The Poppy War

I have no doubt this will end up being the best fantasy debut of the year 2018.

No no, scratch that understatement. Ladies and gentlemen, let me present to you a review for The Poppy War, a book that will go down as one of the best grimdark/military fantasy debuts of all time.

Once in a while, there comes a book that you just know will be a fantastic book just from the premise or the cover; this was one of those books for me. I’ve been eyeing this book ever since I stumbled upon the gorgeous attention-grabbing cover by Jung Shan. (Seriously, check out her artworks. They’re incredible.) Reading that the book is highly inspired by Second Sino-Japanese War also the Rape of Nanking—please look this up if you don't know about it so you’ll have an idea of how dark the book will get—sparked my interest even more. However, although I had a good feeling about this debut, I certainly didn’t expect it to be THIS incredible. In fact, I’ll go so far as to say that this is literally THE best grimdark/military fantasy debut I've ever read; even better than The Blade Itself by Joe Abercrombie or Beyond Redemption by Michael R. Fletcher, and this author only turns 21 years old this year! How awesomely talented is she!?

Before I begin my long review, I will clarify that I’m an Asian and my review for this book will be affected by my experience growing up as one. Then, I need you to consider these two questions:

1. Do you enjoy or are you okay with reading books with a lot of violence? Because this book contains plenty of vividly brutal scenes. The author doesn’t pull any punches and the violence was handled splendidly, not only for the purpose of showing the horror and tragedy of war but also to let these scenes become a huge part of characters’ developments.

2. If the answer to question one is an absolute yes, I’ll ask you this: "are you ready for this book to go into your favorites of all time shelf?" because there’s an incredibly high chance that it WILL happen.

The Poppy War is a debut by R.F. Kuang and it's a coming-of-age grimdark military fantasy. It's a book about empires, drugs, shamanism, and gods, and it's highly inspired by Second Sino-Japanese War, which is one of the darkest and bloodiest periods in Chinese history. I grew up learning about this war and it gave me great satisfaction to read an epic fantasy book inspired by it; one that was written exceptionally well, too. Considering the root of inspiration for the book, it's obvious that there will be a lot of allusions to China and Japan (I’ll get into them more later) and that this will be a violent book. This is not a YA book; there are a lot of scenes that are definitely only appropriate for adults to read and there are tons of content warnings (I’ll list them at the end of my review) in part III. This is also not a happy-go-lucky story to read. Also, this is literally the first time I’ve read a fantasy book written by a female author that doesn’t feature ANY romance in it. (Thank God!)

“If there is a divine creator, some ultimate moral authority, then why do bad things happen to good people? And why would this deity create people at all, since people are such imperfect beings?”

As a Chinese myself, I have my own reasons for believing that The Poppy War is an Asian inspired coming-of-age grimdark military fantasy done absolutely right with finesse. Part I (roughly 40%) of the book may lead you to think this will be strictly an epic/high fantasy with a complete focus on learning, but this isn’t really true. Yes, the story does start with our main character, Fang Runin (Rin), learning tons of skills and forming friendships in a military academy called Sinegard. However, the storyline immediately took a different approach and became a complete grimdark/military fantasy in Part II and III. This won’t be a situation like Kvothe from The Kingkiller Chronicle where after two installments he’s still in the University (I love this series so much though). Story structure wise, this book actually reminds me a lot of Blood Song (another of my favorite debuts of all time), where the first half revolves around the character in a battle school and the second half revolves more around war and battles. This book alone feels like a trilogy in itself due to the sheer amount of monumental events that take place. Kuang did what a lot of authors try to do in the scope of a trilogy within the span of ONE book. Kuang’s prose was easy to read, simple, and most importantly, VERY engaging. Her writing never gets in the way of her story and it was truly compelling to read.

I need to give another reminder that part III in particular was filled with brutal scenes. These scenes are written exceptionally well; the author clearly shows the horrors of war and please do remember, like I said before, these scenes aren’t just there for the sake of making the book darker. The scenes are all there for the purpose of the story, characters development, and world building. In fact, this book just wouldn’t hold the same powerful impact without these scenes. The pacing was also brilliant. There wasn’t any chapter that bored me, none whatsoever. This is truly a story with a fine balance of heart, emotion, brutality, and action scenes that were only possible because of how magnificently written the author wrote all the characters, action sequences, and world-building.

“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.”

Rin has seriously become one of the best female heroines I’ve ever had the chance to encounter. She’s a highly well-developed character, multi-faceted and simply kickass. Her rise from a mere peasant, oppressed and hated by everyone because of the color of her dark skin and her low status, to becoming what she has to be as the story progressed. This was one of the most well-written developments of a heroine or any character I’ve ever read. She makes brutally tough choices, she rises to any challenge that comes her way, and she never gives up. She’s fierce, she’s badass, and she demonstrates that being a strong woman character doesn’t only mean being physically powerful but mentally powerful, as well. Even though we see the story unfolds solely from Rin’s perspective in third person narration, the author does a fantastic job in making sure we’re really inside Rin’s head at all times. At one point, I actually forgot that I was reading the book in third person point of view as Rin’s character and personality were so well explored that I felt like her story was being told in first person POV. Besides that, all the other supporting characters' personalities were so well fleshed out because Part I was used VERY effectively to establish the characters’ introductions and world-building, making rooms for developments in the second half despite the story being in the middle of all the chaos. There’s always something new to discover on every page, and no words are wasted.

No military fantasy will ever reach greatness without intricate war tactics or extraordinary action scenes, and this book simply scored wonderfully on both counts. Every action sequence, whether it’s the martial arts battle or the magic system, was vividly written. The scale and scope of the action relentlessly escalate with each page turned. The magic users in this book are called Shaman—those who commune with the Gods to use their power—and Kuang did a terrific job researching Shamanism. Coincidentally, during my time reading this book, I received an email from one of my favorite artists, Noah Bradley, on his new art piece for Magic: the Gathering and somehow, it completely fits some of the action scenes in this book.

Lastly, I want to talk about the world-building. The history in the world of this book is filled with constant warfare, and this is also where the Asian influences really prevailed. There are TONS of Chinese and Asian influences in this book; I’m going to mention only a few of them here so you can experience the rest on your own:

-The provinces in this book are named after the twelve Chinese Zodiacs.
-The four cardinal mythological Gods are named exactly after the same Four Symbols of Chinese constellations creatures: the White Tiger of the West (Byakko), the Black Tortoise of the North (Genbu), the Azure Dragon of the East (Seiryu), and the Vermilion Bird of the South (Suzaku).
-The creator of the military tactics book named Principles of War in the story is called Sunzi, obviously named after the famous Sun Tzu and his Art of War.
-I’m a Buddhist (I think this is the first time I mention my religion in a review) and I’m pretty sure that Kuang used the name Bodhidharma intentionally to harken to Buddhism. In Buddhism, Bodhi means enlightenment and dharma means cosmic law. Considering the nature of Shamanism in this book, this naming and its meaning is very appropriate.
-Ki derives from Qi/Chi which means life force.
-Federation of Mugen, the name of the group of antagonists in this book, in Japanese means Infinite/Fantasy/Dream and they resembled the Japanese code of war where they are simply tools for the Emperor to use.
-Just one look at the map and you’ll also know that the world is based on China and Japan.
-Then there’s also talk of the legend of Monkey King from Journey to the West.

Believe me, I’m holding myself back here; I’m pretty sure I found almost all the Asian influences in this book and I could talk about them in detail but I want you to experience them for yourself too. I spent four hours writing this review and it has been long enough already. In fact, this is actually my second longest review of all time. I really wish I could talk about how amazing this book is but I have to make sure my review is spoiler-free enough for readers to experience this debut with maximum results. You simply have to read and experience this greatness for yourself.

The Poppy War is an astounding debut and one of the greatest starts to a series I’ve ever read. It’s a shining treasure of fantasy, literature, history, and culture. R.F. Kuang is truly a new author to watch. If this doesn’t become a one-hit wonder and she continues writing as her career, I have absolutely no doubt that her name will be up there with the likes of Robin Hobb and N.K. Jemisin, and maybe even better. I’m already waiting for the second book eagerly. I don’t even know how Kuang will top this debut; it’s a magnificently written debut that will stay in the heart of readers. By this point in my reviewing career, it shouldn’t come as a surprise to my followers that I’m quite stingy with giving a full five-star rating, but this book simply deserves a full five stars. The Poppy War is a book truly worth every second of your time. It’s a profound blending of history into military fantasy. It’s a relentlessly tension-packed book. Rin will capture your heart, embrace it. The Poppy will make you high, accept it. The War will break you, face it. The Poppy War will most likely be included in your favorite books of all-time list, get it. Come May, buy and read this superlative page turner immediately. This is the beginning for a new queen of fantasy and you should consider yourself damn lucky to have the chance to witness it.

The quotes in this review were taken from an ARC and are subject to change upon publication.

I received a copy of this book in exchange of an honest review via NetGalley.

The poppy war was a brilliantly complex and thought provoking debut novel, one that was nothing like I expected based on the synopsis. It blew my mind and took me 2 days to gather my thoughts for a review. I still don’t know if I succeeded in delivering my opinion about it accurately.

The book has a strong writing style and there is nothing simple about it. Just by looking at the some of the words used in it you know that there went a lot of planning and thoughts into it. It is beautiful and so easy to read, to get into it despite the heavier topic.
As for the world building, I enjoyed it immensely. It is intricate, vivid and put together but not too complicating. The story is basically set in a historical Asian country, period but some of the technology and elements has a distinctly modern feel to it. However, the most amazing thing about the book is the incredibly evolution and the depth of the storyline. Honestly, the book is long but it was the first time that I actually felt like I was reading a different book by the end of it. There is so many things happening in it and the direction of the plot changes completely, that by the end the atmosphere is different. I loved how the story progressed, how it started out as a pretty harsh but still mild tale and slowly but unexpectedly it unfurled into a shocking, brutal, dark and bloody adventure. OMG, it was just phenomenal.
The storyline consist of different elements, the war and action, the main character’s development but apart from this there is the deeper, more meaningful part to it as well. The majority of the book discusses a lot of somewhat current and timeless, theological, moral, philosophical and such questions, different sides and possible answers to them. Personally I’m not a big spiritual person so some of these discussions were a bit mumbo-jumbo for me but most of it I enjoyed. It just gave an extra edge, a different perspective to a book generally focusing on fighting and war.
The story doesn’t have an overly fast pace, I would call it more like a intense simmering burn still there is not one boring or dull moment to it. It has a great balanced dynamic to it.

The main character Rin, is the proverbial conflicting protagonist. Sometimes I loved her, sometimes she annoyed me but I had a strong connection to her all the way along. She falls more into the grey area, than black or white. My first impression about her was that she is ballsy and cunning, persistent and hard worker. However, along the way she has a tendency to get a bit too greedy, impatient and power hungry. This side of hers wasn’t my favorite because while she was really smart for some reason her anger and need for recognition prevented her to make the right decisions. And she needed to make some hard choices but her character represented the whole “What’s wrong and right is only a matter of perspective” theory. I liked her but it was hard to love her some times. It was a bit strange but at the same time really refreshing to read about a main character who didn’t fall into the heroic, always making the noble choices and saves everybody kind of stereotype.
There are a lot of interesting and well developed side characters in the book, but I think most of their purpose is to stage the motivating questions or competition for Rin. I saw a lot of possibilities in some of them and I absolutely loved the misfit band of the Cike and their complete devotion to each other.

While with some minor changes the book could have been a standalone as well, I’m happy and elated that it’s actually a trilogy and can’t wait to proceed to the next book. The poppy war ended on a devastating but promising point. I think I’m going to finish it here because I don’t want to accidentally spoil anything. I loved this book but it’s definitely not for the weak and light hearted, it’s full of graphic details of aggression, torture, rape, substance abuse and self harm but if you don’t get queasy about these things then I definitely recommend to give it a try.
My biggest disappointment was that the e-copy I got had some problems with the maps and such in the beginning, meaning it was messed up, patchy or altogether missing and I think I lost out on some additional excitement because of this.

THE POPPY WAR is A:TLA/Korra crossed with the Second Sino-Japanese War, and an epic at its most compulsively readable, and I need the next books so badly.

Wherever Rin is, whatever her story is at the time, I'm immersed. It's a coming-of-age, until it's no longer that. It's a school story, until suddenly it's not. Then it's a war story. A revenge story. A story of gods and all humanity. The yet-unwritten story of Rin. It weaves and morphs and it achieves it all with such seeming ease. The pacing is amazing - three parts, over a time period of 2-3 years. It's a long story with long chapters, but I was never bored; just constantly as hungry as Rin to know more, more, more - about the truth, about the history, about the mythology, about the future to come. The world-building is just so interesting that even as I read through paragraphs of histories and explanations, they fly by.

(There's some obvious real-life analogues that help that along; if there were blanks, I filled them in myself. If you're familiar with the Second Sino-Japanese War, that's exactly how dark and violent TPW gets. I do wonder how different readers will process certain events, as there were things I saw coming because I knew what happened in our own history, so I didn't experience the same kind of first-time horror.)

I fell in love the entire cast of characters, which is the worst thing I could have done, because it's unflinchingly about war, all that leads up to it, and all that comes of it. Characters die. Characters do monstrous things. They do things to survive, to save people, to avenge. Horrific choices are not forgiven in war, but they're a product of war, and TPW never lets you forget that. Many stories focus primarily on a character's individual background affecting their choices, but TPW generously layers in the background of their people, of the wars before them, of the fighting, exploitation, propaganda and sacrifices that shaped the world the characters were born in. I feel both the character's responsibility for their actions, and the millennia of history that's brought them to this point and time, a history that makes the events seem inevitable. I love how the story contrasts perfect moral choices in philosophical bubbles versus real choices in an imperfect world, where all options may be bloody - if not now, then later on.

And we get such an array of characters. Each of them carves a different path, is molded differently by war, and have different moral compasses. I don't cheer for Rin or the others in the traditional sense, not when their "successes" often come with a hefty price tag; I just want them to find peace and some semblance of happiness together. There's an amazing amount of camaraderie. It's a lot of fun while Rin's at school, and it's a beacon of hope in wartime. There are funny, ridiculous moments. Characters whose presence can make me grin. It's hard to feel hopeful in this kind of story, but there are so many satisfying moments where characters act together or come to understand each other, that I really do feel hopeful at times. And there's no romantic storyline, but that doesn't mean there's nothing to ship, cough.

