Reviews tagging 'Drug use'

The Poppy War by R.F. Kuang

1836 reviews

themoostconfused's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark emotional reflective sad tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Addiction, Body horror, Body shaming, Bullying, Child abuse, Child death, Confinement, Death, Domestic abuse, Drug abuse, Drug use, Emotional abuse, Genocide, Gore, Infertility, Misogyny, Physical abuse, Racism, Rape, Self harm, Sexual assault, Sexual violence, Slavery, Suicidal thoughts, Torture, Violence, Forced institutionalization, Xenophobia, Blood, Vomit, Trafficking, Kidnapping, Grief, Murder, Fire/Fire injury, Toxic friendship, Colonisation, War, Injury/Injury detail, and Classism

Minor: Animal cruelty and Excrement

katiemac620's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional informative tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

Sometimes it's good to pick up a book without really knowing what it's about in order to avoid your expectations. And this is not one of those books. I really am conflicted about this story, it's so vividly written but jarringly sewn together that it should have been multiple books itself. I loved the first half where Rin is at the academy, and it is a good juxtaposition to the war in the second half. But by the end of the book I didn't like any of our main characters, especially Rin. The end of the book left such a bad taste in my mouth that I don't think I can continue with the series. (Just for notes: this is the first time I'm using the content warnings feature on this site and I've had to list 14 explicit warnings)

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Child abuse, Child death, Death, Drug abuse, Drug use, Emotional abuse, Genocide, Gore, Physical abuse, Rape, Murder, Fire/Fire injury, War, and Injury/Injury detail

emily_therese_4's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark sad slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

2.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Genocide, Racism, Sexual assault, Violence, and War

Moderate: Drug use, Emotional abuse, Physical abuse, and Rape

Minor: Animal death, Misogyny, and Self harm

origami_cactus's review against another edition

medium-paced

1.5

I have mixed feelings about this book. I think there is some good writing in here and I think the first part is strong. However, I think it doesn't follow through on the character development. It uses some horrific events but it doesn't feel like the main character was affected by those events as much as she was affected by a different character's reaction to those events. I felt the ending, while better in my opinion than the 6 or so chapters that came before it, wasn't earned from the set up. I think perhaps it's due to an over reliance on a relationship between two characters that didn't feel strong enough to justify the lengths that Rin went though for them. I'm a bit disappointed because there are great ideas in here, but the execution leaves me wanting.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Addiction, Animal cruelty, Animal death, Child abuse, Child death, Death, Drug abuse, Drug use, Genocide, Gore, Infertility, Physical abuse, Racism, Rape, Sexual assault, Sexual violence, Slavery, Torture, Violence, Forced institutionalization, Xenophobia, Blood, Medical content, Grief, Medical trauma, Murder, Pregnancy, Fire/Fire injury, Colonisation, and War

Minor: Self harm

elenikin's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark emotional mysterious sad tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.75

Kuang is just awesome at world building and writing a fascinating plot! I was really excited start this series after reading (and loving) Babel, and I wasn't disappointed. I liked seeing Rin rise up from her rough beginnings, but things did get dark as it went along. The descriptions of the battles were gruesome but well written. Overall, I'm looking forward to continuing the series and seeing what happens next with Rin. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Gore, Violence, and War

Moderate: Addiction, Drug abuse, and Drug use

Minor: Rape and Sexual violence

bluefrog's review against another edition

dark emotional sad

4.0

It was an amazing read that had a lot of good themes. It would be a 5 but there is a thing that happens at the end of the book that really bothered me and put me off reading for a couple of days. I understand why it happened but still. If you’re interested in read you definitely should but read the content warnings first.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Addiction, Child death, Death, Drug abuse, Drug use, Rape, Violence, Xenophobia, War, and Classism

Moderate: Abortion

Minor: Suicidal thoughts and Suicide attempt

jojotimber's review against another edition

adventurous dark tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death, Drug abuse, Drug use, and War

Moderate: Child death, Self harm, and Torture

Minor: Rape and Sexual violence

annmeyer's review against another edition

dark slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

phenomenally engaging, horrifically graphic. main characters as morally gray as they could get. if there's a book that ought to have trigger warnings this is it.

