, an illiterate peasant girl, might not have made sense having such beautiful prose. >!However, seeing as she learns to read (somewhat quickly on the page, even), there was an opportunity for the prose to gradually become more elevated if that was the excuse.!< And speaking of Wei.

4. Distance from the main character. The book is written from the third person perspective, but it's written in a way that creates a slight bit of distance between the reader and Wei. Or at least, it felt like that to me. There were times where it seemed more like Wei was noting her emotions than really feeling them. Not the biggest deal, but not my personal preference.

5. Emotions: Honestly, this book was more of an intellectual meal than an emotional meal for me, but I am not easily moved by books in general. In fact, if it wasn't for the element of >!ghosts!< I don't know if I would've been particularly moved by this book. But, through that element, the book does have a scene towards the end that did touch me.

Overall: This is easily the best debut I've read in I-don't-know-how-long. However, I judge each book as a story, doing my best to leave out any external information. My rating isn't boosted by this being a debut (I think). That said, while the author shows a ridiculous amount of promise, I'd be lying if I didn't say I saw a couple of warning signs for their future works too. It will be interesting to see where they end up in their next book and beyond.

4/5 stars.