Book Review: "The Poppy War" by R.F. Kuang

 

4.5/5 stars 

*Spoiler alert!*

I am not sure how The Poppy War didn’t win the Goodreads Choice Awards in 2018 in the category of fantasy or debut author. The first entry in the Sino-Japanese War inspired fantasy blew me away. 

“Well, fuck the heavenly order of things. If getting married to a gross old man was her preordained role on this earth, then Rin was determined to rewrite it.”

 

Our protagonist, Rin, won me over quickly with her determination and persistence. (Notice how I say protagonist and not hero.) A dark-skinned peasant girl from the southern provinces of Nikan is slated to be married off by her criminal adopted parents and will do anything to change her fate. Her only hope of getting out of her home village is taking the prestigious national exam and testing into the tuition-free military academy of Sinegard. 

Rin studies to the point of self-harm. But she passes the exam and tests into Sinegard, where she is thrown into a brutal academy to learn how to become the Empress’s perfect soldier. Her challenges only begin there, as she is targeted for her skin color, gender, and impoverished status. Sinegard is supposed to be for the children of the upper classes, so goes an unspoken rule.

“Children ceased to be children when you put a sword in their hands. When you taught them to fight a war, then you armed them and put them on the front lines, they were not children anymore. They were soldiers.” 

Poppy War breezes through Rin’s schooling, which at first, I thought was a mistake, but as the story went on, I thought that narrative choice was for the best. The meat of the story takes place when a new conflict breaks out between Nikan (China) and the feared and hated Federation of Mugen (Japan) and Rin and her classmates are thrown into war before graduation.

 

“You humans always think you're destined for greatness. Destiny is a myth. Destiny is the only myth. The gods choose nothing. You chose. You chose to take the exam. You chose to come to Sinegard. You chose to pledge Lore, you chose to study the paths of the gods, and you chose to follow your commander's demands over your master's warnings. At every critical juncture you were given an option; you were given a way out. Yet you picked precisely the roads that led you here. You are at this temple, kneeling before me, only because you wanted to be.”

 

At Sinegard, she was apprenticed under a Lore master, who noticed her aptitude for the lost art of shamanism, a sort of spiritual connection with the gods that enables humans to wield godly power temporarily. Thrown into a regiment of shamans, the Cike, Rin struggles to conjure the fire she accidentally does at the beginning of the war, in the heat of battle for Sinegard.

 

“War doesn't determine who's right. War determines who remains.”

 

When Rin discovers anger and hate are the key to her powers, she faces a fateful choice to give herself completely over to her chosen god in exchange for the power to end the war against Mugen. And choose she does. In the process, she becomes a monster.  

“I have become something wonderful, she thought. I have become something terrible. Was she now a goddess or a monster? Perhaps neither. Perhaps both.”

 

Rin is a very complex character who struggles with trauma, grief, anger, rage, and what it means to fight a war. I am not sure if she’ll be given a redemption arc in the next few books—she basically went the path of Eren Jaeger from the anime Attack on Titan—but I am hooked on the story and need to know what happens next. So yes, I’ll be reading the other two books in the trilogy. 

Happy reading! 

--BookOwl