i want to give the poppy war 5 stars, but i don't think it's without flaws. i think some things could have been done better later on in it and the lack of sufficient paratext about the very real historical background is the biggest one. i think the jarring shift from the pre-war to war periods worked very well at shattering the suspended sense of peace and finding humor in darkness then elevating the stakes of "petty" schoolyard spats and theoretical military conflicts to the unimaginably evil and horrific realities of war. i think rin is naive at times, which can come off as annoying and frustrating in the larger, horrific scheme of things, but that's a crucial part of the bildungsroman, baby, especially given the context of what she witnesses, learns, and experiences when confronting the horrors of the world up close and personal.

i think the fact that r.f. kuang doesn't include a note from the author or some other sort of acknowledgement on historical context is confusing coming out the other side and really irks me as a reader. (part of me is like oh, is it her responsibility to inform us of it, but she literally wrote the damn book. it feels almost icky, especially then seeing people romanticize some parts of the book.)  i think the lines between fantasy and historical fiction felt blurred at times and affected the writing in subtle ways, perhaps treading the line of factual source material. i don't want to have to assume the intentionality or rationale of her decision to fictionalize the surrounding context and not address it, because that's not something i want to have to guess at. (did she worry it would make the fictional plot "too heavy" or somehow not immersive and believable enough? but how do you then draw on real horrors for the sake of entertainment?) of course, i'm "glad" to have been spurred to learn more about the real background (the nanjing massacre and the second sino-japanese war at large) that parts of the poppy war were "loosely" based on. like at least it prompts these sorts of discussions, that alone is obviously important, but surely there are people that don't pick up on it or find out? idk.

i think the ending is pretty strong, although there's at least one explicitly fictional plot point i'm fully refusing to believe is real and will just not be accepting. also, i think it's super weird that prior to reading this i'd seen tiktoks about how fang runin can do no wrong; that all makes me feel a little crazy now knowing the things she does by the book's end. 

i'm heartbroken for so many of the characters. i think everyone deserved better, except the people who didn't. but i think how people draw the line to make that distinction is one of the main points of the book. what differs martyrdom in an effort toward emancipation and vengeance, an eye for the eye for the sake of it? who is to blame for a sequence of horrifically violent events if many people could have potentially altered the course of history? when is a war won or lost? how much blood is enough? can it ever be enough?

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Animal cruelty, Body horror, Child death, Death, Drug abuse, Drug use, Genocide, Gore, Rape, Xenophobia, Blood, Murder, Fire/Fire injury, War, and Injury/Injury detail

quechaya's review against another edition

This is not adult fiction. It is full of YA tropes and the characters are all shallow or caricatures. First the protagonist is a poor orphan turned "chosen one" at a very special academy with a mysterious mentor, and then she joins a group of teenage x-men. Then the story becomes  very thinly veiled "fanfiction" of the Nanjing Massacre and Unit 731. To exploit those atrocities for the plot of a fantasy novel (for personal profit!) is absolutely disgusting in my opinion. Writing a fantasy novel means you should come up with your own fucking war crimes. It's disrespectful AND it's lazy writing. 

Anyway. If you want to experience secondhand trauma from reading about how horrible humans are, you can save yourself a lot of time by skipping this book and just reading the wikipedia pages for the Nanjing Massacre and Unit 731.

This pales in comparison to the book's other problems, but protagonist went on and on about two male characters being "perfect." And the guy she was obsessed with physically abused her multiple times. Cool!

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Addiction, Animal death, Body horror, Bullying, Child abuse, Child death, Cursing, Death, Drug abuse, Drug use, Emotional abuse, Genocide, Gore, Physical abuse, Racism, Rape, Self harm, Sexism, Sexual assault, Sexual violence, Slavery, Torture, Violence, Xenophobia, Blood, Kidnapping, Grief, Medical trauma, Murder, Fire/Fire injury, War, Injury/Injury detail, and Classism

alysha714's review against another edition

This book started off nicely but quickly became too graphic in its descriptions of war. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Child death, Death, Drug abuse, Drug use, Genocide, Gore, Hate crime, Physical abuse, Rape, Sexual assault, Sexual violence, Torture, Violence, Blood, Grief, Murder, Gaslighting, Colonisation, and War