She Who Became the Sun (The Radiant Emperor #1) by Shelley Parker-Chan

 The next Hugo nominee. The story is set in an alternative version of ancient China during the end of Mongol rule. The protagonist of the book, Zhu, is a daughter of an impoverished family which doesn’t have enough food. After visiting a fortune teller her brother was promised to have a glorious future filled with greatness. She was promised to have no future at all. During a famine, some bandits come to her home and try to torture her father for hidden food. It turns out that there is no food - hidden or not. Her father and her brother are killed though. So she decides to take her brother's destiny to herself, starting by going to the monastery he was supposed to go to. She gets to the monastery through sheer perseverance and manages to keep her gender hidden. She makes friends and copes pretty well, but keeping her secret isn’t always easy and sometimes demands ruthless acts.

The second story in the book is about military officers of the Mongol army. A prince has offered a commanding role to a eunuch. He has been criticized for that, but the eunuch seems to be an extremely efficient (and ruthless) leader. Also, the prince might have some feelings toward the eunuch, but the eunuch might have his own agenda. The political situation isn't simple and there is a lot of scheming.

Eventually, the stories start to cross. When Zhu is just going to be appointed as an official monk, the monastery is raided and destroyed by the Mongols. After some events, she ends up working with rebel forces who try to defeat Mongol rule, with great success. By trusting her legacy (she believes she got her brother's legacy after she took over his name) and being ready to do almost anything for it, it starts to seem that she is certainly bound for glory.

I wasn’t really looking forward to the book, as it belongs to a subgenre I am not a great fan of. But I was very pleasantly surprised after the first part. When the emphasis transferred to political scheming among the Mongols, the pace of the book seemed to sag for a while. However, towards the end the book very much regained its momentum and turned out to be a very pleasant surprise. The main heroine/hero (who is very much non-binary) was a captivating person with more than just shades of grey. The writing was very good and the plot was imaginative.   

416 pp.