Wow! This is not the kind of book I usually read but, man! It was worth it.

I discovered this book on the podcast, What Should I Read Next? Since I started #365Books and researching bibliotherapy, I’ve listened to a few podcasts. This one is evil – after each episode I end up with a list of books to sample. I then download a sample, get drawn in, and can’t stop. Which is what happened with this book.

The story starts with a girl child in late medieval China, living in a rural farm community, during a time of struggle. The country is suffering under the rule of Mongol Khan. Their disdain for administration has left the peasants battling three foes: a lingering drought which has left nothing but dirt and lizards to eat; wandering groups of bandits who take what they want; and the Great Khan’s own soldiers who are almost as bad as the bandits. There are not many left in their village, only the Zhu family (father, son, and girl) and a few boys (the girls having been sold off or starved to death with their mothers that the men and boys may eat). The girl is the least of her father’s concerns: her brother’s welfare is all he cares about and the spoiled, inept boy receives the lions share of anything they scavenge to eat. The final blow comes when the village fortune teller confirms her father’s belief that her brother is destinated for greatness. When the girl asks for her own fortune, the fortune teller shakes her off with one word: Nothing.

But when bandits kill their father, it’s her brother that wastes away in despair. The daughter assumes her brothers clothes, name, personhood, and place as a novice in the richest and most powerful monastery in their region – and dares to take on his destiny as well.

Accompanied by ever-present ghosts, Zhu uses her wits and cleverness to avoid exposure as a novice, a monk, and – when the monastery is destroyed by the ruling house – as a soldier in the rebel army. Her observational skills, intelligence, persistence, and willingness to do whatever it takes to succeed, earns the loyalty of her men, the enmity of political and military rivals, and the attention of the child blessed with the heavenly radiance that destines him to be the next great emporer.

The story of Zhu’s ascendancy is counter-balanced by the story of another man: the last son of a great house, his extended murdered when the Khan family came into power, castrated, enslaved, forced to serve the son of the man who levied this punishment. When we meet him, he has earned his freedom and worked his way up to being the leading general of the army and closest friend of the heir apparent to the house. His body’s imperfection, however, has left him forbidden to enter sacred places and insulted by people who cannot rival his intelligence or military prowess – and harboring a smoldering rage against anyone who insults him.

As Zhu does, when she outsmarts him in a critical battle, causing him to lose 10,000 men while she loses none.

This book is an Epic, building from small moments of lizard hunting by a girl who doesn’t even have a name, to huge military campaigns that shift the course of the empire, and the crowing of the first emperor of the Ming Dynasty, destined to reign by the heavens.

Wow, what a book. I was kept wondering the whole time how Zhu would survive the challenges that she found herself in, and who would be the one to discover her secret. She is a combination of prue confidence in her abilities and destiny, her cleverness – at times, she reminds me of the clever monks from Zen Speaks, outsmarting those who challenge them with words and ideas – but there is also a strain, not of cruelty but of ruthlessness – born, perhaps of her principal need to find and keep what little food there was, hidden from her brother as a small child.

Her most fascinating encounters are with the women who cross per path – pregnant widows, destined for shame; future wives destined to marry men who refuse their wise political council – she asks of each of them: is this all you want from your life? The number of strong women in this book impresses.

This book is classified as fantasy – the emperor Zhu was a real person, and is not historically believed to be a woman in drag; and the ghosts and indicator of heaven’s destiny are supernatural – but the fantasy aspect is lightly touched and it could have been classified as fiction, competing for the same readers as Shogun – although it has been decades since I last read that – or even perhaps Bernard Cornwell’s Viking books.

If you like sweeping epis that change worlds, rises from rags to riches, and strong female characters, this book is for you.

Highly recommended.