The daughter takes on her brother's name, Zhu Chongba, and pretends to be a boy in order to find refuge in a Buddhist monastery.

Meanwhile, Ouyang, an ethnically Han man who was castrated and enslaved by the Mongolians because of his family's treason, plots to overthrow his rulers.

Zhu Chongba believes that she must totally deny her female identity in order to seize her brother's destiny of greatness and avert the nothingness originally foretold for her.

[6][7][8] In an interview with the South China Morning Post, Parker-Chan described the novel as "a queer reimagining of the rise to power of the founding emperor of the Ming dynasty.

In an interview with SciFiNow, Parker-Chan commented on the inspiration for the novel,"In my case, I was yearning for a sweeping, high stakes, historical epic with the hyper-emotionality of a romance — but which also queered gender roles.

[5] Writing for USA Today, Eliot Schrefer gave the book (3.5 / 4.0), saying that it was "an important debut that expands our concept of who gets to be a hero and a villain", but that it had a "restricted emotional range", as "scenes of kindness and compassion are nearly absent".

[12] Lee Mandelo of Tor.com said the book was "propelled by the intense, grasping, often amoral desires of two queer protagonists whose deeply complicated relationships to gender and their bodies are center-stage" and that the novel pulled "no punches with its gnawing ethical quandaries about the foundations of empire".

[13] Publishers Weekly wrote that "though Parker-Chan’s unrelentingly grim view of humanity bogs down the middle of the novel, her nuanced exploration of gender identity and striking meditation on bodily autonomy set this fantasy apart".