And lastly, THE GODS AND DRUGS. This is actually the part that sold me initially, because I saw the author's blogpost about her query for this story - drop acid, summon gods! Even more intriguing in the actual story. They add a whole new layer to everything else. I can see it already - the gods will be a matter of debate throughout the whole series. They're the enigma. We get conflicting and vague accounts of them, tricksters and liars and betrayers, and stories masquerading as truth. It just all worked so well together thematically with everything else (there's addiction to the drugs, but also to power and vengeance, yay!). The gods are the part of the story that's very A:TLA, in a good way, because I always wanted more of that lore explored.

(One more lastly: the cultural details! I haven't experienced Chinese fantasy like this before! Part of that is on me, I just don't seek them out because they seem foreign even to me sometimes. But TPW felt especially familiar to me, partly because Rin is the kind of heroine I love reading about, and partly because she's from the Rooster Province a.k.a. fantasy Guangdong, a fantasy version of the place my own family came from. They were countryside peasants! My parents had to test into college! I understood the Shanghainese accent thing! And there's also the unfortunate real colorism, nationalism, conformism, and bureaucratic nonsense, too.)

TPW is the epic fantasy I never knew I was waiting for. I'm in love, addicted, and distraught. And it's by a debut author! I can't wait for all the books from her, in this series and any more to come.

The Poppy War by R F Kuang is the author's debut novel and, I have just learned, the first in a trilogy. It's a fantasy book set in an Asian-inspired part of its world (compared with the multitude of fantasy books set in European-inspired parts of their worlds), and follows a teenage girl as she goes from being a poor rural shop girl to playing a prominent role in the titular war.

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 south is not an easy thing at Sinegard. Targeted from the outset by rival classmates for her color, poverty, and gender, Rin discovers she possesses a lethal, unearthly power—an aptitude for the nearly-mythical art of shamanism. Exploring the depths of her gift with the help of a seemingly insane teacher and psychoactive substances, Rin learns that gods long thought dead are very much alive—and that mastering control over those powers could mean more than just surviving school.

For while the Nikara Empire is at peace, the Federation of Mugen still lurks across a narrow sea. The militarily advanced Federation occupied Nikan for decades after the First Poppy War, and only barely lost the continent in the Second. And while most of the people are complacent to go about their lives, a few are aware that a Third Poppy War is just a spark away . . .

Rin’s shamanic powers may be the only way to save her people. But as she finds out more about the god that has chosen her, the vengeful Phoenix, she fears that winning the war may cost her humanity . . . and that it may already be too late.

This book is many things, and long enough to fit them all in. It starts out with Rin, our main character, working hard to escape a crappy life of being married off to some old guy by her foster parents. Once her hard work pays off, the book takes on the feel of a boarding school story while she trains at the prestigious military academy and butts heads with other students — and, of course, stands out for being the poor girl from a southern province. The school part of the book was probably my favourite. It sets up a lot of relationships for Rin, builds up the world and some of its history, and introduces the shamanic aspects that become so central to Rin’s story. This section and what preceded it made me love this book.

Rin’s time at school culminates in the outbreak of war. For all that it happens around the halfway mark, I don’t think talking a bit about it is a spoiler, given the book’s title. The war heralds another change of fortune for Rin and the story shifts from boarding school yarn to a) being about a ragtag band of misfits and b) a brutal war. (And who doesn’t live ragtag bands of misfits?) The brutality of the war sort of snuck up on me, although perhaps it shouldn’t have since the signs were there. I don’t want to get spoiler-specific, but I do want to give a massive trigger/content warning for pretty much all the wartime atrocities you can think of, many of which are described in horrifying detail. I was not fully prepared, and it took me some time to process enough to keep reading and to write this review when I was done.

The thing is, because this book ends in war — especially war that isn’t fully resolved because there’s a sequel to come — it’s easy to focus on that aspect and overlook the earlier and more general aspects of the book. For example the world building was excellent. It’s clear that the main setting is based on China and the nation they are at war with is based on Japan. However, there isn’t an obvious/specific real-world analogue for everything, the geography is quite different to that of China (looking at the map, there is, for example a west coast) and of course magic plays a significant role in the story. It felt a lot less artificially “and here is what not-Japan did next” than other books I have read (The Tiger’s Daughter immediately springs to mind). Instead, for a lot of the book, it felt like the Asian version of non-specific European fantasy books, which I really appreciated. That said, I do have to note that some events towards the end of the book clearly were inspired by real-world events, which kind of undermines my point, but whatever.

The important things to take away from this review are that this is a really good book and that it contains a brutal account of war. It grapples with class divides (until these suddenly matter much less), drug use (which is also entwined with the magic system), and vengeance. Rin's conversations and internal monologue are interspersed with dry/dark humour, which I enjoyed and which made me snort out loud several times. I highly recommend this book to all fans of fantasy, especially those that enjoy the elements I mentioned above (poor girl does great things, military boarding school, asian setting, horrifying war, etc). Although it's the first in a trilogy (according to the author — it's really not made clear elsewhere), it does wrap up a lot of the story at the end. There are a few loose ends and a strong sense of "well, here's what we need to do next" but it doesn't feel unfinished. No need to fear cliff hangers or put off reading until the rest of the series is out. Personally, I'm glad of the gap so I can finish processing before moving on to the next in the series, which I will definitely be reading.

5 / 5 stars

First published: May 2018, Harper Voyager
Series: Apparently the first book of a trilogy, no series name as yet
Format read: eARC
Source: HarperVoyager UK on NetGalley

Everything about this book was fantastic. The descriptions were amazing, the characters were believable and I was on the edge of my seat for the whole thing. (My full review is in the podcast link!)

Content warning: Rape, Violence, Drugs

According to the author, this book ‘draws heavily on the Second Sino-Japanese war which- if you know anything about Asia – was one of the darkest and bloodiest moments in Chinese history’. I do not know anything about Asian history, my own history lessons being woefully euro-centric, so I cannot comment on historical accuracy, but this is a rich setting, clearly laid out in the book. It’s the kind of book where the world builds as the story progresses, rather than having a lot of explanation and exposition at the beginning of the book. I liked this development as this is such a detailed setting that to have been presented it all in one go would have been far too overwhelming.

The story opens with the most difficult and stressful exam I have ever heard of (and I made it through finals at Oxford – I’m kidding…kind of). I thought this was a good way of grounding the reader in something familiar, most people, I would imagine, can relate to being stressed about a test or evaluation in life. Since so much of the rest of Rin’s experience isn’t exactly typical for most readers (particularly not the part that involves wielding magic), this was a clever way to ease the reader into this story.

This read to me as a story of two halves. There is the first half, where Rin is at the prodigious school Sinegard. This isn’t a Harry Potter style magic school novel, nor is the education portion of this story skimmed over. Personally, I felt like this half of the story was the strongest, but I have a feeling that is just my personal preference for this kind of story as opposed to the politics and violence of the second half.

What is the second half? Largely a war/battle narrative alongside Rin’s continued character development. While this is less to my personal taste than a fantasy academy, this was the part of the book where one encounters the best side characters – which I will come to in a moment. There is a huge amount of violence in this book. One violent episode is described by one of the characters and I had to read it in segments because I started to feel hugely uncomfortable. If you are triggered by reading very violent and gory text I would suggest either not reading this or having a friend bookmark those pages for you to avoid.

 What I will say is that the violence and battle scenes in this book never feel like they are brutal for the sake of being brutal. Compare this book, for example, to Godblind by Anna Stephens in which the descriptions were so graphic I felt seriously ill at moments – and it didn’t serve the plot. You could argue that this book doesn’t need the graphic descriptions in the same way, however, for one thing, R. F. Kuang is referencing a historical event (the Rape of Nanjing) and also it is part of Rin’s motivation and it helps to enhance the readers understanding of the nature of these two enemies.

Speaking of Rin, it would be foolish of me not to discuss her characterisation in this book. Initially, I thought Rin would be a typical young female, rags to riches protagonist. She grows up in a household that takes advantage of her, pulls herself through this difficult test, goes to the fancy academy and discovers she has powers that not everyone has. On paper that is a very cliché YA novel (I’d still read it if I’m honest). However, as I read this book I realised that Rin had been given so much more characterisation than that. This isn’t a rags to riches story. This is a story about hard work and about finding acceptance through that work. The fact that Rin is a ‘peasant’ at a school for the wealthiest in the land isn’t downplayed, but it is quickly superseded by more important plot points.

I was also worried that there was going to be something of an insta-love storyline that emerged. However, once I got to around 60% through the book it became obvious that this wasn’t the story being told. This is the first book I’ve read in a while that romance didn’t feature romance, it may be that will be a plot point in the later books in this series, but for those looking for a book devoid of lingering glances, I think you will be pleased.

I said I would mention side characters, that time is now. The cast of characters in this novel is rich and varied. From the hilariously contemptuous teach Jiang to the soldiers with whom Rin fights and becomes friends. These characters are fleshed out and so interesting, I would gladly read a spin-off novel for each of them!

If you’re looking for a dark, gritty fantasy novel which involves characters who swear, get periods and all the other real-world things that bring a fantasy novel into the realms of reality then I would look no further than The Poppy War. It’s a great example of this genre and I look forward to reading the later books in the series.

My rating: 4/5 stars

I received a digital advanced review copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.

this book had my emotions going haywire in so many ways, but do you know what, i actually think this is my favourite books of 2018.
this is a fantasy book loosely based on 11th centuary china and japan. there are some pretty dark moments in this book that give the reader a real sense of just how brutal those wars were. there is masses of substance abuse too, which can be hard reading for some people.
rin is a character that from the start you fall in love with and you want her to do well. some people have said the story is too long, but i feel the length was perfect, there was no rushed parts, a picture was painted in your minds eye about everything, all the characters involved were in plenty of detail. all in all i feel this book was a brilliant story, captivating and humbling at the same time and i thoroughly enjoyed it.

We’re not going to lie, the first thing we did when opened up our digital copy of The Poppy War was complain that it was a PDF and that it had so many bloody pages. The second thing we did was get absolutely hooked and sit on the edge of a chair for two hours until our stomach started rumbling and we realised we were halfway through the book.

A lot happened in The Poppy War, like A LOT. Questionable decisions, country invasions, people dying of enemy inflicted lacerations. This book doesn’t thread lightly, it hits you in the face like tonne of bricks and makes you love it all the while. It’s a novel filled with pain and magic and what bookworm doesn’t love those two things in inordinately high amounts?

Our main character’s name is Rin and she’s a smart character who’s not so smart at times. The starting point of R. F. Kuang’s debut has her in a little village where she gets little love and where if she doesn’t find a way out, she’ll be married off to a man twice her age because her guardians want that and she’s just a peasant girl so really, why is she complaining when it’s obvious that she’s not going to be offered anything better in life…

But Rin has goals. She’s going to pass the Keju and she’s going to get in to Sinegard. What the rest of the book does is examine the consequences of choices made by a young girl. It does so on a personal level with the people Rin finds in Sinegard and a much larger empiric scale.

It’s fascinating.

The Poppy War has so many characters and a lot of them exist firmly in the grey area when it comes to morals and some when it simply comes down to are they friend or are the foe and it’s easy to muse over the motives of characters in this book. Kuang has you questioning everything because she builds a world that rests on fragile foundations. You know it’s going to go boom and you’re wondering who will lie where when the dust clears. Will they be on the side of good? The side of evil? Or will they show that there is no good and evil, there just is.

Speaking of world building, we looove the details of this one. The politics, the cultures, the myriad of gods, the history and how it plays with a fantasy school with a difference.

The Poppy War has some of the tropes of every other fantasy school. There’s a multitude of isms (see classism and sexism) to prop up the I’m so much better than you trope and therefore you are my enemy, let me get you expelled or killed thanks so very much aspect. There are classes, eccentric teachers and houses of a sort, but what this book does differently is have a lot more than a year pass and have the school feature in around 55% of the book. We liked it because it broke a stereotype before it could really take hold.

To finish up this review, we’d like to say you that this book is one of the most anticipated novels of the year for a reason and if you don’t read it, there’s a vengeful Phoenix god who’s going to burn you up when you don’t.


***


So, were thinking the other day, how do we get to rave liking demonic fangirls about books we love without spoiling the entire thing for would be readers AND THE ANSWER WAS SIMPLE.

WE'LL JUST DO TWO REVIEWS.

So, hello and welcome to the spoiler review of The Poppy War by R. F. Kuang where smart girls give zero fucks and obstacles better get out of their way before they get moved.

Aren't you excited!?

You are. We can tell.

The Poppy War is a book about a girl called Rin who, in order to get out of a future marriage development practiced dubious studying methods and got into the most prestigious school in the Empire. Yo, Sinegard, what's up?

Rin's answer cookie. It's evident from the beginning of the novel, but she's also, sometimes, a dim cookie and she made the kind of decisions on occasion that had us ready to throw her off a cliff. A major example of one of her bad decisions being somewhere around halfway through the book where she called down a god after being warned not to and then suffered the consequences.

Consequences being dead people and dead people and even more dead people...

*sigh*

God, we love fantasy.

The Poppy War is basically two books fit into one and it benefits so much from the sheer amount of world building and action that happened because of it. It would have been a major mistake to split it in two. There's just no moment where you feel something end sufficiently to cut the story up.

It's obvious that the author and editors and everyone else were doing their jobs.

What wasn't obvious, however was ALL THE BLOODY DECEPTIONS.

Su Daji isn't a good woman. She's a bad one. Jiang isn't just an adorable eccentric teacher who gives us heart eyes. He's a man who comes from legend and wooh! He should put that on his dating profile. Legendary lover. Hollah

In the vein of the deceptions there are characters who our opinion has done a one eighty on.

Nezha, who started out a classist little bitch is the boy who we ship Rin hard with. Now, he may or may not be dead and Rin may or may not be a newly minted genocidal teenager by the end of the book, but the chemistry between them is lit. We could practically feel sparks flying off our phone screen.

Our opinion of Altan also changed drastically. He started off so cool. We were like, yes, this is the guy who Rin should be friends with, but then he became an asshole and we really didn't like him. We thought, go play in traffic Altan. Get hit by a truck Altan. Altan? Altan!? Why are you still alive?

Rhetorical question.

He's not.

*cue evil laughter*

On a side note, Altan and his lieutenant totally had a thing going on behind the scenes and we'd like it to be confirmed in canon, thanks €€

Despite all the wonderfully dark thing that happen in The Poppy War, there are dark things that aren’t remotely wonderful and honestly, they made our insides twist, but they worked for the story. War isn’t grand and epic, it’s gritty and awful and Kuang does a good job of reminding us of that.

In conclusion, this has been the easiest review we've ever written and we'll be doing more spoiler reviews like this in the future. Focusing back on this book, however, you need to read it because it's great and because we're going to throw it at your head until you give in and dive in and die with happiness as you reach the end. Okay? Okay.

