The Phoenix Empress is darker than Tiger’s Daughter, but better for it

If you fell in love with Shefali and Shizuka in The Tiger’s Daughter, then K Arsenault Rivera’s followup The Phoenix Empress will hurt (in a good way).

Full disclosure here: a quote from my review of The Tiger’s Daughter appears in print on the first inside page of the Tor-published follow-up, The Phoenix Empress. Even with that in mind, though, your reviewer here does her best to discuss books without that sort of thing impacting her judgment.

To that effect, The Phoenix Empress picks up what The Tiger’s Daughter did well, and then expands further. If you recall, the title of the first book refers to Shefali; this book lets us see more of none other than Minami Shizuka herself, picking up years after the events of the first book and with the two of them coming back together after being apart. Don’t worry: these two are still in love.

But they’ve grown up in the ensuing years, and K Arsenault Rivera takes the time to explore how those changes came about. Instead of Shefali to Shizuka, the second-person perspective is meant to be from Shizuka to Shefali, telling her the stories of what things were like while her wife was away. And because it’s telling the past, not the future, it avoids the mistake of Tiger’s Daughter, where things seemed a bit too heavily foreshadowed. Arsenault Rivera has a lighter hand here with it, letting Shizuka’s horrifying story unfold bit by bit, until there’s a section about midway through where it just all pours out. It’s here that things become truly engrossing, as if the reader, like Shefali, has no recourse but to listen until Shizuka is done.

The two have always been distinct characters, and it’s important to note that Shefali doesn’t fade into the background of this book at all. She has her own struggles, just as Shizuka has hers. In fact, this book ultimately feels more balanced between the two, if not a little tilted towards Shizuka actually getting her say and existing not just as Shefali sees her, but as she sees herself.

Admittedly, it might not feel like much actually happens in the present of this book. It’s quite a bit more political than its predecessor, thanks to Shizuka becoming empress of Hokkaro instead of merely its heiress. It’s slower in that sense, but tonally, it echoes the idea that both Shefali and Shizuka are not how we saw them last. Still, it may turn some readers off despite the lovely writing.

At the same time, though, there’s a stronger interrogation of the myths set forward in the first book. These two are not normal humans. That has been plain from the very beginning. But The Phoenix Empress asks what the cost of that looks like and what it means to be haunted by your own legend of being a god or at least god-adjacent. There’s still a touch of mysticism here; no one knows exactly what will happen to the two of them, and that matters.

Arsenault Rivera had a challenge here after such a strong book last October. But The Phoenix Empress has a slower, more bittersweet burn, and it feels like Their Bright Ascendancy as a series could easily rise to even better heights for a third book (already expected for 2020).

But for now, The Phoenix Empress will do this reviewer just fine.