Deep as the Sky, Red as the Sea is a fictionalized account of a real Chinese woman pirate from the 19th century, amidst the lead up to the opium wars. The setup of the book is that Shek Yeung's husband, the leader of an alliance of pirate fleets, has just been killed in battle, leaving her with his wishes to keep the alliance together; part of the fleet was left to his heir Cheung Po, and she (theoretically) still has another part, but in the wake of her death she has to immediately scramble to try to keep everything together.

I think I expected a book about a pirate queen to be more action, but instead it was a lot of internal reflection and navigating politics. Even from the get go, she is trying to hold an alliance of pirate fleets together against constant pressure to split them apart: allies who need reassurance of the ongoing value of their alliance, a shaky relationship with her (new) husband (the heir), increased pirate hunting from the government, attacks from the Dutch, and the threat of internal spies inside the fleets.

A lot of the book is her careful attempt to balance all of these things while trying to survive; she muses several times on the purpose of power, and the feeling I get is that she is truly motivated by trying to create a space of safety for herself and those she cares about. Sometimes this leads her to callous actions, but at the heart of it she is a survivor trying to get by.

Overall, I quite liked this book's pirate politics and interesting window into a historical character.