Deep as the Sky, Red as the Sea by Rita Chang-Eppig (Bloomsbury Publishing)

Shek Yeung is a girl who has been drawn to the sea from her earliest years and her determination to sail with her father and brother leads to an unforeseen destiny. When their boat is captured by pirates, Shek Yeung is sold into prostitution. Her brains as much as her beauty attracts a man who has united the pirates of the South China Sea into a fleet that defies the Emperor’s navy. She becomes Cheng Yat’s wife, his partner in battle, and his chief advisor. With his death, she pragmatically assesses the situation and allies herself with her husband’s adopted son, whom she soon marries. Together Shek Yeung and Cheung Po outwit the ships of the English, Portuguese, and the Dutch, as well as any warships sent by the Emperor. 

A bodice-ripping romance novel? Not at all. Any torn bodices have been ripped in the distant past and are quickly glossed over. Sex, for all that it is instrumental in Shek Yeung’s destiny, is not a major player in her story. Nor is romance. She’s not a woman who has time for that. She has a unified fleet of pirate ships to manage. 

Shek Yeung has one entity in her life to whom she pays respect, the deity Ma-Zou, who protects and offers counsel to those who spend their lives on the sea. Ma-Zou takes many different forms and is enshrined in different legends, some of them providing a counterpoint to Shek Yeung’s own story. But while Ma-Zou is a supernatural being who lives in myth and religion, Shek Yeung is rooted in Chinese history, a dominant figure who ruled China’s seas from 1801 to 1810 and who died under unusual circumstances for a pirate--peacefully, of old age.

She and her second husband controlled a naval empire of five different fleets, each bearing a different colored banner. She and Cheung Po sailed on the Red Banner fleet of 300 ships that scourged the sea from Vietnam to Canton. The Black Banner fleet with 200 ships controlled the waters near the Pearl River Delta, while the Green and Red Banner fleets, with 100 and 50 ships respectively, held sway over the Yangtze River Delta. Taiwan’s seacoast was the province of the Blue Banner Fleet with 150 ships.  Aboard these vessels were 40,000-60,000 pirates, all owing allegiance to Shek Yeung and Cheung Po.

Each pirate carried the weapon of their native regions and all of these were developed for hand-to-hand combat: cutlasses, double-edged swords, axes, crossbows that fired three arrows at a time, maces, and the multi-pointed tiger-head hook swords. Gunpowder got the pirates onto the ships that were their prey, but once they were aboard, courage and skill were the tools of their blood-soaked trade. 

Rita Chang-Eppig’s research is a primary strength of her novel. Although she has given Shek Yeung details that weren’t part of her history, she places her firmly as a redoubtable strategist and warrior. Poor Cheung Po turns ashen in contrast--somewhat henpecked and quite unloved. And although Chang-Eppig pays homage to Ma-Zou in her acknowledgments, as well she should, she never mentions that Shek Yeung existed outside of the author’s creative imagination. 

This is perhaps a deficiency of the advance reader’s edition. When Deep as the Sky, Red as the Sea comes to bookstores in its finished form, it will garner more readers if it acknowledges that Shek Yeung once lived, breathed and ruled as a compelling and factual figure in Chinese history.~Janet Brown