"She was taken to the palace as a concubine for the Emperor. Using her skill in the bedroom, she seduced her way to the throne of the most powerful empire in the world. She executed her enemies without mercy, and even murdered her own children for political gain. She set up her own imperial harem made up of young men. She elected herself a living god and held a ruthless reign of terror for over fifty years. Yet in the end, it was sex that led to her downfall. In this sensational true story, bestselling author Nigel Cawthorne reveals the dark and dramatic story of the only woman ever to rule China; Wu Chao, concubine, manipulator, politician, murderer, Emperor. From her instruction in the art of love by palace officials, to her eventual sticky end, this book opens a window into the colourful world of Tang Dynasty China."
Daughter of Heaven starts off with a confusing medley of names and titles in a huge rush of Chinese history. I found the overall work jarring and that it seemed to take liberties in identifying what should and shouldn't be taken as historical fact.
I wanted to like this book more than I did. The subject is absolutely fascinating: Wu Chao was a commoner in 7th century China and became the only female emperor China has ever had. This time in history was bloody with not only countries, but families all fighting for power and positions. Within the families there were power plays and hostilities; some committing suicide while others were sent into exile. With all of this being such an important and tumultuous time in China's history, I was excited where the author would take this.
In truth, I had a difficult time getting through. There is a lack of organisation throughout the book as it wanders from one topic to another, seemingly unaware of the main focus of the narrative for awhile before coming back to its senses and getting back on track. There are many tangents, and the author seems to have the need to follow every one of them. That being said however, it is quite obvious that the research for this book is extensive and includes a lot of outer history and is very detailed. The amount of outer history may be the reason the author became so sidetracked, and he could have very easily done without it.
The work intersperses the overarching tale of Wu ZeTian with lengthy and unappealing descriptions of architecture and geography. While sometimes helpful in history books, these felt unnecessarily detailed and were only tangentially related to the overall topic. Additionally, the variations in the transliteration of Chinese names, including the addition of accent marks not found in Chinese standard pinyin, make it confusing for readers who are at all familiar with Mandarin. The book is lengthy and convoluted by the constant introducing and immediate executing of multitudinous characters without any kind of introduction or explanation of how they fit into the larger narrative.
Several long sections are dedicated to describing works surrounding sexual pleasure that don't particularly add to the tale beyond shock and awe value. There was quite an uncomfortably strong focus on matters of sex, murder, and other such things that made this feel much less like a decent historical novel of any sort. Instead, it feels like it just carries on the centuries-long tradition of painting high-powered women in imperial China, or anywhere or that matter, as all being part of the same basic mould as nothing but fierce, conniving power-hungry souls with a large sexually deviant streak. It lacked any try to humanise or understand the women and her great economic leaps and ability to rule are quickly skipped over. Certain sensational details may make this book interesting to some and there where certainly some interesting points that I learnt. But as a quality source on the life of a genuinely fascinating woman, I found this to be a very, very heavy disappointment.
Overall, I felt the topic was not presented well and that the author had an automatic bias concerning the Empress Wu from the very beginning - her as a historical character and Tang Dynasty China were not approached, in my opinion, with respect or unbiased objectivity.
Age Rating 15+. As said in the review, there is a heavy focus on sex, violence and murder.
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