I requested a copy of this book off NetGalley because the cover was beautiful and the premise intriguing. The Poppy War is a story based on Chinese culture and draws inspiration from the Sino-Japanese war, and also deals with opium and drug use/abuse. This is the story of an orphan girl, the last survivors of a murdered race, of war and its horrors.

In short, The Poppy War is very well written. I can see it becoming very popular and doing quite well after release. It’s also dark, bloody, and not my type of book.

The Poppy War is broken up into 3 distinct parts. Part 1, my favourite part, mostly takes places in the military academy of Sinegard, the top school in the country. Rin, the main character, was unfairly challenged by social and racial prejudices. There’s some fantastic character development here, and I really loved this part of the book. It felt like a coming-of-age, magical school type of book. Then I hit part 2.

Parts 2 and 3 were much darker than the first part, and I did not enjoy them nearly as much. Not because they were poorly done or the story boring, but because it became much too dark for my tastes. This is where Kuang takes the characters from their secluded military academy and throws them headfirst into a war against people with no qualms about genocide.

The characters and the world at this point still interested me, and Kuang did a fantastic job of developing the characters as they went through the horrors of war. However, the descriptions here are incredibly graphic, and my enjoyment of the book began to wane.

The Poppy War has fantastic potential. It’s well written, has interesting characters, a unique world, and a well thought out plot. It also includes self-harm, drug use/abuse, genocide, sexual abuse/assault, racism, human experimentation, violence, murder, and is very graphically dark.

Content Warnings for abuse, rape, body horror, self-harm, drug use, graphic violence and depictions of death, and genocide.

I received an e-arc of the Poppy War from HarperFiction UK in exchange for an honest review. Thank you to them, and to the author, for providing me with this beautiful tale of relentless misery.

The Poppy War follows Fang Runin, or Rin, a war orphan from a remote southern province of the Nikara empire. Growing up in an abusive foster environment, with no prospects except a forced marriage to a man much older than her, Rin instead pins her hopes on the Keju, an examination which, if she passes, could propel her into an elite school and into the empire’s ruling classes. In fact, Rin has her eye on the best of these schools, the military Sinegard Academy. Throwing everything she has at the examination – including self-harm as a study aid – Rin aces the test, but in doing so launches herself into a world where being a dark-skinned, impoverished peasant girl makes it nearly impossible to survive. While working herself to the bone to overcome the prejudices and barriers set against her, she draws the notice of Jiang, the enigmatic tutor whose “Lore” classes are a running joke among students for the fact he never actually turns up to teach them anything. It turns out that Lore covers the rare art of Shamanism, for which Rin has an aptitude, and that the powers she wields are tied to the whims of extraordinarily dangerous gods, requiring a great deal of training and self-control to even survive.

If this is all sounding like a dark but classic iteration of the “kid at fighting magic school” trope so far, it doesn’t stay that way. Throughout this first part of the novel, Kuang is carefully weaving in strands of recent history and current events about the Nikara, and their eastern neighbours, the Mugen Federation. Recent wars between the two nations have left Nikara precariously in control of its own territory for now, but at an immensely high cost – to win the second Poppy War, Nikara’s generals allowed Mugen to take control of the island of Speer, a Nikaran colony whose population was racially and culturally distinct from the rest of the empire. Mugen murdered every single person on this island, an action which drew the attentions of Hesperia (this setting’s equivalent of “The West”) and led to their assisting Nikara against Mugen, on the condition that the sale of opium be allowed in Nikara’s territory. Nikara also, apparently, drew on the assistance of three divinely-blessed humans, but of these three, only the Empress remains, and any supernatural element to her power has since been greatly downplayed. In narrative terms, all of these historical elements come crashing to the fore just before the book’s halfway mark, and the scale of the story suddenly becomes much larger.

I should note that I didn’t love this book immediately. The first couple of chapters felt rushed, and the style in which information was being conveyed seemed oddly disjointed. I think a large part of this was getting used to Kuang’s style, which is very matter-of-fact and makes use of plenty of time skips when the narrative requires, particularly in the first section. This means we are thrown immediately into an almost montage-style sequence of Rin preparing for the Keju, as well as interacting with characters who we immediately suspect are not actually going to be important once she inevitably gets into school. However, once the book reaches Sinegard the style stopped being an issue for me, and I wouldn’t have wanted the narrative to spend any more time on Rin’s preparation than it did. I’m just glad I didn’t judge this book too early and dismiss it accordingly, because it gets much better!

The Poppy War also gets extremely dark, with a consistent escalation of violence and war which mirror and complicate Rin’s personal journey and her relationship with the immensely destructive divine forces to which she potentially has access. Once the Mugen Federation attacks, Rin and her classmates have their education come to an early, brutal end and are thrown immediately into the war (this leaves a fair bit of unfinished business behind, which is realistic but disappointing to those of us who would have liked to see some serious payoff of the feud between Rin and weapons master Jun). Kuang doesn’t pull her punches in describing the effects of the violence, particularly when it comes to the results of more technologically advanced weaponry used by the Mugen. However, the brutality in this section is nothing compared to the last 20% of the book, where atrocities strongly reminiscent of events in the Second Sino-Japanese war and World War 2 come into play. This is, of course, hard to read, but it didn’t feel gratuitous, and there were certainly plot relevant reasons for why Rin had to see the utter brutality of the Mugen invasion in order to shape her final actions and the story’s grim but fitting conclusion.

In terms of setting, the Nikara Empire and the Mugen Federation draw extremely heavily on China and Japan respectively, and particularly on events around the late 19th and early 20th century. Again, early on I was sceptical about the extent to which elements were going to be wholesale lifted from the real world: in chapter two, for example, Rin’s introduction to the big city of Sinegard is conducted through anecdotes and instances of selfishness and deception which were identical to incidents from 21st century China. It’s rather jarring to have a fantasy city defined through a character recounting folk wisdom which is transparently based on legal precedents from 2006 Nanjing! This also got less frustrating as the book went on, and there was plenty of blending of different historical points and introduction of new elements (or, perhaps, just a lot of things I didn’t recognise – my knowledge of pre-1950 Chinese history is patchy) which stopped things from feeling stale, but a couple of the big set pieces – particularly, as noted, in the last part of the book – drew a great deal from recognisable historical events.

I left The Poppy War with unanswered questions about the effects of these parallels. On the one hand, I think it makes the use of brutal scenes less questionable: whatever else you may feel about the book’s most difficult moments, you can’t argue that they are unrealistic because events like the Rape of Nanjing really did happen, in our world. On the other hand, however, I never shook off the discomfort of characters discussing other races in the book as “not human” or “primitive”, especially when it came to the Speerlies, who have very little voice in the book beyond two troubled, brutalised characters. What does it mean to have a Han Chinese-coded character casually discuss the primitiveness and expendability of a race who are recognisably (though less directly coded as) Aboriginal Taiwanese? And for those Aboriginal Taiwanese characters to apparently have crimson eyes as a racial trait? To be clear, obviously the author does not come down on the side of tactical genocide and racism just because some of her characters normalise it, but having racial dynamics which are almost-but-not-quite real world felt like it pushed some of this material into an odd grey area where characters’ use of unexamined stereotypes became acceptable without being challenged to the extent I’d have liked to see. Then again, none of the characters in The Poppy War are good people, so expecting them to react to fantasy-world dehumanisation in a way which punches back against real-world racism is a rather tall order, and probably an unfair criticism.

This certainly isn’t going to be a book for everyone, and although I found it a compelling read after a few chapters, I still have some reservations about what I’ve just read. However, if you have the stomach for it, the Poppy War is an extremely rewarding, if grim tale, whose parallels with real-world events makes its brutality difficult to dismiss.

You know those books where you finish them and you're absolutely speechless, like gobsmacked speechless (in a good way)? This is one of those. So, apologies if parts of this review are an incoherent mess. That's just what this book has made me.

The Poppy War tells the story of Rin, an orphan living in the Rooster Province, who shocks everyone when she comes first in her district in the Keju, a test to find the best and brightest to send to the Academies of the Empire. Rin ends up at Sinegard, an elite military school, where she discovers she possesses a talent for shamanism.

First off, this book is intense. And it only gets more so as you read along. Part one follows Rin from taking the test to the start of the war between the Federation and Nikara. One thing I really liked about this was that, while she was at school, and initially there were some detailed descriptions of lessons to set the scene, it wasn't like a lot of first books in series where not a lot happens until right at the end. The first part was gripping and moved quickly too. Based on the first part alone, I'd have probably rated this 4 stars. But then part two happened. Part two ups the ante considerably. Suddenly, they're at war, and it's brutal, and you think this book cannot possibly get more intense than this. But it does. It got so intense I needed to take a break just to calm down. It got so intense I am absolutely terrified at the thought of how the second book is going to go. Especially given that ending.

If the best thing about this book was the plot, then the characters and relationships came in close second. There's an excellent enemies to friends (to lovers? I can live in hope) relationship as well as a wonderful found family, some of whose scenes had me laughing out loud. I really don't know how to describe how I felt about all the characters, because I loved each and every one of them (or at least, each and every one of the ones I was supposed to, and the ones who grew on me). The characters in this book, particularly Rin, Kitay, Chaghan and Nezha, are probably some of my favourites I've read this year.

The one teeny tiny problem I had with this book (and it's a problem that's personal more than anything) was that occasionally the writing seemed a little clunky, particularly in the lulls between action scenes, and some things felt a little underdeveloped, like Nezha's character development (but that's probably because it mostly happened off page). But like I said, it's more personal feelings than anything major, and likely it's just because this is a debut. Anyway, the intensity of the plot more than made up for it.

This book is absolutely incredible it is about girl who is a war orphan. The orphan Rin makes a decision to try and get into sinegard a school which helps train the army and their commander for the warfare they are going to inevitably be part of. The two side have been fighting for decades and these wars have been terrible and had brutal outcomes for its world and its people. Some people are able to call upon the Gods for help but it is costly. I loved the main character Rin right from the get go. I loved how the author incorporated the Gods on the story I think it was very well done and something I haven’t seen done this well. I think the author has done an amazing job in making you really root for these characters by showing you what these characters are willing to do to succeed. This world is brutal and the author doesn’t hold back on providing a rich history that shows the deep rooted tensions between these two sides. The political warfare in this had me overcome with disbelief with the lengths these side would go to to win. I have never read a book that shows how truly cruel people can be especially in war. I think it is the perfect blend between The Name of The Wind and Game of Thrones two of my favourite fantasy books. I can’t wait to buy a physical copy when it is released. I completely loved it and it is now one of my favourite fantasy books.

This book is a journey.

It's Rin's journey: from war orphan, to boarding school, to soldier in a brutal war. But it's also got huge narrative range: from bantering team dynamics to wrenching horror.

Because this story is dark, especially after the first 1/3. It has a strong point of view and something to say about what war and violence do to people, countries, soldiers, civilians, children. And while it is not dark for the sake of being shocking, it's modeled after the second Sino-Japanese war, which if you're not familiar with, I recommend that you look up before reading. There is brutal violence described on page, and you should decide before reading if that's something you are up for.

But back to the story!

THE POPPY WAR has characters you root for and hate. And there are characters who I began to love with a single line. The first of which is Jiang, the Lore Master at Rin's school. While I found the start of the book a tiny bit slow, the minute I met Jiang, I had a huge smile on my face. Even as there are very dark moments in the story, there's also so many fun moments. (Rin sees magic for the first time, and has the most relatable reaction: "What the fuck?")

The magic system feels terrifying and huge and awe inspiring and fresh. I love the way this book conceives of gods and power and how it ties that into war. And there’s an interesting sense of fate or inevitability. But at the same time, characters are held responsible and are always (explicitly, textually) agents in their own stories.

Finally, I found the writing very accessible. It's a heavy book, but I read it in just a few days, because it's so compulsively readable. (And quotable - I don't often highlight quotes in books, but I found myself doing it often here. Both with the banter and with the descriptions).

There’s a certain economy to the language - a rhythm.

Everything can change in a single sentence. Everything does.

I received an advanced reader copy of The Poppy War from the publisher in exchange for an honest review. I would like to thank R. F. Kuang and Harper Voyager for this opportunity.

Rin is a war orphan who works at her foster parents' shop and their main income is created by dealing drugs. Only just into her teenage years, Rin is offered a proposal to marry and bear children for an unattractive gentleman three times her age who has no redeeming qualities. She decides she needs to escape this presented and projected future and her only means of doing this is to study for the Keju - an examination where the top-50 students in the country that pass the test can train at the military educational establishment set in the empire's capital. Surprising everyone apart from herself she is successful and then whisked away by her tutor to the city and this is where Rin's adventure really starts.

Although the college sections are similar in design and structure to those depicted within novels such as The Name of the Wind and The Wizard of Earthsea, The Poppy War has a lot more in common with Anthony Ryan's Blood Song. This is a dark, brutal, gruesome and occasionally uncomfortable book to experience so readers should not think that because it features a school environment with best friends, bullies, and coming of age experiences that this is dumbed down like some fantasy adventures that feature such tropes.

The Poppy War is inspired by China's bloody 20th-century history and parallels between segments here and real events can be seen at certain points. The oriental take on fantasy is something that has intrigued me since I read Fonda Lee's - Jade City and similar to that tale Kuang's debut is complex, insightful, well-crafted and features certain characters who kick-ass at martial arts. The world building here is sublime, as is the depth of the nations history, religions and practices. There were many ways the author engineered the intricate details of her created world but my personal favourite was when the myths of the Trifecta were presented in the form of a shadow puppet show.

The characterisation and character development employed throughout this novel are exquisite. Written in the third person perspective, Rin is the only point of view character that we follow and to say that her character and personality change throughout the course of the narrative is an understatement. She is an excellent protagonist and shortly she may be mentioned alongside genre-defining characters such as Kvothe and Vaelin. There is quite a sizeable dramatis personae and too many standout characters to mention in this review. Notable mentions go to Jiang (the Lore master who might just be a little bit insane), Nezha (Rin's rival who is the beautiful son of a warlord and who should have a glorious military career), and Altan (the college's finest student who excels in all aspects and has never lost a fight). Also, the Cike are brilliant. They are almost like this worlds version of the X-Men.

Approximately the first half of the book is set in the school where students learn about five subjects including strategy, lore, and martial arts training. Three years later we reach the second half of The Poppy War which features skirmishes, battles, political indecision and some of the grimmest and most shocking scenes I've come across for a long time. One moment is particular stands out as being on par with the nightmare that was the hammer scene from Anna Stephen's Godblind. This story features plenty of deaths as well as torture, drug use, mutilation, implied rape, grotesque monsters and malevolent gods. The first third of the book doesn't really present this sort of darkness and despondency so I thought I'd make it clear in my review that this is a story that is very adult in nature. A good percentage of destruction, later on, is generated from this worlds magic where certain vessels can be assigned the power of the gods and wield it for their own means. As I'm sure you can imagine, this leads to ridiculously overpowered players that then can lead to complete madness.

