A review by whatswrenreading
The Dragon Republic by R.F. Kuang

adventurous challenging dark medium-paced

• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

I found the second installation in the series a bit slow and at times relying on tropes. They're not bad cliches but did make me roll my eyes at times. I'm not super interested in naval battles which this book focuses a lot on, but if that's something you're into you'll enjoy it. I can tell the author put in lots of research to discuss the naval scenes properly. And the world building is still fabulous! This book really makes you question if there are any good characters, they're all so morally grey and written incredibly well imo. I'm also 100% ready to watch rin just go feral in the 3rd book, let her burn the world down, I'll be cheering her on. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Addiction, Body horror, Cursing, Death, Drug abuse, Drug use, Emotional abuse, Genocide, Gore, Panic attacks/disorders, Physical abuse, Racism, Rape, Self harm, Torture, Violence, Blood, and Grief

Moderate: Emotional abuse, Suicidal thoughts, Medical content, and Religious bigotry

Poor treatment of refugees, war, classism, discussion of feeling like your mind isn't your own, minor character deaths, sinking, sinking boat, open bodies of water, graphic depictions of people burning/burn victims, experimenting on people.