

For his part, Ouyang is not about to let a no-name monk distract him from a revenge plot a lifetime in the making, leading to a Machiavellian series of bargains and battles between the two. The new Zhu’s tenacious will to survive and desire for glory leads her to become first a Buddhist monk, then a commander in the rebel army attempting to overthrow Mongol rule of China-and results in continual clashes with an antagonist to whom her fate is inexorably intertwined: the eunuch General Ouyang.

Instead, his purposefully never-named sister takes on her brother’s identity-and his fate. After bandits kill Zhu Chongba’s father in 14th-century China, Zhu dies of grief without ever having fulfilled the destined greatness that was foreseen at his birth. Parker-Chan’s fascinating debut, the first in the Radiant Emperor duology, gives the historical Red Turban Rebellion a grimdark fantasy twist.
