The Poppy War (The Poppy War #1)

By R.F. Kuang

Publication Year: 2018

Type: Fiction

Genre: fantasy, adventure

Read on 2019-04-02

View additional specs on this book in Muhan’s 2019 Reading Survey ➞

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★★★☆☆

The first third of this book where Rin studies for the imperial exam and goes to the military academy was AWESOME. I’m such a Chinese history nerd so I love love loved all the historical references to the Opium War and imperial exams. And I know it’s problematic and unhealthy but I also really enjoyed reading about Rin’s brutal study habits. Idk it just brought me back to high school. The military academy was also a really fun setting and world. Kind of like any other YA high school but with martial arts and really specific nuanced references to Chinese military history. The slow build-up to the fantasy elements was also well-handled here. So up to this point I was ready to give this a 4 or 5 star because it was so satisfying and precisely what I studied in university.

But then they leave the military academy to go to war and it kind of starts to fall apart. In short, this book is kind of like an entire YA fantasy/dystopian trilogy compressed into one book, where book 1 is super fun with great world building and character dynamics, book 2 kind of switches gears into a different setting but it’s kind of new and fun so you’re still with it, and then by book 3 the author has given up on good writing and the world and logic starts to fall apart. This is like that, but one book. So like, a LOT fucking happens and it’s kind of insane R.F. Kuang didn’t like save any of it for the rest of this series. Like I don’t really know what other stunts she can pull no, apart from cheap romances. Like I’m pretty sure the last two thirds of the book spans like 4-5 years (not that the characters changes or anything during that time), and she also kind of ruins any semblance of logic/limits to the magic/fantasy things she introduced so well earlier. So like...what now.

I looked Kuang up at some point in the beginning and found out that she’s my fucking age and got this published in her last year of college or something which is just really rude. But good for her I’m happy for you or whatever.

I also found out incidentally that later parts of the book are based on the Nanking Massacre. This is where I have real problems with this book. I already knew that Kuang is really into hyperbolic plot points like a character staying up and never sleeping to study with no real consequences other than to show that they’re rly committed. But honestly she takes it to the point of torture porn in the massacre parts. Reading about the wartime atrocities in this world felt 1) like someone sat down and just had a grand old time dreaming up the most horrific, viscerally terrible, inhumane gross violent shocking cruelties possible and 2) like Kuang was referencing real-world wartime atrocities without any moral responsibility or sensitivity to that history. My family is from Nanjing and it’s where I was born, so I grew up with the history she is directly referencing, but this kind of shit happens to many groups of people throughout history and CONTINUES to happen around the world TODAY. What’s the point of drawing it out in a cheap YA fantasy for shock value? Where is the in-world, diegetic exploration of this kind of deep, societal trauma? And if that’s beyond the scope of YA fantasy series, maybe just don’t go there? It just felt a touch too irreverent and irresponsible for me to give it a pass for generally good writing and world building.

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