The Poppy War

, #1

Hardcover, 544 pages

English language

Published Sept. 9, 2018 by Harper Voyager.

ISBN:
978-0-06-266259-0
Copied ISBN!

View on OpenLibrary

4 stars (11 reviews)

A brilliantly imaginative talent makes her exciting debut with this epic historical military fantasy, inspired by the bloody history of China’s twentieth century and filled with treachery and magic, in the tradition of Ken Liu’s Grace of Kings and N.K. Jemisin’s Inheritance Trilogy.

When Rin aced the Keju—the Empire-wide test to find the most talented youth to learn at the Academies—it was a shock to everyone: to the test officials, who couldn’t believe a war orphan from Rooster Province could pass without cheating; to Rin’s guardians, who believed they’d finally be able to marry her off and further their criminal enterprise; and to Rin herself, who realized she was finally free of the servitude and despair that had made up her daily existence. That she got into Sinegard—the most elite military school in Nikan—was even more surprising.

But surprises aren’t always good.

Because being a dark-skinned peasant girl from the …

10 editions

Fantastic, both sobering and entertaining

5 stars

Really well-written, the dialogue flows (in natural modern English with swear words, not a stilted English indicating it's not English), and the epic scope of the story doesn't get in the way of sympathetic characters or diminish the horrors and cruelty of politics and war. In fact, the historical analogies are obvious (read the authors note at the end) but the end tied it all together even more than I expected.

A dark, grim tale of violence, injustice, and the horror of revenge

3 stars

Content warning Spoilery review. Dark, striking, fantasy.

Engaging military fantasy grounded in Chinese history

4 stars

I enjoyed this book very much, both for its approach to fantasy through Chinese (rather than European) culture and for its basis in real-world history. The last third of this book is filled with the graphic horrors of fascists at war, so I wouldn't recommend this for young readers. (Thinking of my niece, who loves to read.) I particularly like the end of the book, because in the end our hero commits an act of fascist evil herself, and we are forced to think about things like the nature of justice, the cost of vengeance, and the dangers of power. Looking forward to jumping into The Dragon Republic!

reviewed The Poppy War by R. F. Kuang (The Poppy War, #1)

Review of 'The Poppy War' on 'Goodreads'

3 stars

Goodness gracious, what a read. Let me start by saying that overall, I enjoyed this book. I thought it was a really strong entry into the trilogy as well as a very good story in and of itself. However what stood out to me the most was its very unique structure. Many aspects of this book were solidly YA. The characters were written very YA, the relationships were extremely YA, and the story beats (girl has to prove herself to get into school against all odds, girl has to prove herself at school against all odds, girl has to prove herself in battle against all odds, etc.) This was most prominent in the first third of the book, to the extent that I was convinced that the book had been mislabeled as 'Adult fantasy'. And it was these aspects of the book that were my least favorite. I felt that …

Review of 'The Poppy War' on 'Goodreads'

5 stars

This started out as asian and suddenly turned very western. There are a lot of concepts in this book that give tons of room for analyzing.

I think it's the first asian cultured book that tackles real swelling conflicts that made it big in the western world. The negative reviews stem in my opinion from missing knowledge about asian story telling and history.

It starts with people being baffled by Asian writing methods, which originated from a different folklore and developing into the Wuxia genre (which was dominant in the first part), it continued through the blatantly missing knowledge of the sino Japanese war and the Nanjing massacre. And basically ended with ignorance of today's diplomatic relationship between china and Japan. While at the same time using western christian eyes to decipher a story that is written with a chinese philosophy (i.e. Sunzi, interpretation of Rin's character)

This book seems …

avatar for Elphez

rated it

3 stars
avatar for Alexander@bookwyrm.social

rated it

3 stars