Review: Yellow Sky Revolt by Baptiste Pinson Wu

Blurb:

China, 184 CE

An empire will shatter.

Dark clouds loom over the Han dynasty. The Yellow Turbans, simple folks turned rebels, threaten the power in place with their sheer numbers and burning anger. Among them, Liao Hua, a young peasant boy, becomes the symbol of the uprising's vengeful spirit.

But what should have been a short revolt turns into a bloody war for survival. As untrained farmers face the full might of the empire, Liao Hua forges himself a will of iron and vows to do whatever it takes to become the greatest warrior of his time. However, when his path crosses that of the bearded warrior, he understands ambition won't be enough to come out on top.

An age of chaos is beginning. Men will fall, warlords rise, and warriors clash, but only the strongest will leave their names to be praised for the centuries.

Review:

The tale of how I got the book:

About two weeks ago, before the end of February, I had no class until 13:45 on a Thursday, so, having a plan to get cables and extenders for my laptop, I walked over to the local drug store, bought an Amazon gift card, and went about placing orders, adding this book to the cart after seeing the author being compared to Brandon Sanderson by one of Boe’s tweets and the book being a fictional retelling of China’s Three Kingdom Era.

Considering I immensely enjoyed “The Poppy War” by R.F Kuang and the subsequent books after that, and I immensely enjoyed reading almost all of Brandon Sanderson's books, I added it to the cart and bought three items: an HDMI extender, an HDMI cable and “Yellow Sky Revolt”, which all arrived on the same day, although I immediately started using the HDMI stuff before getting around to reading this. Considering it’s been about two weeks since I got the book, I cracked it open last night…

and when I opened the book for the first time and read the preview, it immediately hooked me. Immediately.

We have a mixture of a narrator who wants to only give his old friends justice in historical works, a scribe who only knows the narrator's friends as great heroes and villains, and a journey taking enough time to get everything written down.

Us readers are immediately told where the tale ends with the preview, but the journey, the journey to the end makes it special and you’ll never know how it ends unless you read “Yellow Sky Revolt” and the rest of the books in “The Three Kingdom Chronicles”.

What did I like about this book?

Well, let me first start with the narrator and his old friends, plus the scribe. All of them are portrayed as humans, doing what humans do. Liao Hua, the narrator, doesn’t embellish his tale, as far as I’m aware… be wary though, since he’s the one talking, we don’t know his mind any more than he lets us see. Then we have Chen Shou, the scribe. Adorable kid, tasked with writing down the ramblings of an old man, and despite Liaos stories being different from Chen Shou’s remembrance of them, he keeps on writing, only to take a break in between. Then, the characters on the side, the three warriors; Cheng Younzhi, Deng Mao and Han Zhong, who try to keep young Liao Hua safe and his sister safe. All of them are called Uncle by Liao Hua, and each one means something special to him. Cheng Younzhi and Deng Mao for training him in the art of war and Han Zhong for protecting his sister once his and her father die during the rebellion.

Secondly, the world the books take place in. This isn’t just a historical fiction retelling of Chinese history, it acts like an actual historical retelling of Chinese history. If I ever were to visit that country using a VR headset and Google street view, I’d try to figure out exactly where those villages exist just to take a peak at them. To the reader of the book, it is as if you can reach into the story, pluck a house from the book, and view it. The geography is also right from that era. In the afterword by the author, he mentions he spent a lot of time going into the minute detail of that period of Chinese history. And it shows.

This brings me to the third reason why I enjoyed reading this book so much. Although it is fiction based on actual events centuries ago, it felt as real to me as the book “Poland” by James A. Michener. If I wasn’t told about it being a historical fiction book, I’d not have believed it to be one.

What did I not enjoy about “Yellow Sky Revolt”?
Honestly, not much. Not much at all. The phrasing is odd at first, but you get used to it reading through the book, so it’s not that big of a deal.

I’d recommend this book to anyone who in some way or form enjoys historical fiction or even general fiction. If you are not that big on that kind of novel, feel free to check out other reviews by fellow SFF Insiders who all have varied reviews on a variety of different genres and books. Like Boe’s review of “The Winds of Change (Elements of Time)”, written by Sam Paisley or Joseph’s review of “Empire of Silence”, written by Christopher Ruocchio. 

If you’ve made it to this part of the review, thank you for reading this, and I hope I’ve helped you along on your reading journey to find the next thing to read.

Have a good morning, good evening and goodnight!