2017's debut fantasy releases were some of the finest of recent years and it's great to know that Kuang has picked up the baton and is carrying on the trend and leading the charge in 2018. I can safely say that this will be the finest debut of 2018 and I'd be surprised if it isn't one of the top 3 books of the year full stop. Spectacular, masterclass, brilliant, awesome... All the complimentary buzzwords you can imagine don't quite do The Poppy War justice for how amazing it is. The only very minor criticism I have is that on the cover artwork Rin has a bow and I can't remember her using such a weapon in the book. That's my only negative. If you like dark adult fantasy then check out this masterpiece by grimdark's newest and perhaps darkest daughter.

That was seriously impressive; I knew I needed to read this as soon as I saw the brilliant cover. The book has also garnered a serious amount of buzz and as such I was beyond thrilled to have the chance to read this early. I was then a bit apprehensive when the first reviews came in and they all emphasized the dark nature of this book - I usually like my fantasy to be not super violent. And don't get me wrong, this book (especially its second half) is beyond brutal - but it is so well-written that it was worth it. The language used worked wonderfully for me - R. F. Kuang manages to create a world so immersive that I came up breathless in-between the tensest scenes.

The book follows in close third person narration Rin, a war orphan who manages through sheer willpower to ace the test that ensures her place at Sinegard, an elite military school. There she is an outsider, too dark-skinned and poor to be taken seriously, when she realizes she has an affinity for shamanism. This book moves at a serious breakneck speed and packs as much story into one book as other authors might pack into three - and I was glad for that. The author handles her story so adeptly that I was never bored or confused, while also filling the book to the brim with characters that feel real. They are sparingly, but well characterised and I could always remember who was who and what there motivations were: I found this highly impressive (I often struggle with remembering names in books with casts this huge).

There are some slight problems I have with this book; for one the first and the second half have vastly different tones and as such do not quite feel like a coherent whole. There were also some sentences that conveyed stereotypes in a way that felt unquestioned - and this is a problem in a book that so clearly mirrors real-world history. I do hope that this will be a major theme in the next two books in the series though (the ending seems to indicate this) - which I just cannot wait to read.

Overall, a damn impressive debut from an author I will have to keep an eye out for. Also, I need the next two books as soon as possible. Do read this if you like fantasy at all (but beware of the dark content).

I received an advanced reader copy of The Poppy War from the publisher in exchange for an honest review. I would like to thank R. F. Kuang and Harper Voyager for this opportunity.

Rin is a war orphan who works at her foster parents’ shop and their main income is created by dealing drugs. Only just into her teenage years, Rin is offered a proposal to marry and bear children for an unattractive gentleman three times her age who has no redeeming qualities. She decides she needs to escape this presented and projected future and her only means of doing this is to study for the Keju – an examination where the top-50 students in the country that pass the test can train at the military educational establishment set in the empire’s capital. Surprising everyone apart from herself she is successful and then whisked away by her tutor to the city and this is where Rin’s adventure really starts.

Although the college sections are similar in design and structure to those depicted within novels such as The Name of the Wind and The Wizard of Earthsea, The Poppy War has a lot more in common with Anthony Ryan’s Blood Song. This is a dark, brutal, gruesome and occasionally uncomfortable book to experience so readers should not think that because it features a school environment with best friends, bullies, and coming of age experiences that this is dumbed down like some fantasy adventures that feature such tropes.

The Poppy War is inspired by China’s bloody 20th-century history and parallels between segments here and real events can be seen at certain points. The oriental take on fantasy is something that has intrigued me since I read Fonda Lee’s – Jade City and similar to that tale Kuang’s debut is complex, insightful, well-crafted and features certain characters who kick-ass at martial arts. The world building here is sublime, as is the depth of the nations history, religions and practices. There were many ways the author engineered the intricate details of her created world but my personal favourite was when the myths of the Trifecta were presented in the form of a shadow puppet show.

The characterisation and character development employed throughout this novel are exquisite. Written in the third person perspective, Rin is the only point of view character that we follow and to say that her character and personality change throughout the course of the narrative is an understatement. She is an excellent protagonist and shortly she may be mentioned alongside genre-defining characters such as Kvothe and Vaelin. There is quite a sizeable dramatis personae and too many standout characters to mention in this review. Notable mentions go to Jiang (the Lore master who might just be a little bit insane), Nezha (Rin’s rival who is the beautiful son of a warlord and who should have a glorious military career), and Altan (the college’s finest student who excels in all aspects and has never lost a fight). Also, the Cike are brilliant. They are almost like this worlds version of the X-Men.

Approximately the first half of the book is set in the school where students learn about five subjects including strategy, lore, and martial arts training. Three years later we reach the second half of The Poppy War which features skirmishes, battles, political indecision and some of the grimmest and most shocking scenes I’ve come across for a long time. One moment is particular stands out as being on par with the nightmare that was the hammer scene from Anna Stephen’s Godblind. This story features plenty of deaths as well as torture, drug use, mutilation, implied rape, grotesque monsters and malevolent gods. The first third of the book doesn’t really present this sort of darkness and despondency so I thought I’d make it clear in my review that this is a story that is very adult in nature. A good percentage of destruction, later on, is generated from this worlds magic where certain vessels can be assigned the power of the gods and wield it for their own means. As I’m sure you can imagine, this leads to ridiculously overpowered players that then can lead to complete madness.

2017’s debut fantasy releases were some of the finest of recent years and it’s great to know that Kuang has picked up the baton and is carrying on the trend and leading the charge in 2018. I can safely say that this will be the finest debut of 2018 and I’d be surprised if it isn’t one of the top 3 books of the year full stop. Spectacular, masterclass, brilliant, awesome… All the complimentary buzzwords you can imagine don’t quite do The Poppy War justice for how amazing it is. The only very minor criticism I have is that on the cover artwork Rin has a bow and I can’t remember her using such a weapon in the book. That’s my only negative. If you like dark adult fantasy then check out this masterpiece by grimdark’s newest and perhaps darkest daughter.

So, I finished this about a week and a half ago and I had to sit and percolate on this one before gathering my thoughts to write a proper review. This book devastated me, y’all.

The Poppy War by R.F. Kuang is a fantasy story that is a bit coming of age, and a lot military fantasy dealing with the harsh reality of war. Rin is a young girl from the country with little prospects. A war orphan, she’s been raised by guardians that are eager to marry her off in order to help their business. Vehemently opposed to this plan, Rin becomes determined to study so she can score high enough on the test to be admitted into the country’s most elite military academy, Sinegard. Once there she learns her path ahead will be tough–she’ll be ostracized by her fellow students and even some of the teachers. One of the only people to believe in her will be an eccentric teacher that isa a master of the ancient and mostly defunct art of shamanism. Meanwhile, the tentative peace between Rin’s homeland of Nikara and their old foe, the Federation of Mugen, begins to waver. Soon the peace will be shattered altogether and Rin and her schoolmates will be faced with the harsh realities of war.

The first forty percent of the book focuses on Rin trying to get into the school and her experiences once there. This gives us a very good picture of Rin’s character overall–she’s doggedly determined to the point where she pushes herself almost beyond her limits in order to achieve her goals. It’s obvious she yearns for friends, but having always been an outsider in one way or another, it’s difficult for her. And she has to constantly harden herself at the school and remind herself that she’s not there to make friends. As much as she does want friends she won’t let that stand in her way either. She has a chip on her shoulder from everyone constantly looking down on her and again with that determination, she wants to prove the students and teachers wrong, show them she not only deserves to be at Sinegard, but that she can best them. I love her tenacity but her stubbornness is both her greatest strength and her greatest weakness. Rin isn’t a perfect person, and I feel like she’s such an interesting character because of all her flaws.

I also really love the other characters that Rin meets along her journey, both at the school and some of those after. I feel like they all multi-faceted and I want to get to know some of them more and I hope we’ll get to see some of them again in the next book. The parts at the school and the interaction between Rin and the other characters there were some of my favorite parts of the book. And, here especially, there is actually a good deal of humor in these pages.

Once we get to part two of the book the tone changes a bit. There were already some grimmer things in the beginning of the book, but in part two things take a turn. War breaks out and it gets real. School is not a safe haven. No where and no one is safe and once you realize this it keeps you, as a reader, on edge. The battle/fight scenes were well written and made me feel as if I were experiencing what Rin was during those times. I also really love the whole idea of shamanism in this universe and the way the gods possess a human and work through them is both intriguing and terrifying.

I feel like I can’t say that I enjoyed this book entirely because if I do then people may begin to question my sanity–because this book goes to some very, very, very dark places. But, I did like this book, very much, and I respect it because it doesn’t hold anything back and goes right into the heart of nightmares. The thing is, if you know the history that a lot of this is based on, specifically the second Sino-Japanese war and certain events therein, then it makes those sections of the book even more of an uncomfortable read. Because it’s not just fantasy ultra-violence for the sake of ultra-violence the way some grimdark can be…it’s uncomfortable because the atrocities written on the pages in this book are pulled from right from human history. This book is a stark reminder of the human capacity for violence and what can happen when some people refuse to see other people as fellow human beings.

Overall, The Poppy War was quite a reading experience for me. I don’t think it’s going to be a book that I can recommend to everyone but it’s definitely going to stick with me for a while and continue to make me think. 5/5 stars.

The Poppy War is the debut fantasy novel from R.F. Kuang. It’s a thoughtful piece, looking at colonisation, cultural constructions, empire and authority, atrocities, and philosophies of violence. Mind you, it also has snappy dialogue, explosive (often literally) magic, a world where the strange and the familiar intermingle, and characters which will make you laugh, cry, and scream – possibly all at once. It’s an incredibly impressive debut, one which explores some dark places, but does so with such honesty and imagination that it’s impossible to put down.

As you may be able to tell, I rather enjoyed it.

The world of The Poppy War is one shaped by empires. There’s the one in which we find ourselves, as an example. A sprawling creature, split into provinces governed by separate warlords, it still has a history. That history is one of violence. Originally separate kingdoms, bound together by strongmen into a nominally functional unit, it was broken apart by a colonising force. After years of warfare, it’s been reshaped to the current form, ruled by a survivor of three heroes that led the fight against the occupation. There’s a history here – one of assumed culutral superiority and arrogance, clashing with the reality of pulling out from under the hand of an occupier. That the occupation ended due to the intervention of a third party is the icing on the cake of identity. It’s a land with heroes, yes, and with a recent history of successful resistance through unification – but a far longer one of internecine conflict and division.

So there’s politics. There’s scheming and the need to decide who controls what, and always, hovering on the horizon, is the understanding that the historical occupying forces could be back this time tomorrow. It’s a space which is rich in history, but also rich in gods. Divinities, lore, magic, are all ideas floating at the edge of the cultural consciousness. They’re maligned, to be sure, considered folk stories and traditions, but they help the seamless, sparkling tapestry of the world leap into life. If the larger world is one of wars, of realpolitik, of tax farmers, of drugs and swords and blood – there is a liminal space here, one in which fire and hope burn together. In a world of formal exams, maintained by and for the elite with a façade of meritocracy, in a world where drugs are forbidden and pervasive – in that world, if and when magic is real, it can shatter lives.

Kuang has constructed a geography which evokes tones from our world – the colonial adventures of the 1800’s, the sociocultural tensions of the Quing dynasty – but gives them a unique spin, one which adds a mixture of blood and sparkle. This is a world of potentially necessary horrors, and the monsters who builds them – but also one of wonders. Sometimes those are built by the same people.

Our protagonist, living in this space is Rin. Rin comes from nothing. Rin is not meant to be anything.

But Rin is stubborn. Rin persists. Rin has fire and determination, and a bloody-minded desire to stick it to whoever has annoyed her. Rin is smart. Rin is cynical. Rin kicks serious arse. And Rin pays for it. In some ways, this is a hopeful book. Rin doesn’t have a thing. She’s trying to escape her dirt poor town, and its dirt poor prospects, by becoming something else, something , if not better, at least different. Rin, an orphan, struggles to define herself against the expectations of the world around her.

She claws back every inch. In between confounding others expectations, she also manages to be better, rising from the social constraints of her upbringing to have a fighters control to go with her spirit. In her interactions with magic, Rin learns, to be sure, but she carries a kind of icy pragmatism, a banked rage and determination which binds some of her self-worth to success, however she defines that. But what she’s really looking for is identity – to either become what her unknown past inspires, or to be whatever she can make of herself.

Rin also makes some hard choices. I’m inclined to call them bad choices, but the texture of the book wouldn’t allow it. This isn’t a place with simple decisions. It’s one where using power has bloody, horrific consequences, mostly for others – and where not using power also has bloody, horrific consequences for others. These decisions sit on a razor edge, and Rin’s struggle with her own capacities, with her own choices and their consequences, helps to shape the book. I’m not sure I agreed with them all, but I understood them all – and both Rin and the reader will come to understand the price which she pays for each decision made. This begins as a story of a young woman growing into her power, but then sidles into a narrative about the consequences of using, or refusing to exercise, that power.

The plot – well, no spoilers. There’s a school, and it teaches martial arts. It teaches tactics and strategy. It may or may not teach the mystical. Rin finds herself there, in her journey to discover herself, and to pay the costs of doing so. But it’s not just a school story, Harry Potter with blod on knives. It’s also a story of war. Of battles. Of lives taken and lives broken. Of atrocities. Of hard decisions taken in despair, and bloody decisions taken in hope. There’s magic. There’s a lot of fabulously kinetic single combat fight scenes. There’s politics, there’s military infighting, there’s gods and magic and more than one hidden agenda. There’s a coming of age story with carmine blades and a whiff of the mystical extracting a price no-one should pay.

Is it any good? Absolutely. The book kicks arse, and I couldn’t put it down. It’s a cracking debut, and one I recommend without reservation.

Welp.

That's honestly all I can bring myself to say about THE POPPY WAR, a brutal, breathtaking, DARK AS FUCK fantasy epic inspired by the Sino-Japanese War and some of the larger historical and cultural questions that have long haunted the region. I'll try to contextualize that helpless monosyllable exclamation, but seriously, welp is all that needs saying.

First of all, be warned: the book jacket summary really covers the first third of the book. And it is a wonderful first third of a book, to be sure: a coming-of-age military academy that throws our ruthless, endlessly yearning heroine Rin into a shark pool of the most elite scholars and martial artists Nikara has to offer. It's kind of what you expect of a boarding school bildungsroman, with enemy classmates, fast friends, eccentric teachers, impossible crushes, but it's also waaay more intense than that. When war breaks out between Nikara and Mugen, things shift into high gear. Shit gets more real than we typically imagine, even of fantasy. RF Kuang does not let up, which is so great and done so well, but it may be helpful to have a better idea of what's in store; I knew it was inspired by the Sino-Japanese War and especially Nanking, so I knew what to expect, but it is still a very visceral read. In plot terms, THE POPPY WAR may not be for everyone.

