Rita Chang-Eppig

When Shek Yeung sees a Portuguese sailor slay her husband, a feared pirate, she knows she must act swiftly or die. Instead of mourning, Shek ayeung launches a new plan: immediately marrying her husband’s second-in-command, and agreeing to give him a son and heir,in order to retain power over her half of the fleet.
But as Shek Yeung vies for control over the army she knows she was born to lead, larger threats loom. The Chinese Emperor has charged a brutal, crafty nobleman with ridding the sought China Seas of pirates, and the Europeans-tired of losing ships, men, and money to Shek Yeung’s alliance-have new plans for the area. As Shek Yuen navigates new motherhood and the crises of leadership,she must decide how long she is willing to fight, and at what price, or risk losing her fleet, her new family, and even her life.… (more)

If you read the reviews of this book, what you will immediately realize is that everyone assumed a book about history's most famous female pirate would be swashbuckling, but swashbuckling is not what this book is about. Indeed, there are very few battle scenes in this book and those that are included are almost always the ones going badly.

No. What this book is about is power. The consequences of both having it and not having it, and whether or not one person can truly control or change their fate. It is a very reflective and introspective novel, focusing on Shek Yeung's decision-making after the death of her husband, in choosing new alliances and assessing old ones, in interpreting signs, visions, and rumors. The central question she wrestles with through the novel is basically, how long do I fight to maintain this way of life that I did not even choose, and when do I knew it is time to walk away?

This is a fictionalized story, not an attempt at biography, but I don't know enough about the subject to know how far it deviates, or how much is actually known about her life in the first place.

There is abundant queerness in the novel, though mostly in the background and in a rather matter-of-fact way. It doesn't seem to interest Shek Yeung much either way, and the entire novel is lived in her interiority.

What I liked most about this were the reflections on gods, belief, and the afterlife. There are many gods and goddesses present, from a variety of traditions, but all from the point of view of what, if anything, they do for the believer. If one shouldn't cry about one's fate, then why does anyone pray to anyone or anything?

Ultimately I think that I, like many readers, was looking for something different from this book than what I got, but still got more than enough from it to be happy that I read it.… (more)