A Song to Drown Rivers

A Song to Drown Rivers by Ann Liang
★★★☆☆ 3.5/5
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ARC received on NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

A Song to Drown Rivers was a beautiful novel to read. The prose is captivating and lyrical, quite reminiscent of traditional Chinese poetry. The questions and ideas posed by Ann Liang within the story were thought-provoking and interesting to read. With this alone, I'd recommend A Song to Drown Rivers for anyone to read.

There were however, many things that made the book fall flat for me. What I loved about the novel was also its downfall. The excessive amount of poetic descriptions made the pace of the story feel rather slow. Xishi's concubine training in 10 weeks from the poorest farmer girl to a snake in human flesh was simply unrealistic and glossed over. The romance between Xishi and Fanli was not compelling. Similar to the issue of the concubine training, it occurred off screen, and I would have found the tension and yearning more convincing had there been more development during their time living together. I would have been interested in reading a potential love develop between Xishi and Fuchai in comparison, despite how the legends go. Fuchai felt like the second-most fleshed out character in the story, apart from Xishi. There were a few more gripes that I had, but for the sake of avoiding spoilers I will omit them here.

This is not to say that A Song to Drown Rivers is a bad book by any means. While it is not a book I would re-read, I plan to read Ann Liang's other stories in the future.