Book Beginning | Friday 56 | Blogger Hop || She Who Became the Sun (The Radiant Emperor #1) by Shelley Parker-Chan

Please join us over at RoseCityReader every Friday to share the first sentence (or so) of the book you are reading, along with your initial thoughts about the sentence, impressions of the book, or anything else the opener inspires. Please remember to include the title of the book and the author’s name.

This is a weekly meme hosted by Freda's Voice
These are the rules:

1. Grab a book, any book.

2. Turn to page 56, or 56% on your eReader.

3. Find any sentence (or a few, just don't spoil it) that grabs you.

4. Post it.

5. Add the URL to your post in the link on Freda's most recent Friday 56 post.

Synopsis:

   To possess the Mandate of Heaven, the female monk Zhu will do anything

“I refuse to be nothing…”

   In a famine-stricken village on a dusty yellow plain, two children are given two fates. A boy, greatness. A girl, nothingness…

   In 1345, China lies under harsh Mongol rule. For the starving peasants of the Central Plains, greatness is something found only in stories. When the Zhu family’s eighth-born son, Zhu Chongba, is given a fate of greatness, everyone is mystified as to how it will come to pass. The fate of nothingness received by the family’s clever and capable second daughter, on the other hand, is only as expected.

   When a bandit attack orphans the two children, though, it is Zhu Chongba who succumbs to despair and dies. Desperate to escape her own fated death, the girl uses her brother's identity to enter a monastery as a young male novice. There, propelled by her burning desire to survive, Zhu learns she is capable of doing whatever it takes, no matter how callous, to stay hidden from her fate.

   After her sanctuary is destroyed for supporting the rebellion against Mongol rule, Zhu takes the chance to claim another future altogether: her brother's abandoned greatness.

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Book Beginning: 

  Zhongli village lay flattened under the sun like a defeated dog that has given up on finding shade.

Friday 56: 

  Xu Da paused at the door and gave her a betrayed look.

Zhu said meanly, "Enjoy!"

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Q: Are you more likely to choose to read a book based on the synopsis, or the cover? 

A: I sometimes see a synopsis before I see the cover, but if I see a cover that draws my eye I look up the synopsis to see if it sounds like something I might enjoy.