The Poppy War by R. F. Kuang
Book 1 of the trilogy. This was a weird reading experience. The beginning of the novel, on the surface, sounds like something I would not like: teen protagonist goes to military school, has to deal with school bullying, ends up having magic powers and learning under a mysterious older master. Despite usually not liking teenage protagonists, Rin was engaging very early, and I was super on board with her journey to escape from the role she was being forced into as a lower class, female orphan. And then found her military school experience very interesting, and was appreciating how many of her issues - with classism, racism, etc - were not things she could actually escape, they just changed form.
If the entire book was written in keeping with part 1, I’d easily put this book on my highly recommended list. But then part 2 happened. Somehow, while the actual action was ramping up, the book felt like it lost steam. In theory, I don’t mind a tonal shift, and think one was appropriate in this instance. However, it needs to be executed carefully. After spending about 35-40% of the book effectively world building, and laying a foundation for the book in a well-paced way, the plot through part 2 felt incredibly rushed.
Further, I have a decent enough working knowledge of the history of the second Sino-Japanese war to recognize a lot of the inspiration for the plot. While I don’t mind drawing from real history for a fantasy novel, I wish part 2 had lingered more and integrated that history into the fantasy world more completely. Instead, it felt a bit like a copied list of historical events with the names changed. The list like quality left me never quite emotionally connecting with the events or the characters as they experienced them. Without that connection, by the end of part 2, very few of the character’s motivations made much sense. They seemed they were just whatever was needed to advance the plot.
On positive notes, even when I started to disconnect from the plot, the writing style (sentence structure, word choice, etc) was very well done and made for swift reading without getting fatigued, so there was never a moment where I wanted to DNF. And main character, Rin, started out very well - overcoming my teenage protagonist bias.
Overall, I think this book had an interesting foundational idea with a lot of potential, but tried to fit too much into one book and in doing so sacrificed having truly impactful emotional experience of the plot, and connection to the characters. Still undecided if I’ll try the second book in the trilogy, but leaning towards no. I do have another book by the same author - not of this series and written later - that I am going to try eventually. I liked the prose enough to give the author another shot.
“Destiny is a myth. Destiny is the only myth. The gods choose nothing. You chose.”
