A Song To Drown Rivers by Ann Liang🐾
Hello, my fellow bookworms! Welcome back to Boots’ Bookshelf!
This week’s book, paw-picked by Boots, was A Song To Drown Rivers, a 2024 release that is a retelling of a famous Chinese folktale about Xishi, one of the four beauties of ancient China! Boots and I curled up together and finished the book within a week.
But, was it a cat-tastic read or did it leave us hissing? Let’s find out! 😻📖
Quick Look
Genre: Romance, historical fiction
Release Date: 2024
Page Count: 321
Vibe Check: A historical espionage story that draws you in and takes you on a whirlwind of emotions!
Purr Rating: 🐾🐾🐾🐾 (3.5/5 Paws rounded to 4)
The Plot sans Spoilers
All her life Xishi has been praised for her beauty - a beauty that attracts the attention of the king’s military advisor, Fanli. Fanli offers Xishi a rare opportunity: use her beauty to help save her kingdom of Yue by infiltrating the rivaling kingdom of Wu to topple it.
Driven by her personal reasons, Xishi agrees and trains to become the perfect lady of the court, and the perfect hidden weapon. Upon arriving in Wu, she quickly captures the eyes of the king, Fuchai–and the eyes of those who do not trust her.
Danger lurks in every corner as she navigates her mission, knowing that failure will bring certain doom to her and her kingdom.
Now it’s time for our 🐾Paws and Claws!
Paws
This book caught my attention because of the premise. I had never known about the four legendary beauties prior to this story and I think Liang did a great job walking readers through the tale of Xishi.
Which brings me to the emotions of this story! It truly felt like an emotional rollercoaster at times, and the emotions helped add dimension to the characters. I think Liang did a fantastic job with Fuchai’s character!
She also did a great job with the description of the setting - I could clearly see the scenes being described and the beauty of ancient China.
I liked how she portrayed Fuchai and gave him more depth as a character - at times, I felt as if she gave him more character than Fanli.
Claws
The main claw I had with this story was the romance, or lack of. Although the blurb mentions her romance with Fanli, this romance isn’t developed to the point of it being called a romance, especially given how little they see of each other. I felt like it was a one-sided pining on Xishi’s side and a mask of coldness from Fanli. The few scenes that they have together do not add much kindling to the flames and I felt like their romance lost its heat and its appeal to me fairly quickly.
Another claw I had was the lack of action in the book. I know that Xishi would not be fighting or something physical like that but her scenes all felt tame and demure–she didn’t feel like this cold, seductive, and calculating beauty who had the king eating out of the palm of her hand. Most of the time, she and the king interacted as if they were teenagers, which I could understand given that they’re young, but it just felt like there could have been more action or something between them to show how dangerous she truly was. I wish there was more spying built into the story to really raise the stakes and show how skilled she was and how dangerous everything truly was. Most of the time, it didn’t feel like she was in any real danger.
My last claw was Zhengdan. She was written as a great character and I liked that she was strong and brave but she felt like she was, at times, modeled after Mulan with her backstory and her motivation for helping Fanli. There were some scenes where I literally felt like I was watching Mulan.
Boots’ Thoughts
My mom likes this book - she loves learning about legends and stories in other cultures and was excited to learn about the four beauties of ancient China.
There were some parts where she looked sad and some parts where she was smiling. I think she had a ton of different emotions while reading this book, and even teared up! I thought it was cool how pretty Xishi was, so much so that the fish forgot how to swim when they saw her! I wonder if I would have forgotten how to meow if I ever saw her 🐾
Final Verdict
...
Final Verdict ...
Was A Song To Drown Rivers worth the catnip? Boots gives it 3.5 paws: 🐾🐾🐾🐾
We recommend it to readers who like books with:
🐾 Retellings of cultural stories or folktales
🐾 Chinese culture
🐾 Spying on the enemy
🐾 LOTS of emotions!
Purr-spective Wrap-Up
Ready to give this book a read? Let me know what you think in the comments—especially if your furry friends approve too! Don’t forget to follow us on social media for more purr-fect recs and reviews.
Until then, stay paw-sitive and read on! ✨
🐾Boots & Nalicia
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