Review: Kuang’s debut novel is a gripping tale of the horrors of war and the cost of revenge. 

 

“The Poppy War” follows Fang Runin (referred to simply as Rin), a war orphan that is one of the select few to successfully test into the most elite military school in Nikara. Once there, she explores the depths of the lethal, unearthly power she possesses. The Nikara Empire is at peace for now, but a Third Poppy War is brewing…and Rin’s shamanic powers may be the only way to save her people. 

 

Kuang masterfully draws from Chinese history, more specifically the Second Sino-Japanese War and the Nanjing Massacre, to create her fictional world and inspire her system of magic. Though I was overwhelmed at times by how dense it was, I really appreciated her detailed world-building and how incredibly realistic it is. She weaves many underlying sociopolitical themes into her storyline, including race, class, colorism, and gender. The end result is a thought-provoking, haunting work of fiction. 

 

I thoroughly enjoyed reading from Rin’s perspective as she navigates life at Sinegard, then life on the battlefield. Her character undergoes massive development with each section of the novel, the jarring tonal shifts making it even more anxiety inducing to witness. At the very beginning, her only worry is to survive school, but once the Federation of Mugen invades, her innocence is pried away from her as she watches fellow classmates be kidnapped, tortured, violated, and killed. With time, war hardens her, her desire for vengeance clouds her decision-making, and the terrible choices she is faced with corrupt her. 

 

Admittedly, the pacing made it more challenging for me to get through this one. Life at the academy propelled the story forward for me, but there were moments—like when Rin and her division spent several weeks waiting for the Federation to strike—where I lost momentum. While I acknowledge that there is down time in war, I feel that had the pacing been more consistent and some of the character relationships been more fleshed out, I would have had a harder time putting this one down. I am interested to see where the story goes in book two.