The Poet Empress by Shen Tao
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
This book is hard for me to critique. I loved and hated it at the same time.
The concept of palace politics and ruthlessness is pretty familiar to me, a big fan of C-drama. In fact even though the plot is very different, I cannot stop but comparing this book with “Bloody Romance”, a 2018 wuxia dark fantasy TV series. Extremely violent, you (or maybe just me) spend the whole series hoping for a moment of happiness between the two main characters only to be left baffled and unsatisfied at the end. Even though “The Poet Empress” doesn’t quite qualify as wuxia , the plot follows a lot of the same themes of injustice, abuse, and choosing a less-than-ideal resolution for the sake of others.
Very well written with an interesting magic system but so dark, readers like me who enjoy a happy ending might not be too thrilled to read it.
I do believe that much like in “Bloody Romance”, this novel goes way overboard with the graphic violence, helpful to develop the characters, but ultimately taking it to unnecessary levels in my opinion. Be prepared if you are squeamish about this kind of violence.
I was attracted to the book by the cover and the premise, but I also thought it was a romantasy and didn’t realize it was closer to gothic/horror lit until I was already invested in the plot.
I’m not going to lie, I read the book pretty quickly and found myself staying way past my bed time to read “one more chapter”. But I can’t say that this was a favorite and I’ll be honest if I had an inkling about the content, I would most likely not have read it. But that’s a “me” problem and I’m still giving it a 4 star rating because despite being out of my usual fare, it is a good book, a good story, and a page-turner for sure.
Author Natalina Reis 