We don’t know what we love more: action-packed historical fantasies or a cast of strong female characters. Thankfully, we don’t have to choose in Joan He’s newest novel, Sound the Gong!
Sound the Gong is the second book of Joan He’s Kingdom of Three duology. And if you remember our review of Strike the Zither, you’ll know that this series reimagines Three Kingdoms, one of the most famous historical epics in Chinese literature!
Sound the Gong by Joan He is arguably one of our most-anticipated releases of 2024 and so worth the wait. But let’s dive into the review and give you our three favorite things about Sound the Gong!
Book Overview
Content Warnings: war, torture, blood, death, character death, violence, cruel and unusual executions (not limited to multiple beheadings), fires, burn wounds, identity theft, alcohol consumption, starvation/famine, and vomiting (Read at your discretion!)
Summary: All her life, Zephyr has tried to rise above her humble origins as a no-name orphan. Now she is a god in a warrior’s body, and never has she felt more powerless. Her lordess Xin Ren holds the Westlands, but her position is tenuous. In the north, the empress remains under Miasma’s thumb. In the south, the alliance with Cicada is in pieces.
Fate also seems to have a different winner in mind for the three kingdoms, but Zephyr has no intentions of respecting it. She will pay any price to see Ren succeed—and she will make her enemies pay, especially one dark-haired, dark-eyed Crow. What she’ll do when she finds out the truth—that he worked for the South all along…
Only the heavens know.
The Angst That Hurts So Good
We’ll be the first to admit that we don’t want to make ourselves sad (most of the time). But the ill-fated relationship between Zephyr and Crow in Sound the Gong? We’ll voluntarily read and cry about them any day! Their rivalry from the first book turns into a darker, more intense enmity in this one. And they each make morally gray decisions to best serve their lordess. Crow may have questionable motives, but Zephyr becomes ruthless in a way we’ve never seen her before. It only makes us want to fight for them more.
All The Plot Twists
If there’s one thing we should warn you about in Sound the Gong, it’d be to avoid predicting what happens next. Because whatever you think will happen probably won’t. And the plot twists are part of what makes reading it so enjoyable! We haven’t read a book that has challenged our intuition as much as this one. The final battle between Xin Ren, Miasma, and Cicada had us gripping our chairs and refusing to look up from the screen. We didn’t even realize how close we were to the end. Which leads us to our next point.
The Ending We Couldn’t Expect
The ending had us gagged. We can’t even lie. Sound the Gong may be the conclusion to Joan He’s Kingdom of Three duology, but the story will stay with us forever. We didn’t know how the war between the three kingdoms would end. Nor did we expect who the ultimate ruler would be. And it kills us to know that Zephyr’s efforts to change everyone’s fate would go unnoticed (of course, except a certain someone). We want to spoil the ending so badly, but we’ll let you go on the rollercoaster of emotions for yourself.
An ill-fated connection, ruthless loyalty, and brilliant plot twists make up Joan He’s Sound The Gong; it has everything we could ask for in a sequel!
Sound the Gong by Joan He releases April 30th, and you can preorder a copy of it here!
What do you think of Joan He’s Sound the Gong from our review? Let us know on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram!
Want to hear some of our audiobook recommendations? Here’s the latest!