But even if hardcore magic warfare is not your jam, it's written in such a modern, compulsively readable style that all the horrors (and again: oh, the horrors!) actually go down rather smoothly. Even in the beginning, there's a warmth and ease and, again, compulsive readability, that's very much at work; all the worldbuilding history lectures and classes on military strategy that Rin sits through don't feel like info-dumps at all, at least not in the way fantasy readers dread. You learn so much, and you want to learn more about this world and its rules and histories and its magics and its gods. I could read that stuff forever.

The biggest feat of this book, though, is its ambition. I can barely wrap my head around the scale of this book and the journey Rin takes throughout. It's a truly staggering work. Rin is the character I've been looking for most of my life; she's so dynamic, so real, so terrible, so wonderful, I almost wish she had a more... pleasant story... to exist in. But in the end, I don't, because the book and the character deserve each other, in the best possible way. The entire cast of characters are so much fun, filled with such depth, and go on such breathtaking/heartbreaking journeys themselves, it's so worth the relentless rollercoaster ride that is THE POPPY WAR to follow them all (view spoiler).

I loved this book to the bitter end. I can't wait to see where the series goes. But really, all I still want to say is: welp.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the egalley :)

This book is startling in its originality and has left me emotionally destroyed! It tells the story of Rin, a young girl hoping to escape being sold into a marriage by travelling to Sinegard and training at the Academy. The book starts as a fairly traditional story and we follow Rin through her attempts to get to the Academy. We then see how she is treated once she arrives there - spoiler, not kindly. The book then descends into a torturous fever dream of drugs, gods and war and is utterly relentless. I read this book not wanting to look, but unable to turn away from the horror unfolding before me and spent a large amount of time staggered by the decisions that some of the characters make. This is not a world that I would ever want to travel to, and Kuang has rendered it with exquisite detail, ensuring that despite your misgivings, you have to continue. I cannot say that I enjoyed this book - it is not a book that the word 'enjoy' applies to, in my opinion. What I can say is that I found it breathtaking and terrifying in equal measure. A wonderful achievement.
I received a free copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for a fair and honest review.

This is one of the rare moments when the world “epic” is not only 100% fit, but also no exaggeration at all.
Step into the Poppy War and find yourself in a land of epic fantasy, military, rueful tactics and long forgotten Gods.

The Nikara Empire is a vast place. Consisting of 12 districts and ruled by one Empress, the kingdom is plagued by opium and wars. Thanks to its old heroes, the legendary Trifecta, the land survived the first two Poppy Wars. But now the heroes are gone, and the Empire is clinging on the verge of another war.
War orphan Rin was raised among drug dealing peasants, silently enduring every hardship and torture her foster family had to impose on her. But when a marriage is arranged for her, she claw her way out of it, struggling for a different future. And she will do everything in her power to get it, everything she can in order to join the Empire’s most elite military forces: the Sinegard Military Academy.
However, when a third war raps on the Empire’s door, Rin will have to dive into the real world. Military is no longer a student subject, and Strategy is no longer mere theory. Suffering is real. Death is real. And so are the long-forgotten Gods. And with harnessing their power, she learns, comes a great price.

The Poppy War is a unique, amazing fantasy story with strong military outlines. Strategy, military, politics and myths are woven intricately into a genius pattern that exceed by far every expectation. The author creates a world effortlessly, and the reader loyally follows. There is reason and purpose behind every move in the story, and every constructed dialogue. No room has been left for boring parts ore unnecessary talking, which makes th plot concise and incredibly interesting, at the point where you lose track of time, getting absorbed in the world of the Nikara Empire.
This intricate world was built carefully and strategically. Strongly reminding the reader of China, it holds a plethora of borrowed lore; from the Chinese zodiac to the energy flow and the deities. It all fits perfectly, creating an astounding world. At he same time, it remains faithfully realistic. While reading, you can’t help but compare the Empire’s situation to the modern world’s politics.
There is a lot to be said about the characters, surprisingly all appraising. It is hard to find a story where character building has been done with such care. Rin, the heroine, is a determined, resourceful and strong human, who swims against her life’s current. Despite the adversities, she persists and has one of the strongest mindsets ever seen in fantasy literature. It is incredibly easy to effortlessly empathize, and even identify with Rin. But it is not only about her. The story is filled with different people, each one with a completely different background and their unique story to tell.
“War doesn’t determine who’s right War determines who remains”
And then, of course, there is the aspect of war. The author handles it with an incredible maturity and huge doses of wisdom and intelligence. Through Poppy War, you read about the atrocities of war. You see what the human mind is capable of : both great mercy and horrible crimes against fellow humans. There are always two sides on every coin, and both Rin and the reader realize this very well through this story. The Poppy War is filled with straight-on truths about the consequences of our choices, the responsibilities of our actions, and a very significant and painful truth : no one is a victim to destiny; what we live through is a result of a series of choices that we have made through our lives.

The Poppy War might be, with no exaggeration, the best fantasy book of 2018. As a professional book reviewer, I only have to say this : I wish all books had the depth in meaning and hard work in the making as The Poppy War does.

The Poppy War is an amazingly accomplished debut fantasy novel comprising of dizzying highs and devastating lows.

This is book that covers basically all bases:

It’s a slow burner in many ways, yet manages to skim any potentially boring bits, maintaining a good pace and momentum.

It’s hysterically funny at times, particularly early on when Rin is a first year of the Sinegard Military Academy, which is like Hogwarts on an acid trip. This part of the book is so, so entertaining and one of the most quotable things I’ve ever read, but, the story goes on to take much darker themes, particularly in the last quarter or so.

It’s both character driven and fiercely political – it deals with A-LOT of heavy issues, so consider this a trigger warning for:
*Graphic violence
*Genocide
*Rape
*Racism
*Substance abuse
*Self-harm
Oh and my personal favourite: *bad things happening to small children*
(seriously why does Kuang hate babies??)

One of the authors biggest strengths as a writer are the almost visceral scenes depicting the fallout of a political war for innocent inhabitants of a country. I understand the necessity of the author taking this seriously and it 100% has to be gritty and realistic, I just personally have a really hard time imagining infants being brutalised, and there were at least five or six separate occasions where I’d see the word ‘baby’ or ‘babies’ and I honestly just skipped to the next page for the sake of my own well-being (history of PND over here manifesting as high level anxiety and an inability to hear about anything bad happening in the world ever and not immediately picture it happening to my infant sons and having a panic attack, soz)

So yeah that kind of left a bad taste in my mouth and quite honestly affected my experience continuing with the last quarter of the book, which is a shame because up until that point I was basically this books #1 fan and it sort of ended on a bit of a downer. I’m not saying that it should have been excluded but personally I just find it impossible to separate fantasy and reality when it comes to these things because my wee brain is broken.

Nonetheless I’m looking forward to continuing with this series (I’m sure I read somewhere that it was going to be a trilogy) and I’d like to sincerely thank the publishers and NetGalley for the opportunity to review this title 🙂

Highlights:

Badass female main character

Historical Chinese setting

Shaman Magic system

Struggles in training and learning, nothing happens overnight

Cool friends

Tutor weirdness

Basically, I enjoyed this book so much I forgot to take notes, much of this review is based on memory.

The book is told from Rin's perspective 95% of the time which is really nice as I have read a lot of multi-perspectives books lately. The book is divided into three parts, all relating to the relation between Rin's nation Nakara and its neighbour and all the different stages of Rin's understanding and development as a person. In short, the first part is new and fun, the second part is nervous, and the third part is bloody.

I really enjoyed the entire book. I loved Rin as a character and loved following her development throughout the book and the story.

Be aware, of the brutality which starts in part 3. I have read a lot of books and when people say it's a dark book I tend to love it and not really find it that dark, or people say its brutal, and I don't really find it that brutal. This one was very brutal for me. It's not just the fact that they are at war, but it's the gruesome brutality towards civilians (men, women, children and infants) that really struck me deep. The level of gruesomeness made my brain distance itself a bit from the story emotionally, so when something sad happened I didn't have the reactions I should have. However, it all adds up to the reasons behind Rin's decision making and her changes as a person. 

The story is set in a fantasy version of 20th century China. Rin's Nikara is controlled by an Empress, while the neighbouring Federation is run by an Emperor who feels Nikara is his. Rin goes through a Nikara in a peace, to a Nikara on the brink of war and in full tension, to a Nikara at war. She makes a dramatic and difficult journey. Both trying to figure out who she is, who she wants to be, and want she wants, where her place in the system and in the universe is and of she has a choice in it all.

R F Kuang writes war in high detail and not the typical fantasy war with battalion against battalion, but as in a modern warfare against older warfare. It's guerrilla warfare, sword fights, magic fights, and waves of soldiers. It's brutal, gruesome, tragic, and realistic. It's very well written, but not something you should read before bed or while you eat (like I did. it was a short lunch...).

Rin is the main character and the story is from her perspective. The book starts with Rin sitting down to take her Kajo exam. She has spent only two years studying for this exam while most children spend their entire lives studying. Rin only has one chance. If she fails she will be married off to a rich old dude... Who wants that?

I really enjoyed her study method, it was intense. She had to finish two books a week and rotate between two subjects a day, on top of her duties as a shop girl and drug dealer.

Rin really develops and becomes more solid as she figures out who she is and as the book evolves. And it's not like halfway through she has found her self, the search goes all the way to the very last page, and I really liked that.

One thing I didn't like about Rin was when she got her period. Firstly, Hell Yeah a period is mentioned in a book!!! YES, Kuang! And it's not a nice trickling sort of period it's the full-on on crime scene and pain of death stuff she gets. But, what I didn't like is the author's way of getting rip of this element. I know its very difficult to write about a female character who every month has to have her heavy period, but it makes it realistic and adds a challenge. In here thought the author writes it off. Yes, I understand what Rin was thinking, and believe me I understand! But I wished it would not end so soon. I felt she could have struggled with it more. Get some life experience and all that. Having said all that, later in the book, this event proposes an interesting limit for Rin and who she is. I won't say more...

I enjoyed her training struggles and not having an easy time learning, because learning isn't always easy. You cant run a marathon just because you trained once, you have to go through the struggles of training for months, and Rin does that. Not the marathon but the training. Loved the pig up the mountain element, lol!

Of all the side characters I really liked Kitay. He's a great supporting character for Rin, as her opposite but complementary to Rin as a person.  

I found the setting magical. I absolutely loved it. I kept imagining a mix of Mulan and Chinese art (like the cover), especially in the beginning. As the storyline become darker and more brutal my thoughts moved towards the Second Wolrd War and the Vietnam War (as my only source of reference for a war in Asia with serious gruesomeness and brutality), but still with Chinese art style landscape.

The magic system was fascinating as hell. I really enjoyed how Rin discovered it the first time around. That was a lot of fun to read. The shamanism is something I've never read about and it gave me something new and interesting, and I really like it.

I also like the fact that Rin has to discover several things for herself by trial and error, which gives the author a chance to "try stuff out in this world" and to introduce and explain thing to the reader. It also gives Rin more challenges and struggles to go through. 

This book is really well written throughout. It's detailed without overwhelming me with details. The pacing is spot on in all the different scenes without sprinting or dragging. It's smooth and easily flows through the plotline.

Well done!

I'm definitely reading other stuff by this author and I can't wait for book two in this trilogy!

Thank you to NetGalley and Orbit Books for a review copy of this book.

R.F. Kuang’s "The Poppy War" is one of the hardest-hitting and impressive debuts I’ve had the privilege of reading; it pulled me through an exhaustive range of emotion of which I haven’t yet recovered. The book explores the corruption of power, the lust for vengeance, and the darkest depths of humanity and savagery. It comments on the nature of war, religion, and social imbalance. It paints an all-too-real portrait of racial atrocities, drug dependence, and genocide. Yet it is compulsively readable and quietly educational as well. Kuang seems driven to shine a spotlight on humanity at its basest level, and what we find is unfortunately all too familiar.

These revelations are frightening for a fantasy novel, but even more disturbing when drawing comparisons to crises evident in our own recent history. This story has direct correlations with the first and second Sino-Japanese War and World War II, when the Japanese imperialists were responsible for the deaths of millions of civilians and POWs through deeds of human experimentation, starvation, chemical and biological warfare, and genocide. It was a horrifying and shameful period in human history, and it happened less than a century ago.

But don’t let these themes scare you away from picking this book up, as the story takes on a much less oppressive tone for the first two acts. The narrative follows Rin, a teenage war orphan who is assigned to live with adoptive parents who deal opium for a living. They plan to sell Rin to a man thrice her age who can pay her parents a large dowry, and Rin envisions a life of unhappiness and disgust unless she can somehow find a way out. She learns about a test that all students can take that would place them in universities across the country. Having no money, the only college that wouldn’t charge her tuition is the very best of the best: a military academy in Sinegard, the capital city of the Nikara empire. This poor, southern girl who is years behind in her education must sacrifice everything to gain a spot at this prestigious academy where only the sons and daughters of warlords and politicians attend. Although Rin passes the test, she quickly learns that her challenges are just getting started.

We spend the first half of the book following Rin’s progress and education in the studies of martial arts, lore, strategy, and other subjects that will prepare her for a high leadership role in the armed forces. But Rin is different than her peers; she has left her old life behind, and faces a homelessness and starvation if she doesn’t excel in her studies. She dedicates herself to learning as much as she can about the history of her empire, The First and Second Poppy Wars, and how an entire race of people were sacrificed just to gain allies in a conflict. She trains in a different form of combat than any of her other peers whom have been fighting since they could stand. She starts to learn about the ancient art of shamanism, and how ingesting certain hallucinogens or opioids can help transcend her state of meditation towards communion with her gods.

Rin is an imperfect soul who is easy to root for, especially since it is plain to see how any one of us could make the same mistakes and errors of judgment in our own youth. She means well, and is not afraid to sacrifice anything for what she believes is right and just. This theme comes into play several times throughout the course of the book, and helps to shape the type of person Rin feels she is fated to become. But the gods may scoff at ideas such as fate and destiny, and Rin and her peers are forced to make the most difficult decision of all: when faced with unspeakable horror, how far would you go to exact vengeance? Can acts of terror ever truly be justified?

