technicat@bookwyrm.social reviewed The Burning God by R. F. Kuang (The Poppy War, #3)
good wrap-up and I'm glad I'm done with that
4 stars
I wasn't quite as engaged with this final volume of the trilogy, but I think it's a successful wrap-up, as much as you could expect with a story that reads like The Hunger Games (with fifty percent more love interests, although only two alive at any one time), and has obvious parallels to Chinese history and colonialism (the story was inspired by Mao's life which had me worried but it either doesn't go too far that way or does so very cleverly), and lots of violence (makes The Hunger Games look like a Disney flick). There is a nice short story at the end which is more of an epilogue that fills in the blanks and reframes the last fifteen hundred pages you just read and finished with what the hell just happened. Honestly, it didn't end the way I expected, but I don't know what I expected.