The Dragon Republic was a great follow up to the Poppy War! The book starts immediately with a lot of action, and continues on with a really fast paced story. R.F. Kuang has a way with words that makes you feel so much emotion in very few words Her words are very succinct and cut right to the heart.

This installment was much less gruesome than the first book (or maybe I was intentionally dulling my senses toward it because I'm still a bit scarred from

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Venka explaining what happened to her

in book one.) Though it still had the heavy topics that I expected with drug addiction, attempted suicide, self harm, etc.

Rin is such an infuriating character sometimes, but I found myself liking her so much more in this book. My favorite part was how Kuang did such a great job with keeping her characterization

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heavy and troubled, but through that, reminding us that Rin is really just a kid. It's something we forget, but through her trauma and struggles, we see moments of her lost childhood coming through. Something we've known about her from the very beginning, but I loved the portrayal in this book.