Simply put, "The Poppy War" is a towering achievement of modern fantasy. Kuang writes in a descriptive and narrative style that presents many sides of an issue without trying to persuade the reader into thinking which path is the “correct” one, if one such exists. As the book descends into its bleak final act, the connection we’ve built with Rin and her companions is put to the test. It is a testament to Kuang’s skill as a writer to establish such a strong connection with her protagonists that the impact of the events in third act hit as hard as they do. There aren’t any real complaints I have about this book, which is wholly impressive considering how early it is in the author’s young career. This story weaves recent Chinese history into an emotionally chaotic, brilliantly-told grimdark fantasy that is impossible to forget. Read it.

9.3 / 10

5 Words: Power, loyalty, temptation, friendship, war.

Well damn that was good. And dark. And fiery.

Content warning: Self harm, rape, drug use, graphic violence/gore, genocide.

Review to come. But know that this book is brutal, horrific, tragic, and dark AF. Only read it if you think you can handle it, and definitely don't be afraid to put it down. It's one hell of a debut.

Approved to read on NetGalley - Yay!

‪The Poppy War by R F Kuang https://www.runalongtheshelves.net/blog/2018/5/14/the-poppy-war-by-r-f-kuang‬

Fantasy by definition being genre we tend to decide that certain tropes mean that the story obviously must be an x, y or z plot. We know the theme and expect the story to run along the same lines. For me the best stories are those that subvert or build upon these well-trodden ideas and gives us a fresh perspective. In this fantastic debut what appears at first to be a story of a young teenager discovering magic and fighting the prejudices of her society becomes a much bigger epic tale examining war and its consequences.

You’ll be hard-pressed to not feel supportive of Rin our main character the story focuses on. As a young woman she is ‘fostered’ by the local village opium dealers who believe she will make a fine young bride/bribe for the local middle-aged single government official. Rin finds just one single way out – she must pass her local exam and get herself a free scholarship into the nation’s best school at Sineguard. There she can find the skills to make a future for itself. It’s not too spoilerish to find that after a brutal few months of cramming that she passes and then finds herself the only non-noble in her year. In this academy skills such as Combat, Strategy and even Medicine are covered to make the students into the best soldiers but Rin’s temperament and approach to life attracts her to the Academy’s less than salubrious Master of Lore Jiang who feels Rin is a prime candidate to learn about shamanism where drugs do work…to show you what reality really comprises or to bring the humans to the attention of the local Pantheon of Gods.

The Poppy War almost like it’s title in this first third is deceptively beautiful. Rin is a hard-working student; there is the standard teenage banter and even a local school bully and a hostile teacher to face while in Jiang we have a friendly slightly stoned mentor guiding Rin to a better understanding. Cheering Rin on as she develops her confidence and fights back is a joy; but this is not Hogwarts and while the school setting is an excellent way to smuggle in world building explaining the social strata and history of the Nikaran people and their enemies the reader starts to notice that ultimately this school turns people into weapons for the state. The culture is one of competition; Rin is happy to burn her own skin to stay awake for exams; Students are encouraged to fight and maim each other, and the magic can just as easily send you mad as give you new insights. Rin arrives just as war with the historic enemies in Mugen becomes a talking point. By the time this first third of the book ends we understand the approaching conflict and find Rin’s future is closely involved with the battle to come.

The second part of the book explores Rin joining a secretive division in the Empire known as the Cike now managed by one of Rin’s school heroes - Altan This small but deadly group is now tasked with a major defence against the Muginese forces on their way to invade the country. Rin must learn how her powers can bolster the group, but she finds she shares far more in common with Altan than she ever dared hoped but at the same time finds her destiny is one that will potentially cause far more death and destruction than her teachers ever hoped for.

This is a hard story to describe and it’s a testament to Kuang’s skill as an author that that school setting allows you to understand the nature of the country, it’s power structures and magic systems. All done smartly as lessons or conversations between various school factions so that it never feels like pure exposition and always serves the plot at the time; the pace of the story never feels to have been slowed down either. Just as Rin learns how the world works so does the reader and once Rin leaves her school as wartime requires her to join the Cike we understand their role and potentially how her magical skills can aid her people. In many ways the reader can be reassured with classic signs of fantasy – the motley mercenaries with amazing skills; the noble but tragic squad commander but slowly we also get these almost deconstructed. Our mercenaries are not simply mavericks but people to whom magical abilities are having huge psychological impacts on; the noble Empire is riven with politics and feuding and is the aim to protect your country or to just finally avenge the results of the last war?

Kuang has created some fascinating characters that appear often as one thing only to turn into the virtual opposite over the story. Enemies can become friends, the mad can be sane and the noble can be ruthless. It’s tempting to call this grimdark but for me that title is almost a genre that delights in showing off moral ambiguity and indulging in the joy of violence. Here violence is shown as ugly, immoral and often perpetrated by all sides There is no joy being taken in the death and destruction we are witnessing which gets darker and more graphic. For me this is an epic fantasy war story examine how a society creates war and the soldiers to fight it.

The latter half of the book examines the merciless nature of battle and I did wonder if there were some parallels with WW2 and the invasion of China with Japan and some of the atrocities performed in that time in the name of an Emperor. My only caveat is that it really does show the starkness of battle and the horrific aftermath creates scenes that some readers may find too upsetting. This also led to the question as to what you need to do to stop the war and is that decision and what it will then unleash justifying the means? In a fantasy environment this means allowing Gods to exert their powers on earth – is that choice justified. Kuang does not make the decision easy and nor is it clear certainly in this first volume that the right answer was used. There are signs an even larger game is being played between these forces and a theme is made about choices – we decide what we want to do, and we must then be responsible for our actions and what that means for our world. Can we still support Rin and her path at the end?

The novel this book most closely reminds me of is The Fifth Season (one of my all-time favourite series) in that it examines how a society gets to where it is and the consequences due to the structure and prejudices created by it. This first volume perhaps has focused more on the build-up and at the end of it we have a very different set-up to the one we joined, and I’m intrigued how the aftermath of these choices will be handled. One of the most impressive fantasy of the year and I think well worth your time.

I would like to write a long essay about the literary pros and cons of this book but what really mattered was the pleasure I had in reading this book.
An entertaining and wonderful fantasy with a lot of world building that reminded me of Judge Dee mysteries (I love that books).
The book is complex and easy to read at same time as you are so enthralled that you just want to read more.
One of the best fantasy I read in a long time.
It's highly recommended to whoever wants to read a fantasy novel that gives you a lot of pleasure in reading it.
Many thanks to HarperCollins UK, HarperFiction and Netgalley for the ARC.

Epic & thought provoking! The Poppy War is a feminist fantasy spilling over with adventure and heart-stopping drama. The prose is both beautiful & devastating and I've no doubt this will feature on countless Best of 2018 lists by the close of the year.

As much as I adored this book it is not for the faint of heart. Many scenes were incredible graphic and harrowing, but the author handles the subject matter with immense skill and sensitivity. I look forward to following her career for years to come!

I received this book from NetGalley for purposes of a review.

3.5 stars, rounded up for sheer ambition and as a debut novel.

This novel follows a protagonist, a young orphaned woman Fang Runin (Rin) as she applies to a military academy, trains to become a proficient warrior and commander and subsequently, takes part in a terrifying, genocidal war. It's a little bit like Ender's Game, only much more realistic, without the homophobia and with a lot more graphically described aftermath of torture.

(If you'll permit me a comparison: if Ender is like Buffy, where the aliens/vampires disappear into dust, this novel is True Blood, and the enemies as well as friends splatter all over.)

This is a hugely impressive project, a fast paced, no-holds-barred, grim story which starts off innocently enough and then doesn't flinch from taking the horrible premise (it occurs in the aftermath of one genocide already) to its logical and historical conclusion (and beyond it). At the same time, it's a reminder for me that grimdark is not my favourite genre.

I think a strength of this novel is that it:
a) does not use genocide to talk about something else - it uses genocide to talk about genocide (and that's my rule of thumb about "does my book need to contain this triggering atrocity")
b) does not excuse its monstrosities, but neither does it flinch from depicting them fully
c) is palpably furious but doesn't romanticise rage and violence.

All the same, I found myself uncertain whether the extent of graphic description of violence was warranted. It was largely realistic, based on what I've read about the events it is modelled after (though, granted, the scale in the novel seems a little larger and the massacre - more thorough and occurring with less preamble). Still, I am not certain if the artistic effect achieved by going into the details is worth it, and whether it becomes more or less affecting. Does it honour the memory of those who really died, to model a fictional narrative so closely upon their suffering, or does it turn it into entertainment, yet another tragedy for the readers to be shocked by, a form of misery and torture porn? Obviously, the author has thought about it, but I'm still uncertain, and I think each reader has to decide for themselves; I personally wouldn't have been less emotionally affected by a more circumspect story. I think I could have been as angry without gazing; I'm not sure if what I did by reading was witnessing or gaping.

This novel asks a lot of valuable and important questions, including about what makes people commit unimaginable horrors upon one another. It doesn't really answer them (or only partly), and I suppose it remains to be seen whether the following volumes will. I suppose that will also clarify, for me, whether the extent of graphic depiction was ultimately gratuitous or necessary.

The one caveat I have: I didn't like the ostensible connection between race/ethnicity and magical ability.

In addition, this is just a personal preference, but I do wish novels that use history to this extent would contain more information at the end, describing the research and informing the readers about the background they may be unfamiliar with. I knew enough to know what to google, but not everyone might.

The Poppy War is less a novel and more a paper-wrapped sucker-punch to the gut. You will think you are prepared, but you will not be. What starts as an almost Rothfuss-esque university story at a prestigious military academy, soon dissolves into an account of the worst things humanity is able to do to one another when the country is invaded.

Thanks for NetGalley for providing me an advanced free copy of this book. Ever since I heard about this book, I was dying to read it. I am a fan of magical worlds and fantasy, especially if its classified as adult fiction and not YA.

This book combines magic, Chinese culture and ancient Gods = Best combination ever.


It took me a while to get into the story, because the first third focused a lot on world building, but afterwards, the plot thickened and I raced right through till the end!

Definitely a 5-star read for me. The only flaw is that it's a part of a trilogy, so I'm going to wait patiently for the sequels...

Personal Thoughts (Spoilers?)

Magical China - The atmosphere in the book is heavily influenced by Chinese culture, which I find refreshing and innovative in Fantasy books. I have never read a book that included religious ceremonies that transcended into magic and opened portals to other realms, so it was a very interesting experience. it's worth noting that there is no magic in the first third of the book. I almost had to re-read the summary, to make sure I am reading the correct book, but once it's revealed... Everything bursts into flames.

Orphan heroine - Like many other fictional heroines, Rin, has no loving family. She doesn't know her origins and has no attachments in the world. Being an orphan makes her commit some very questionable actions that escalate as the book progresses. It makes sense, in a way, cause if she had a good support system, she wouldn't get herself in all that mess, but then, there would be no book, right?

Destiny vs Predestination - One of my favorite parts in the book focuses on this theme. It raises some questions about free will and the power of people. Are we free to do as we please or is everything written in the stars? This book has a unique answer to this question.

Value of life -The second half of the book is set during war time. As readers, we are not spared from the atrocious and vivid descriptions of death and battle. The author wants to shock us and show us the brutality of war. We learn that in every war, there are no winners or loses, since both sides lose so much...

This book is very recommended. It's a highly enjoyable and addictive read! Can't wait for the next one in the series.

Debut date: May 1, 2018

I received a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.  I alternated between this copy and the finished copy I purchased for myself.  This is a spoiler-free review.

Despite people saying this is a YA book it is absolutely not, please don’t be fooled by the YA-esque beginning.



I had been hearing so much about The Poppy War via social media and knew I had to try for a copy on Netgalley.  I began reading my digital ARC, made it a few chapters in, and bought the book. I can confidently say that this is one of the best books I’ve read this year.

I’m not really sure where to start with this book, and I mean that in the best way possible.  Kuang has written what is easily the best fantasy debut of the year so far, and I don’t see how other authors will be able to take that crown from her. The Poppy War is a brutal look at history through the lens of grimdark fantasy, and it is not for the faint of heart.  Here are the content warnings that the author has provided:

Self-harm
Suicide
Violent rape (off-screen, but described by a victim)
Sexual assault
Murder
Massacres
Brutalization
Mutilation
Torture
Substance abuse
Abuse
Emotional abuse
Physical abuse
Relationship abuse
Human experimentation
Chemical warfare
Genocide

Like I said, not for the faint of heart.  However, Kuang does not glorify this content, which is something I’ve spotted grimdark authors doing in the past.  You all may or may not know that the use of rape in fantasy is one of my major problems with the genre because it’s gratuitous and overused, so believe me when I say that every single choice she makes to include this content makes sense with the story.  Kuang bases much of the book on the Second Sino-Japanese War, and notable chapters include scenes inspired by the Rape of Nanking and Unit 731. Her drawing on real events adds to the gravity of the wartime atrocities committed in the book -- these things can happen, and have happened, in real life.  I went into The Poppy War knowing that such things were in the book, and I still struggled to read the notorious Chapter 21. I say all of this early on in my review because I think I would have really struggled if I didn’t know about the content beforehand, and I wanted to give a heads-up to other readers.

In terms of world building, Kuang does a great job of adding detail to the world without slowing down the narrative.  At 527 pages, The Poppy War is quite the tome and there just isn’t room for dumping information about the world and culture on the reader.  Because the book is based so heavily on China and Chinese history, the reader can fill in some of the gaps themselves, which is a smart way of handling world building and one of the reasons I love historically based fantasy.  The magic system makes sense, is well thought out, and is compelling. I really loved that magic doesn’t dominate the story, and when it comes into play it is more of a fact of the world than some mysterious force.  I can’t say too much here without spoilers, but I loved the fact that magic use is difficult, doesn’t come easily to users, and has consequences.

Now, onto our girl Rin.  I absolutely loved Rin as a character -- talk about a breath of fresh air.  The first thing of note about Rin is the fact that she is exactly what Kuang says she is.  So often in fantasy we get characters we’re told are clever, or strong, or badass, but they don’t turn out that way.  Rin is smart, fierce, determined, stubborn, sarcastic, and angry. This translates into the incredibly badass and flawed heroine that we are promised.  However, things don’t come easily to her and I think this is one of the best aspects of her characterisation -- she easily could have been a Mary Sue-esque character and its a testament to Kuang's writing that she is not. She works her ass off to achieve her goals and I absolutely love her for it.  She’s not necessarily someone I’d like to know in real life, but I loved reading about her and she’s one of my new favourite characters. I wish more authors would create incredible women like Rin.

I could seriously go on and on about this book, but I’ll cut it short here.  It is dark, it is brutal, but it is also well-crafted and a pleasure to read. If you’re interested in historical or military fantasy, strong female characters, books with minimal to no romance, strong friendships between characters (regardless of gender), or interesting magic systems, then I urge you to give The Poppy War a try.  Don’t miss out on one of the best books of 2018.

