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Infamous Pirate Queens: Deep as the Sky, Red as the Sea by Rita Chang-Eppig

Deep as the Sky, Red as the Sea has just about everything in the world going for it. The book is based on the story of the infamous pirate queen Shek Yeung, who went from prostitute to empress of the seas. When a Portuguese sailor murders her husband, she marries the second-in-command to retain control over her half of the fleet and struggles to keep the pirate alliance together. What follows is an insane chess match of minds and swords, all while Shek Yeung explores her identites of mother, pirate, and woman across battles at sea.

I mean… come on — the book writes itself.

Or, so I thought.

This is Rita Chang-Eppig’s debut novel, and I just want you to know as the quintessential ideal audience for this story, I wanted to love this book.

What I Liked About Deep as the Sky, Red as the Sea by Rita Chang-Eppig

When I first started reading, I was jazzed. Finally: a heroine who does stuff (unlike the passive leading ladies in books like The Guest by Emma Cline who have less agency than a forgotten floor mop). At the start of the book, Chang-Eppig’s portrayal of Shek Yeung was a breath of fresh sea breeze.

The book opens with a retelling of past events, summarizing the murder of Shek Yeung’s husband and her strategies to keep control over her half of the fleet. We then get more backstory told to us, getting caught up to speed on her time as a prostitute in the flower boats.

I wasn’t too familiar with the history behind this real-life pirate, so I was captivated for the first 50 pages on the true story, even though it felt like I was reading a history book rather than a novel. I also liked the strategy elements of the book, showing how Shek Yeung was a cunning pirate empress who played the surrounding pirates like a fiddle.

There were also some stunning sentences in the book, like the below that painted a vivid picture so effortlessly:

“Five days passed before the craggy coastline of Canton appeared, a splotch of ink gradually seeping through the scroll-paper mist.”

Can’t you just see the calligrapher’s brush painting this scene for us? Gorgeous.

What I Hated About Deep as the Sky, Red as the Sea by Rita Chang-Eppig

The difference between a history book and a novel comes down to the famous old adage of show, don’t tell.

A history book can tell us interesting facts, but it’s still a history book. There might be some storytelling depending on the quality of the book, but we’re getting a bird’s eye view so we can speed through decades at a time and get a sense of what happened way in the past.

Novels, however, need to have a feeling of immediacy. We need to feel the suspense as our pirate queen goes into tenuous negotiations with another pirate leader in her alliance. We have to feel her shock as a cutlass slashes through her husband in the opening of the book, taste the rage she must have felt in that moment.

This is the biggest downfall of Deep as the Sky, Red as the Sea. Chang-Eppig never allowed us space to sit in a scene with the most infamous pirate empress that history has ever known. Instead, we get some stilted internal dialog that keeps getting interrupted by a plot that moves along at the same. speed. for. the. entire. book.

A book should feel like a piece of music: it should have scenes that whizz by, swashbuckling that sweeps us up in fast, choppy sentences and line breaks. Then, there should be moments of slowness where we sink into the mind of our heroine, feel her fear, and experience the five senses during a moment of betrayal, a moment of fear, a moment of hope or longing.

I read fiction to luxuriate in a world beyond my own, and I never got that experience reading this book.

Final Thoughts on Deep as the Sky, Red as the Sea by Rita Chang-Eppig

It’s clear Chang-Eppig has done her research on Shek Yeung, and you can feel the love in the depth of the descriptions. The details feel accurate and interesting for a history book, and that’s where I would place this on the shelf. But if I were you, I’d skip this novel for a much shorter account of the extraordinary life of this pirate queen.

My final score: 2 out of 5 stars ⭐️⭐️ I love pirate queen lore, and the true story is amazing — but this book reads like a research paper, not a novel.

Do I recommend this book? ❌ No.

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