Reviews with content warning for Addiction - Опиумная война

Reviews tagging 'Addiction'

Опиумная война by R.F. Kuang

2266 reviews

kelliemb's review against another edition

5.0

adventurous dark emotional tense

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: Complicated

Loveable characters: Complicated

Diverse cast of characters: Complicated

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

Good book but not everyone’s cup of tea.

Content Warnings

elekat's review against another edition

4.75

challenging dark medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Complicated

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

This book has been on my TBR for over a year, and finally I got my hands on a copy to read and boy was it a read. First of all, the writing! I knew RF Kuang was a phenomenal writer because of Babel and Yellowface , but I wasn’t expecting this. The world was so well thought out, the way the universe magic and supernatural worked so immaculately planned that it didn’t cause my brain to hurt thinking about. Every line felt like it had so much meaning to the rest of the story, painting pictures even without the context.

There were a couple things that immediately caught my attention. First was the way that she used the puppet show to tell the history of the world. The reader leant everything at the same time as Rin, and I think using the puppet show for this was an amazing way to give her (and us) the history without making it some long winded monologue. It also allowed for us to see not only Runin’s reaction, but also that of Kitay. The second piece that had me immediately was the conversation about religion between Jiang and Runin. I don’t have words for how that conversation hit, and how it seemed to encapsulate both sides of the arguments for and against religions.

I’m excited to read the next book in the trilogy, even though I know I’m going to be emotionally destroyed again.

Content Warnings

ben_dover's review against another edition

3.75

adventurous dark emotional medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Complicated

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

Content Warnings

libbymonroe's review against another edition

3.5

adventurous dark tense medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Plot

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: No

Diverse cast of characters: Complicated

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

Content Warnings

indigo_scout's review against another edition

4.5

adventurous challenging dark reflective sad tense fast-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Complicated

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Content Warnings

klarapd's review against another edition

4.75

adventurous challenging dark sad tense medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Complicated

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

Content Warnings

bentimus's review against another edition

4.5

adventurous dark medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Complicated

Diverse cast of characters: Complicated

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

Content Warnings

amberambi's review against another edition

5.0

adventurous dark emotional medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Content Warnings

charlxox's review against another edition

3.5

adventurous dark emotional mysterious sad medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: Complicated

Loveable characters: No

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

Content Warnings

jseicas's review against another edition

2.25

adventurous dark medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Plot

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: No

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

To start off, I did not enjoy reading this book. I liked the side characters, but interactions with the main cast honestly weren't entertaining, and the main character was not only unlikable, she was uninteresting. After the first half of the first part, I found a lot of her inspiration to be unclear and cloudy, and

even though this was partially taken care of through the narrative,

it didn't make the experience of it any better to read, or have it make sense within the character- at least in this book, the contradictions aren't addressed,

in fact they're just flipped at the end, which I bet inspires the second book.

I love historical fiction, and I think it's a great way to address and educate on hard themes (like war crimes and genocide) and are very important at making readers empathetic and making history have feelings. I thought this book did this in a way that was lazy and heavy handed, and failed.

Having this book so clearly based off the opium wars and the world wars was a great and interesting start, and introducing magic to it is not a problem; however, the way that the placenames were changed and yet so very clearly representative of real places does nothing but muddy waters and simplify things that actually deserve to be complicated. I think it was really done so that the writing could be offensively colonial to the island of formosa and the people represented by the hinterlands, be they siberians or mongolians or whoever. It was frustrating to read these parts.

Content Warnings

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