Deep as the Sky, Red as the Sea (pub. May 30, 2023) by Rita Chang-Eppig is a thoughtful historical novel about life and piracy as experienced by one woman–Shek Yeung–based on the real-life pirate queen who commanded a confederation of pirates in the South China Sea in the early 1800s.
As the novel opens, Shek Yeung’s husband is killed in a battle with the Portugese. He had been her captor and champion, having bought her out of prostitution on the flower boats, bringing her with him and making her his partner as leaders of their own fleet and in confederation with several other fleets of pirates. Shek Yeung had given birth to two sons being raised by her husband’s family on land. She doesn’t want to lose her power over the fleet and in the confederation, so she proposes an alliance with her husband’s second in command, Cheung Po, where they will marry and she will provide him an heir. Cheung Po had been both her husband’s adoptive son and also his lover, so they had been in somewhat of a similar situation before his death.
Scattered throughout the novel are tales of Ma-Zou, the goddess of the sea. The Chinese emperor is after notorious pirates like Shek Yeung and the confederation she is trying to hold together. She doesn’t know who to trust, even whether she can trust her new husband, and it seems like the British and Dutch are up to something as well. All the while, she wonders whether there is any chance for a life on land, not being always on the run. She is responsible for so many people, she is so tired, and she is pregnant again, which is always a vulnerable time, especially so in a pirate ship on the sea.
The girl understood now that the world was divided into the powerful and the powerless. To be powerless was to live and die by others’ whims; to be powerful was to live in constant fear that others might one day take that power away. No part of the world was truly at peace.
Deep as the Sky, Red as the Sea
If you’re looking for a plot-driven adventure novel, this won’t really fit that bill. But if you like historical novels based on true events, set in a faraway place, with strong women acting against all odds, with beautiful writing and quotable, insightful lines, then give this one a try. It’s a quiet read, but I was invested in finding out who might be double-crossing Shek Yeung and who might survive their perilous existence.
I didn’t note any explicit anti-fat bias, so consider it weight-neutral. Thanks to NetGalley for the e-galley in exchange for an honest review.
Reading While Fat 