Hello everyone. Welcome back to Bibliophilia Book Reviews. Today I am reviewing The Poppy War by R.F. Kuang. Visit the author’s website here. The Poppy War by R.F. Kuang is the first book of the eponymous trilogy based on the second Sino-Japanese War (1937-1945). It is both a coming-of-age story and a grimdark military fantasy series. Trigger warnings for this book include self-harm, rape, genocide, drug use (the protagonist is an addict), violence and gore, torture, and death, to name a few. It is also a very popular, highly-acclaimed, and award-winning novel that debuted in 2018. This review has minor spoilers.
When I first saw reviewers on BookTube rave about The Poppy War, give it five-star reviews, and add it to their favorites book list of 2018, I thought that it would be one of those books for me as well. But unfortunately it was not. It did not make it to my favorites list at all actually, and I admit that I didn’t know how I felt about this book for the longest time after I finished reading it. Hence, the late review (six months after first picking it up in late February). I’m still not entirely sure whether I liked it or not honestly. I know I didn’t love it (though I was expecting to). But I can’t say that I didn’t like it either. It is a good book; it’s writing, superb. However, I can’t say that its writing was enough to make me like it either.
In truth, I was mad when I finished this book. The Poppy War has a very strong beginning. The protagonist, Rin, is a young and poor orphan girl living in a poor village in the poorest province of Nikan. If she stays there, Rin knows she’ll be married off and forced to work for her aunt and uncle’s opium business; if she stays, she’ll never stop being her guardians’ and her future husband’s servant. If she stays, it will kill her. So she devises a plan to escape her fate. She will study hard, take the Keju, the Empire-wide test to find the most talented youth to learn at the Academies, and get admitted into one of those Academies. Against all odds, she takes the test and goes back home knowing that her one chance of getting out of her predicament was a failure. Until the day she finds out that she aced the test and is admitted into the most prestigious military academy of the empire: Sinegard.
“The Keju keeps the lower classes sedated. It keeps us dreaming. It’s not a ladder for mobility; it’s a way to keep people like me exactly where they were born. The Keju is a drug.”
The book is divided into three parts, but each one of those parts is so different from one another that it seemed as if I were reading three different books in one. The second part, the one where Rin arrives at Sinegard and starts training, gave me some Name of the Wind vibes because both of these books use the “mad/crazy teacher” trope. I am not a fan of Name of the Wind (see my review here), but that’s as far as the comparison goes. It is also in this second part of the book where things started to go downhill for me. I knew that both Nezha and Kitay—the other two main characters of this book—were important to Rin’s story, but the character that made me utterly mad was Rin herself. I liked her in the first part of the book. In the second, I started to hate her a bit. In the third, I totally despised her. By then, she is a completely different person. And the part where all this starts to fall apart is when she meets Altan.
Oh Altan. They said this book didn’t have any romance, but man, does this girl fall hard for Altan. So much so that it changes her from a determined girl wanting to escape her fate to a completely smitten and love-struck girl that makes all the wrong choices for the stupidest reasons. My God. And I did not care for that. I did not like that the main character changed so drastically so quickly.
I did like Kitay and Nezha, even though they were completely different. You would think, by the way that he is introduced, that I would not have cared for Nezha. But surprisingly he is my favorite character of this book. He is hot-blooded and quick-tempered. He is ruled by passion, and eventually he becomes Rin’s nemesis. Kitay is the complete opposite. He is the epitome of rationale and thought. He is Rin’s guilty conscience and the one that makes her see reason, even though she hardly ever listens to that reason (remember, stupid decisions). The dynamic between these three characters however is one of the best parts of the book (and series). The relationship between Rin, Kitay, and Nezha is the backbone of this series. Hence, it is a very character-driven story. And that in itself was what I liked most of the book.
“I don’t believe in gods,” said Rin. “But I believe in power.”
However, my opinion of Rin suffered the further along I got into the book. It’s amazing how much she lets her love for Altan change her (even though the author never specifies that she is in love with him), and she becomes a much weaker and annoying version of herself. Someone who is constantly seeking Altan’s approval and making all the wrong decisions because of it. Rin was never meant to be a nice or good person. But the way she completely changes after meeting Altan—who ultimately she sees as the most powerful being around her, the only one who has the power of fire like her, and the one who personifies all she has ever wanted—and the way she follows him blindly really exasperated and annoyed me.
The last thing I want to talk about in this review is the book’s magic system. Rin’s relationship with the Phoenix and shamanism. And this was another thing I did not like about Rin. All she wants is power. She hungers for it and that didn’t make me like her any better. In fact, I liked her even less because of it. She wants it so much that she doesn’t care about anyone or anything else; she also doesn’t think about what she’ll do with it in the future; once she’s won the war. Because of course she’ll win the war. She’s got a god on her side. A powerful god, yes, but also a very volatile one at that; and a very self-centered one as well, like her. And once she wins the war, she’ll just go on to the next war. And then the next war. Etcetera. War becomes Rin’s whole life, and she readily embraces it and loves it. But she’s not very smart with the power she has or gains from it.
Suffice it to say, I did not like Rin a whole lot. However, I still recommend this series for the simple fact that in the end Rin redeems herself. For once in her life, she made the right choice, and I can’t hate her completely because of that. Overall, I gave this book a rating of I Liked It And Will Probably Read It Again.
