Reviews

The Burning God by R.F. Kuang

melmmh's review against another edition

4.0

Even though I (correctly) guessed how it would end - I still didn't like it. I understand why Kuang went that direction, but this last book jerked all over the place. It felt much less cohesive. Did I still love it? Absolutely yes. This trilogy has a piece of my heart. I wanted to give it a 3 but went with a 4 because of how much I loved the series overall.

emmaoswald's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark tense slow-paced

3.75

hollyoparker's review against another edition

adventurous emotional tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

orange_flower's review against another edition

adventurous dark fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

1.5

Rin is so unlikeable and annoying and has basically no growth throughout the whole series. Her unhealthy obsession with altan was so cringe, esp the stupid decisions she made bc of it. she just keeps fucking up over and over with no regard for the people who actually love her. And its not even like she's an antihero or morally grey character archetype bc with those types of characters you can understand their reasonings and where their evil stems from (Killmonger, Walter White), but with Rin all of her issues are mostly just the consequences of her own actions. I wanted to think this was intentional, but it continues well into the third book, in fact the whole series and I don't understand what it was supposed to accomplish. I guess now we know that mao zedong was annoying? Her whole arc was giving prince of thorns by mark lawrence lol, just edgy for no reason

there was nothing "new" in the whole series. The author just wrote about stuff that actually happened and changed up the names a little and called it a day. Even the fantasy parts like the pantheon/shamanism is directly from chinese mythology with no alterations or new insights at all...I looked it all up . Theres nothing wrong with taking inspo from historical (eg between shades of grey, the color purple)and mythological (eg percy jackson, narnia) sources, but the author just didn't do it well and that's why the story dragged for much of the series. They spend a lot of time just doing nothing too which makes it even worse. The author also claims to have put the golyn niis massacre in there to raise awareness but to me it felt like she cheapened it by using it in a fantasy novel and as ragefuel for the mc's bad decisions. I think the problem is that she tried to combine history AND mythology AND the mao zedong parallel and it just didn't quite mesh well. She should've stuck to one or the other instead of ruining both.

the plot holes ...the way they spend all of book 2 trying to kill the empress and then all of a sudden theyre working together like besties...be so fr 💀 at first I thought maybe there would be a gotcha at the end where the vipress had been mind controlling them all along but nope. Just that Rin is dumb and trusts anyone despite being betrayed multiple times 😹 she literally got backstabbed by nezha, vaisra, moag, liu gurubai, AND souji TWIIICEEEE and yet she still decides to trust daji....
its also crazy that she saw the massacre at golyn niis and still turns into this war minded "general" who thinks civilian casualties arent important lmao. Who is she gonna rule if they're all dead?  she's claiming to be this tough emotionless machine who doesn't even care about her own people's casualties but when she had the chance to kill daji, moag, and nezha she didnt take it 🤦 smells like selfish and bitch to me! Ok with letting random civilians die bc "war" but doesn't keep the same energy when it's people she personally knows and in fact should probably kill

in conclusion,,, rin is max level smooth brain😹 she doesn't feel like the main character in her own story. Her actions are always driven by someone or something else and she has no personality of her own aside from being a whiny bitch.

there's so many other things as well that were bad about this that I could go on about. But overall this series was disappointing and I feel like I wasted my time reading it. 

bookgraphy's review against another edition

3.75

I don't know how to feel about this, the other two books were so much better and this gave me the same feelings as the last season of GoT. I still enjoyed some parts of it, It's undeniable the writer's ability to make war strategy so interesting! And I still loved the action bits of it.

kunstmithell's review against another edition

adventurous dark sad tense medium-paced

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

4.0

booksbydann's review against another edition

5.0

Dear Rebecca Kuang, why did you have to break me like this?

allisonpuke's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark emotional medium-paced

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

5.0

loonatrum's review against another edition

5.0

no thoughts, soul crashed, staring at my wall. leaving a review isn't enough i need to write a 40 pages analysis on the magnificence of this book/the whole story as it is

syddey_syd's review against another edition

challenging dark sad tense medium-paced

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

3.5

OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOFFFFFFF

That was a RIDE. 

I had a feeling the book would end as it did. This is a fitting—if brutal, sad, and heart wrenching—ending to the Poppy War trilogy. Never before have I read such a complex and anti-hero character. So many times I wished things (by things I mean EVERY part of the series) could have turned out differently, but it wouldn’t have been true to the character. 

I’ll need time to digest the series as a whole. I can’t say it was my favourite to read. I truly disliked Rin about 90% of the time. Her motivations, decisions, and morals were so foreign and distasteful to my own. She had a chance for redemption in the first book and she didn’t take it. If anything, this series is a warning against letting rage and vengeance drive you. It destroyed her relationships, her family, and ever her country. There were so many times I wanted to scream at her to STOP and think, but she never did. 

My biggest critique of this book is the inconsistency in Rin’s character. She’s supposedly incredibly smart and capable—that’s set up in the first few chapters of the first book. But as the story goes on, she seems to have no smarts at all and no ability to strategize (when she was at the top of her strategy class at Sinegard). Perhaps that shift initially comes from her opium addiction, but after she was clean the backsliding continued. I found it hard to believe that someone who was so smart could oftentimes act so stupid, even if she was driven by rage.

For the absolute chaotic mess that this character was, Kuang did a great job at portraying her. I never want to enter that mind again. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Violence, Cannibalism, War, Death, Injury/Injury detail, and Murder