So, this was awesome. Such a relief too since I've had to DNF a few fantasies this year, most of which I was super pumped for. So much happens in this book that it almost feels like a trilogy unto itself, but the pace is quick throughout and I was never bored. The action scenes are so vividly written that it sometimes felt like a graphic novel, and I loved how layered and different the relationships between the characters were.

I feel like I don't want to say too much since this book is such a great, surprising journey I think it's best to go in knowing less, but trust the hype on this one. It's real.

The book is set in a fantasy world, in the Nikara Empire, who have an uneasy truce with their neighbour and former occupying power the Mugen Federation. It follows Rin, a young girl from the rural south of Nikara, as she tries to gain entry to the most prestigious school in the country – Sinegard – to avoid an arranged marriage, and then her studies there and development into a military leader. When she arrives at Sinegard, however, she discovers that things are not as straightforward as they seem, and there are powers in the world that seem like the stuff of legend, rather than reason.

One of the things I loved about this book was that it wasn’t set in a Western-style world, but instead in a country which closely paralleled China, and Mugen playing the part of Japan. I only know the faintest bits of history for that area of the world, but I was able to identify certain parallels – some stories were taken directly from Chinese history, such as the monk who sat in a cave and stared at a wall for seven years, listening to the ants scream. Even the description of the woodcut image accompanying the story is recognisable to the one I have seen, and this close parallel I think made the world feel more solid for its description, although it did raise some questions in later parts of the book. Mostly, however, I loved the different voice you had as a result of this setting, and it was so rich and delightful and refreshing to read.

I would say there are trigger warnings – drug use and self-harm for the majority of the book, but in the latter third we are exposed to the extreme atrocities of war. This seemed to come a little out of nowhere for me. Whilst the book had dealt with serious issues, and death, and it hadn’t shied away from discussing war and bloodshed, the chapter dealing with these atrocities took things so much further, made the narrative so much darker. It was unexpected, but narratively it worked for me in that these atrocities would always be unexpected – no-one in their right mind would expect anything of this nature. This marks a turning point for the characters as well, and you see questions of sanity, morality and the varying nature of good and evil. Whilst the first two thirds of the book are socio-political, the latter turns into a very dark narrative on sanity and war crimes which perhaps would not be too far away from Heart of Darkness in its depiction of what total immersion in aggression can do to you psychologically. Equally, given how closely the book has followed Chinese history and is so anchored in this world, these atrocities do raise some questions for me about how much is drawn from reality at this stage, which perhaps makes things that little bit more uncomfortable than they already are. On the author’s blog, she states it’s influenced by the 1937 Rape of Nanjing, and I find her thoughts very interesting. This level of understanding of Chinese history that grounds her book is why it works so well, and why it feels so real. The author is sensitive to the triggering material as well, and gives specific chapter warnings in her blog post – I highly recommend reading it.

This appears to be the first of at least two books, so whilst the end resolves, it is not a neat ending, or one where you feel the characters have reached their full potential. The next book will be an interesting exploration of the repercussions from the first book, and I have no doubt, based on this, that they will be handled sensitively and with great care.

I am not sure whether this book is strictly a young adult book – I have seen some criticism levelled at it saying it is not, but I have also not seen anything suggesting that it is meant to be young adult. Perhaps this assumption was made based on the age of the main character. I think it is aimed at a crossover market, and it definitely would appeal to a huge range of readers. The narrative is strong and fluent, the pacing is extraordinary, and the issues and themes in it are meaty and handled well. I think Rin is a wonderful main character, flawed and rounded in so many ways, and I adored the setting and mythology that came from it. It was the book I hadn’t known I’d wanted, and it was like a breath of fresh air.

[I was sent an ARC of this book via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review]
The Poppy War is a Chinese-inspired military fantasy novel following a teenage orphan named Rin from her admission to a strict and elitist military academy to all the events that ensue soon after. It relies heavily on folklore and mythology elements, as well as more recent history such as the second Sino-Japanese war. Despite the young age of the protagonist, though, this is NOT a young adult book: it has heavy grimdark tones, it deals with heavy topics such as war crimes and genocide and it isn't a hopeful, light-hearted story at all. It's stunning nonetheless, but I suggest you keep your heads up - particularly in the second and third part. I'm still baffled at how solid this book feels, especially for a debut novel: if I didn't know it already, I'd say that it was written by a way more mature author! The only reasons I gave it 4.5/5 stars instead of a full 5/5 is because the context feels a bit disjointed between the first and the second part; both were, as I said before, solid and well-written contexts, but they didn't transition as smoothly into one another as I would've wanted. Overall, I was thrilled to read this book and ended up finishing it in less than three days; I recommend it wholeheartedly, although perhaps just to my older audience.

I initially heard about THE POPPY WAR because of a lot of discussion on Twitter over whether the book was to be considered adult or young adult fiction. I requested a copy from NetGalley, because whether it was adult or YA, it sounded great – epic fantasy inspired by Chinese history with a female protagonist using shamanic powers and fighting in a war – very up my street! I’m also madly envious that the author is younger than me…*grumbles and returns to own manuscript*

I’m going to put it simply – this book, in my opinion anyway, is adult fiction. The second half is incredibly dark and I’ve seen that a lot of people find it disturbing, and it’s very long (over 500 pages) – it’s really rare to find a YA debut (even in fantasy) that is quite as long and complex as this. Not to say YA can’t be complex – but publishers definitely seem to prefer YA to be very tightly written with not as much room for worldbuilding as adult fantasy affords. However, if you do love epic fantasy YA and accept that the content may be triggering (there are too many awful things to list – sexual assault, mutilation, drug abuse, self-harm, and many more) – then you’ll likely enjoy this. The actual writing style feels very YA in tone (Rin is a teenager too), but the subject matter and scope of the book is very much adult. You have been warned!

I went into this without much knowledge of Chinese history, but this doesn’t matter. Kuang doesn’t make assumptions on the behalf of the reader and carefully details the world of Nikan – it’s one of the most realistic fantasy settings I’ve read in a long time, helped by just how massive it feels – the land is divided into “provinces” that are named for the animals of the Chinese zodiac.

The first half of the book is where I think the YA confusion comes in – it’s a bit Potter-esque, with Rin getting into a special military school where she eventually learns to use shamanic powers. It felt very familiar in this regard, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing – it’s a good way of helping the reader learn about the world. However, the threads of darkness are already there from the beginning – it’s quickly made clear that opium addiction is a serious problem in the land, and Rin’s method of getting herself to focus on her studies is to burn herself. And this is in the LIGHT section of the book. We haven’t even got to the actual war yet.

The second half of the book is where the action really kicks off, as Rin becomes involved in the third Poppy War. A common flaw I find with a lot of fantasy is that it isn’t gruesome enough – people are mowed down in wars, but it’s all very bloodless, faceless carnage, that doesn’t properly display the true horror of war. Let me assure you right now, THE POPPY WAR does *not* have that problem. What happened to the civilians that Rin and her cohorts discover were overrun by the enemy is truly horrendous – you’ll need a strong stomach for this part. I did hear before I read the book that a lot of the awful scenes were inspired by the Rape of Nanking, a truly horrific event that occurred during WWII when Japanese soldiers invaded China. I saw that Kuang said that she found this section of the book to be incredibly difficult to write, and I can understand why. It would be gruesome enough, but the knowledge that it’s based on true events makes it even worse, and adds an extra layer to the horror.

I was predicting a romance thread (there’s a couple of hints towards it) but was pleasantly surprised to find that it didn’t evolve into anything – the relationships Rin forges with the other soldiers and her teacher feel strong and real enough that I don’t think any romance was actually necessary. Altan was one of my favourite characters – I’m a big fan of strong, broody guys with lots of power and tortured pasts, and seeing him and Rin grow to know and understand each other better was great.

Rin herself is a great character who I quickly became invested in – from the beginning she’s shown to have a strong resolve, as she studies hard in the face of discrimination in order to get into the best military school in Nikan. I don’t mind “chosen one” fantasy, but it was refreshing to see Rin get into the school entirely based on her own hard work and talent (even though what she did to herself to keep focus was awful!) rather than have it handed to her on a plate because of heritage. Her character arc of learning the power and struggling with it while enduring the horrors of war was great to watch – at one point she is forced to make a horrendous choice which has massive, earth-shattering consequences for both her and Nikan. I love flawed heroines!! Give me more!!

If you like epic, military fantasy YA, you’ll enjoy this – though be warned that it is VERY DARK. There is a reason I keep seeing the word “grimdark” being paired with this book, and that is because it is BLEAK. Make sure you have some chocolate to help you through the second half of the book, and maybe a nice blanket, and some kitten pictures for afterwards.

THE POPPY WAR is a welcome addition to the adult fantasy genre, and it’s refreshing to see another title that’s not just based off historical Europe – the depth and scale of Nikan, as well as the inspired, careful references to Chinese and Japanese history and culture, makes THE POPPY WAR a must-read for anyone who considers themselves a fan of epic fantasy.

I’ve been excited for The Poppy War ever since I first heard about it on twitter, a grimdark military fantasy inspired by historical events and Chinese mythology sounds exactly what I’d love to give a shot to.

I don’t think any grimdark I’ve read slapped me like this before, with such force, and I even welcomed it. Thanks to the author’s presence on twitter and her care to warn people of the extremely violent parts of her debut novel, I knew what I was getting into and was prepared for what was to come.

This book is graphic, this book is violent, this book doesn’t shy away from some horrific things that actually happened in history, but this isn’t all done only for the shock value. None of it is gratuitous, none of it is written carelessly. The author took care to look at history straight in the face, and make the reader do it as well. Some parts left me in shock, but I do think it is necessary.

The Poppy War has been compared to Avatar: The Last Airbender because of the fire abilities the main character learns to master and of the apparent presence of ancient gods. Kuang even does not make it a secret that Azula is an inspiration for her main protagonist. For those who are not familiar with her, she is a skilled strategist and obsessed with power, something we do not see often enough regarding female characters, especially younger ones.

Runin (Rin for short) is all of this and more. Driven and ready to do whatever it takes to escape the future that would await her, she decides to do everything she can to join the military instead. Rin has to work really hard, push herself in even unhealthy ways to get what she wants and needs. Some parts really resonated with me as a university student, and I can imagine it comes from experience, seeing as the author is a scholar as well, open about her work on her master thesis on twitter.

Another thing I loved about this book was the found family theme found in the later part of the novel, after Rin’s time at the Academy. This novel has basically everything I like in fantasy novels: from the school setting, to the unlikely friendship, with magic and special mentor, found family and epic battles, but also historical and social commentary.

Morally grey characters, unexpected choices, grief and anger, compassion and disenchantment, vengeance and raw power… This book has it all and Kuang deals masterfully with everything, which is why this is a book I recommend highly, but also that I would be careful to not recommend to everyone because of its very triggering content.

Other cool stuff about it:

talks about periods
back to back fighting a la Rey&Kylo
squad of magical assassins
character development, both for main and secondary characters
laugh out loud moments / horror-stricken moments
gods, monsters, so much magic
so many amazing quotes

Trigger warnings: ableist language (not addressed), racism and colourism, self harm, suicidal ideation, war, torture, genocide, graphic descriptions, rapes, infanticide, drug use and addiction, mass killing, mutilation, animal cruelty, emotional abuse, physical abuse, relationship abuse, human experimentation
The chapter 21 alludes to the Nanjing Massacre and chapter 24 to Unit 731.

Thanks to the publisher and author for an e-ARC of ‘The Poppy War’ in exchange for an honest review. This ARC being provided in no way influences my review.

And here I thought 2017 was the one-off year for fantastic debuts. Well, I was wrong. The Poppy War has entrenched itself as one of the best debuts of 2018 and is a must-read for fantasy/grimdark fanboys/girls.

This is the story of Rin, a war orphan from Rooster Province, who wants to escape the shackles of her foster family and their drug dealing empire; one that will be made greater seeing her wedded to a man three times her age and having a marriage that will bear much fruit. What Rin wants more than anything is to study for and take the Keju – an exam that sees youths in the Empire with the highest scores training at Sinregard, the most elite military school in Nikan.

But when she passes the Keju with top marks, everyone, including Rin, is baffled by the results.

She is then whisked away to Sinregard where she will train to become a great warrior while the Federation of Mugen sets it’s sights on Nikan, a land it held until the Second Poppy War disarmed it’s grip. The Federation seems to have the likely upper hand, at least until Rin discovers a hidden power within herself; one that will allow a God to flow through her and use her as a tool for destruction.

While I have seen some comparisons to Anthony Ryan’s novel ‘Blood Song’, a novel which I have not read but have had on my TBR pile for some time, the only thing I have read that I can somewhat compare it to is ‘Red Sister’ by Mark Lawrence. You have a strong female protagonist from an impoverished background who goes off to a school to become a fierce warrior, is looked upon as an outsider and bullied by her peers, is put through intense/violent academic tests, and has a power hidden just below the surface that is ready to reveal itself.

That is not to say this novel is a rip-off or completely unoriginal. Kuang has created a grimdark and beautiful world that we should all just be happy to be apart of, even if only for 544 pages. Lucky for us, there are more books on the way!

The novel is stunning and Kuang shows off masterful craft in her execution, but it is also the darkest shade of black in terms of violence, rape, torture, and utter destruction of civilization. It is agonizingly emotional and tears at your heartstrings in the most gruesome of ways. A novel inspired by real events that happened in the 1930s in Nanjing, China called the ‘Nanking Massacre’, which just adds to the overall brutality of the story.

I don’t normally give half stars out, but this one most certainly earns a 4.5/5 for my sheer enjoyment of it’s characters and world. Rin is one of the strongest female leads I have ever had the opportunity to walk hand in hand with, and one that I became emotionally glued to throughout her journey. I cannot wait to see what Kuang has in store for Rin, especially after that hellishly dark ending she put us all through.

Perfect for fans of grimdark and military fantasy everywhere. A YA book this is not, so do not treat it as such.

I have no idea how to review a book like this; some books take you on a journey, but only The Poppy War could offer a journey like this one. With a slow building start, dramatic twists, heartbreaking scenes, vicious violence & intelligent writing beyond compare, The Poppy War is sure to be a book that goes down in history.

This book contains violence & distressing war scenes throughout, plus drug abuse, descriptions of rape & details of genocide.

Trigger Warnings

Self-harm
Suicide
Violent rape
Sexual assault
Murder
Massacres
Brutalization
Mutilation
Torture
Substance abuse
Abuse
Emotional abuse
Physical abuse
Relationship abuse
Human experimentation
Chemical warfare
Genocide
I got these from the author's website and if you want to know more you can find that here.

