The Poppy War is better than average fantasy that pulls in some interesting pieces, but doesn't quite integrate all its parts into a truly great whole.

Rin is an shopgirl and orphan living in the south of a large but fragile empire modeled on China. To avoid a forced marriage to an older man, she studies like mad for the national examinations, aces them, and winds up going to the elite military academy of Sinegard. There, the outcast Rin outshines the pampered elite and becomes an initiate of a secret magical tradition. There's little time to savor her lessons, because soon their traditional enemy (a stand-in for Japan) attacks, and repeatedly crushes what feeble resistance Rin's nation can offer. As Rin survives sack and siege, she falls in with an elite assassination unit of magical adepts, shamans who can make the gods manifest. Shamanism is a powerful weapon, but channeling too much power leads to madness, and Rin's patron of the Phoenix is a particularly dangerous one, asking for endless sacrifice.

So what's good here? The usual fantasy-school plotline is handled with appreciable style and understanding for the tropes. Mythic China is better than a usual setting. The frank depictions of warfare and the use of hallucinogen drugs to spark shamanic voyages are outstanding.

And yet, it doesn't quite work. Cities are put to the sword, but Rin's friends lead charmed lives. Shamanism gives supernatural powers, and yet it feels surprisingly mundane. There's a kind of holistic unity between character, plot, setting and theme, which The Poppy War falls just short of, and for two good ideas, there's too many that I've seen before. In a world where The Traitor Baru Cormorant, City of Stairs, and even Low Town exist, The Poppy War is a good book, but not a great one.