The New York Times bestselling author, Ann Liang just came out with a historical fantasy, “A Song to Drown Rivers”. This book is highly anticipated by many of her readers/fans and hit stores on Oct. 1, 2024.

“A Song To Drown Rivers” follows the legend Xishi, one of the four beauties of Ancient China. Her beauty gained the attention of one of the military advisors of Yue, Fanli. He gives her the opportunity to use her beauty as a weapon to overthrow the Wu kingdom. All she has to do is infiltrate the Wu kingdom as a spy and seduce the king to weaken them from within. First, she has to train with Fanli and throughout her training she finds herself falling in love with him. But when the time comes, she has to leave, being forbidden to be with Fanli and forced to be a spy.

If I am being completely honest, this book was a major disappointment. This book had so much potential that it never lived up to. The characters were so underdeveloped, specifically Fanli and Zhengdan. Zhengdan was Xishi’s best friend, but readers never got to know her and see Xishi’s relationship with Zhengdan. Not only that, but they hardly have any interactions during the entirety of the book. And Fanli wasn’t mentioned in the book that much considering that he is the love interest. He was in 10% of the book, yet he held an important role? Xishi and Fanli’s relationship was instalove and they had a total of 3 interactions which didn’t make sense. Xishi’s interactions with the characters could have been more meaningful if they were developed more. Both characters had so much potential but were wasted.

“A Song To Drown Rivers” also fluctuates a lot. Some parts of the book were slow paced and hard to read through, and some parts were fast paced and packed with action. This made the book a little hard to get through because it was really slow and it was mostly Xishi complaining about missing Fanli and hating King Fuchai or mundane events. After it being so slow for so long there is suddenly a part that is action packed but there is no build up to it. The writing just felt very rushed and messy in some parts.

There is also a lot of telling instead of showing. A lot of the important things that Xishi does such as training or manipulating the king is done off page. I would like to see how Xishi was trained because it would have been cool as well as Xishi manipulating the king. Yes, we do get some scenes but most of it off page and told rather than shown later on but not in detail.

Ann Liang is known for her swoon worthy romance books but this book’s romance was almost non-existent. Overall, I was expecting a really good book based on the hype but I was really disappointed with this book. 

2/5  Read.