My thoughts

Before I start this review I wanted to emphasise this is an adult book and if anything triggers you, you should look at the trigger warnings above.

This book was a hard book to get through. Not because of the writing but because of the subject matter. It is essentially about a world where war is on the horizon again and preparing for it. It's about the brutality of war and the lengths people go to win it.It's about a girl evading an arranged marriage to go to school.I really enjoyed the writing style but in some parts it was a bit vague,especially in the school years. 2-3 years went by but each major event happened in a few paragraphs. We were told what happened and didn't get to see it in detail.The book is already 544 pages so I understand why it was shortened. I understand this is based on modern Chinese history and it is brutal. Other than focusing on war, the first part of the book is about Rin and how she overcomes the bullying she faces and tries to come out on top. I loved that this book had no romance as most books have them in some shape or form.

I really liked Rin and how determined she is to get what she wants. You watch her grow up and be herself. She faces a lot of racism because her skin is darker than others, she also faces hardships because she's from a poorer distract. She shows them that that can't stop her and hard work pays off.One of my favourite characters have to be Jiang. I think he's really weird and essentric.He's the character who brought a little light to a otherwise dark book. At least in the start of the book.

I don't have much to say about this book,even though I've been thinking for days on how to write this.I might have to come and update this when I can artiulate my words. Just know I highly recommend this book.

5/5 

*Thank you to netgalley and Harpercollins UK for the e-arc.                                                   All views expressed are my own.

5/5 

*Thank you to netgalley and Harpercollins UK for the e-arc.                                               
 All views expressed are my own.

So this one grabbed my attention from the start. Initially, it sounds like an Asian Hogwarts, a story of 'girl outsider makes good', a rousing tale of success against challenge.

And to begin, it does feel a little like that. The first half of the story is nothing particularly new. Told mainly in the first-person, it is that of Fang Runin (Rin), a young orphan working as a slave for a gangster family in the rural backward Southern province of Tikany. By working all of her spare time, she manages to pass the prestigious entrance exams to the countries elite military academy in Sinegard.

There she struggles against all the challenges that social class, and her classmates, set her against.

What the book does in the second half of the novel, after the initial set up, is send Rin down a path that leads her to new experiences and ideas – a world of Lore, where, under the guidance of Jiang, a maverick mentor, she finds that taking poppy seeds opens her up to a realm of Gods left pretty much unnoticed for centuries. This leads her to a greater destiny….

At first glance. it feels that the book could be marketed as a YA book. There are reasons for this - the author is in her twenties, the lead character is a teenager, and there’s a lot about being at school and the difficulties of passing exams. I’m not entirely sure myself, for reasons that I will explain later, but with such a synopsis, I can see why teenage readers will find it attractive. It is full of things that many teenagers will not have limited knowledge or experience of – love, drugs, independence, relationships, for example – and by writing about such matters creates a glimpse into a possible future, and how some may choose to live their lives.

And rather like a difficult teenager, the first part of the book feels like it sits at that point between childhood and adulthood. There’s mention of sex (but nothing too explicit), and heartfelt swearing (the f-word and others), and all those issues of being at school and whilst at school – friends, enemies, relationships, bullying, physical changes, difficult teachers, scary adults, drugs – all in an Asian setting.

This may sound attractive – and there’s a lot to like in this first part of the book,admittedly -  but it’s not without its issues. Like a typical teen (if there is such a thing), for me the beginning of the book lurched from one emotion to another. From the start The Poppy War is very much an ‘all or nothing’ kind of book – there are no half-measures. Our heroine is not just good, she is the BEST - the top of the class in her small province, and elsewhere. As the book progresses, this full-on attitude continues. Urban life is not just scary, we have to have Rin’s arrival in Sinegard highlighted by the killing of a child by a carriage in the streets, killed because it is easier to do so than allow the child a potential disability claim in the future, to show the reader how BAD it is. (Worse mutilations and killings happen later in the book, partly for the same reason.) This extremism is continued in the characterisation - we don’t just love our heroes – we LOVE them, we don’t just hate our enemies, we HATE them, and so on.

My fear at the beginning was that this would be a book that simplifies viewpoints to the point of being bipolar, with little subtlety, few shades of grey.

Pleasingly, though the book moves away from this quite quickly. The second half of the book settles things down a little and moves the plot away from the predictable. The plot steps up a gear as Rin finds that she is involved in a war. When the Mugan Federation invades Nikara, Sinegard is under siege and the academy closed. Rin finds herself using her new-found skills to defend the city of Khurdalain as a Cike, one of the super-elite ninja warriors (‘the freak squad’) trained to do the Empress’s bidding. Her friend and fellow student, Altan, is her commander and one of the few survivors from the island of Speer, which was wiped out in the last Poppy War. His command of the Cike leads to Rin discovering about her past and her future, developing abilities she didn’t know she could have, and becoming a shamanistic conduit between the Pantheon of Gods and humans.

The book is also a story with its parallels in history – the evil Empire is (rather obviously) China, with the Mugen Federation Japan, and ‘little island’ Speer perhaps Taiwan. For all of the brutality, it is rather sobering that similar events have occurred in real life - for example, the destruction of Nanking in the 1930’s is allegedly the ‘inspiration’ for some of the events in the war in the later part of this novel.

At the same time, The Poppy War is also a very angry book. Rin faces racism, class war and prejudice and deals with them all, often with a smack in the face. As she trains to become one of the elite, she struggles with her emotions, betrayal, torture and (again, rather teenage-like) the general unfairness of everything to the extent that by the end of the book The Poppy War feels like one long proverbial scream in the wind, a railing against the world.

This is also true of the book’s ending. It is the cumulation of choices made throughout the book – good, bad and sometimes impossible - with consequences for Rin and her friends that are not always positive. There is resolution, but the usual ending which leads to the next book in a proposed trilogy.

In short, The Poppy War is not for everyone. It is, in essence, a bildungsroman story of teenage drug addicts and their importance on a Fantasy world. Whilst there is undeniably a pace and a drive in the plot, it is also brutal and unsubtle, unremitting in its anger and its viciousness. But I can see this one generating the buzz that Twilight once did. For all of its Fantasy setting, with its talk of Gods, most importantly, it’s also an encapsulation of adolescence in a Grimdark fantasy setting. And it is miles away from Harry Potter.

The Poppy War by R F Kuang (review copy from Harper Voyager) is a stunning and gut-wrenching debut. Kuang mixes up real historical events (such as the Rape of Nanjing) with bigotry and violence to tell a complex story of betrayal and revenge.

The novel opens as Fang Runin (Rin) - a war orphan - is studying for the entrance exam to earn a scholarship place at Sinegard, the foremost military academy in Nikara. Education is Rin's escape from her abusive foster parents and the prospect of an unwanted marriage. It offers her the chance of independence and a career. Successful, she finds herself one of a group of new students at Sinegard. But her education is interrupted when the always strained relations with neighbouring country Mugen erupt into war. Mugen and Nikara have a history of tit-for-tat conflict, with peace always uneasy and never lasting long. Both countries have long memories and lists of the war crimes committed by the other.

The early parts of The Poppy War have the feel of Pat Rothfuss's The Name of the Wind - student from the wrong side of the tracks enrols in school, makes enemies among the students and tutors, but catches the attention of the most eccentric and elusive of the school's tutors, the Lore tutor Jiang. Rin learns that the stories of her childhood about gods and men able to summon them and their magic have truth in them. Under Jiang's supervision she begins to learn how to access her spiritual side and the Pantheon of the gods. This is in sharp contrast to the rest of her training on military medicine, strategy and history.

The latter parts of the book are pure military fantasy, with shades of Steven Erikson's Malazan Book of the Fallen. Rin's loyalty to her command structure and her patriotism to the Empress and Nikara is tested to the limits as the novel progresses. This is a novel that asks us to choose between conflicting loyalties at every turn.

The Poppy War is strong on the horrors of war (particularly the sequence based on the Rape of Nanjing, where the invading Japanese army massacred the civilian population of the city) and the camaraderie between unit members. It draws heavily on the contested history between China and Japan, particularly the Second Sino-Japanese War. (Kuang's academic background is in this period of history.) The military incidents in the book are modelled on that war, right down to the use of chemical and biological weapons.

This is a novel with a fantastic level of class-consciousness and awareness of inequality and prejudice. Although the national examinations are supposed to be meritocratic, they inevitably favour the rich and privileged who can afford the classical education tested for. Sinegard is the only college that offers a full scholarship - for all the others the student's family must meet the costs of their education. So, while superficially meritocratic, this education system acts as a tool to reinforce and embed the privilege and stratification in Nikara society. Although Rin's fellow Sinegard student Altan Trengsin, the last of the Speerlies (a nation of fearsome warriors with the reputation of being able to summon fire, who were wiped out in a brutal act of genocide in the last war), is idolised for his fighting skills, he is treated as a curiosity and freak: mocked for his dark skin and the target of all the other students.

Rin is the inevitable product of this society. Abused and exploited as a child and the victim of racist and classist bullying at Sinegard, she is used to mistreatment. That for her is normal. She blackmails her childhood tutor to help her prepare for the exam. She gets through her studying by self-harming. Anger at her mistreatment and the fragility of her life and future are what keep her going and focused on her education. When she does encounter kindness, from Jiang, she doesn't quite know how to respond to it. Ironically she ends up most comfortable in the strict hierarchy of the Militia, where she can rail against orders and authority, but within the familiar context of abusive and controlling power structures.

To that extent it is no wonder that The Poppy War ends where it does. This is a book about what happens when you dehumanise people and push them to their limits of pain and endurance. That this is a story rooted in real history makes this all the more chilling. Anger and the desire for revenge are powerful motives, but they are inherently destructive ones. Almost inevitably, the abuse victim lashes out in revenge, but the price is a terrible one.

Goodreads rating: 5*

<i>The Poppy War</i> is the kind of book that I feel (and hope) will take 2018 by storm. It's a brilliant example of an inversion of tropes that manages to lull you into a false sense of security with its focus on the familiar before throwing you right into the midst of a war. It's a book that starts by feeling like a historical fiction novel (with mentions of legends and gods and fire shamans, but all within the context of being a myth, something to scare the children) and then it turns into something so dark, so gritty and so violent, I had to recover from the whiplash. And I absolutely <i>loved</i> it, because it's fierce and it's real and it covers an area and a time in our own history that I personally have never seen before in fantasy: the Opium Wars of China and the conflict with Japan (up to and including the Rape of Nanking).

The story starts off with Rin, a war orphan who lives with an abusive family peddling the highly illegal drug opium, and her attempt at escaping the futures her guardians envision for her: one where she is married off to further their illegal activities. So through sheer grit and determination (and not without quite literal pain), she studies for the Keju, the highly prestigious exam that would send her to Sinegard Academy and a freedom she daren't dream of. But, as it transpires, life at the Academy isn't quite what Rin expected it to be and soon, she learns the true purpose of the school: to prepare you for war.

So far so Harry Potter clone, right? I admit that I sincerely appreciated where the book went, but to begin with, I wasn't exactly blown away. The worldbuilding is top notch (and Kuang continues this throughout the novel, minor details that expand her world and characters, building a picture of a setting that feels lived in, with centuries of history and mythology behind it. The Sinegard chapters read like a darker Harry Potter, until you encounter the first sign this may not be going quite where you think it is: <spoiler>when Rin decides to sterilise herself rather than go through periods</spoiler>, a moment so grim and so brutal that showed me we weren't (and never had been) in Hogwarts anymore.

Then, about halfway through the book, as the action ramps up, the stakes get even higher and Rin is forced to face some harsh truths about her country's history, its actions in the war and the deeper truth of her own nature (not to mention that when the fantasy bits come in, everything is thrown off kilter in the most spectacular way). The ending is so amazingly over the top, so brutal, so unbelievable that I was left wanting more (and I don't know how I could possibly deal with this if this were actually a standalone novel) and I desperately want to know more about what's going to happen next. To Rin, to her world, to her friends and companions, because if we really are looking at a fantasy reimagining of China, some really horrific things are about to hit us (even <i>more</i> horrific than what we've experienced so far).

But <i>The Poppy War</i> does so much more than just explore the horrors of war; it tackles racism (and classism), it tackles magic, it tackles <i>genocide</i> in ways that are new and refreshing. It's a brilliantly written work of fiction, able to go from the mundane interactions over dinner to visceral scenes of brutality and death. It completely takes the tropes we have come to accept from a fantasy novel and flips them on its head. And it asks questions about humanity, about war and its repercussions, about the lengths to which regimes go in order to protect themselves from change (as well as related questions about how change should be enacted - how brutal should the revolution be, and in Rin's shoes, what would your choices look like?).

I loved this book and if Kuang can keep up the good work, I can easily see myself putting this in my top 10 series. It does so many things so well and all I can hope for is that others also notice this and ensure the hype trains keeps on chugging.

Rin is only sixteen when she passes the Keju, the Empire-wide test to find the best and brightest, and enters the Academy to escape an arranged marriage and finally prove herself worthy. But passing the test and training at the academy, Rin learns, are two completely opposite things. Once she’s there, she instantly targeted for her skin, her poverty and her gender. A war orphan from the Rooster Province shouldn’t last a day in the Academy. While a war grows between the Empire and the Federation of Mugen, Rin’s powers may be the only thing that can save her people. Until she learns that she holds a power that could cost her the price of her own humanity.

I have no doubt that this book will top most end of year lists. Believe the hype. It’s truly worth it.

Check the content warnings at the end because The Poppy War is not a simple read. It’s fast paced, bloody and detailed with its scenes of violence. Fang ‘Rin’ Runin is an ambitious war orphan who blackmails her own way into the Keju examination and is forced to contend with students whose privilege put their experience years before her own. Her drive to do better and take a reign on her life is powerful and fantastic to read.

The cast of characters we interact with are extremely diverse and intricately detailed with complex and unique characterisations. You hate them in one page but slowly sympathise in the next. Their choices are dangerous but realistic. The story is uncomfortable but so real to read.

There’s a lot of scenes that are, I warn, very, very dark. Horrifically violent that felt physically ill to read at multiple points. If you’ve looked into the book world, The Poppy War is everywhere. And rightfully so. But take note before you jump into this book.

The scale and depth of The Poppy War makes this book nothing short of a masterpiece. The strong world-building with its detailed and crafted characters as they try to survive this brutal and devastating world.

I’m excited to see where it will from here and what we’ll expect to see in future novels. Watch out for this series. It’s here to stay.

This book blew me away. I fell in love with the characters, and it kept me captivated through out. It’s brutal and hard to read, but then can be so inspirational at other points in the story. I wasn’t expecting to love it as much as I did. For sure my fave book I’ve read in 2018