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A review by toggle_fow
The Dragon Republic by R.F. Kuang
adventurous
challenging
dark
sad
medium-paced
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.0
Well, here we are lads. This was a ROUGH read.
If you only look at the blurb, you already know a lot. This whole book is just Rin set adrift in a land of sixty different factions, all of them bad. Can she find her own purpose? Can she make her own decisions? Can she use wisdom and discernment to guide herself and her friends through a constantly twisting labyrinth of horrors? The overwhelming answer is: no.
This isn't me criticizing the story. This explicitly IS the story. It's part of what R. F. Kuang deliberately communicates in this book, and I can totally relate to Rin. She just wants someone good to follow and take orders from, but there is none righteous, not even one. The self-awareness of this is all that's giving me hope for the end of the trilogy.
So. Now that the foreign enemy is defeated, the country split into civil war, which is actually far too neat a description of the alliances. In this book only two good things happen. That's it. The rest is increasing chaos, increasing aimlessness, increasing pain with no purpose, and it's hard to see any possible outcome beyond just everyone dying and millions of people starving. Also, as a bonus we introduce the colonizers in this book, because we desperately needed to add some racism!
Anyway, I said there were two good things. Those were:
If you only look at the blurb, you already know a lot. This whole book is just Rin set adrift in a land of sixty different factions, all of them bad. Can she find her own purpose? Can she make her own decisions? Can she use wisdom and discernment to guide herself and her friends through a constantly twisting labyrinth of horrors? The overwhelming answer is: no.
This isn't me criticizing the story. This explicitly IS the story. It's part of what R. F. Kuang deliberately communicates in this book, and I can totally relate to Rin. She just wants someone good to follow and take orders from, but there is none righteous, not even one. The self-awareness of this is all that's giving me hope for the end of the trilogy.
So. Now that the foreign enemy is defeated, the country split into civil war, which is actually far too neat a description of the alliances. In this book only two good things happen. That's it. The rest is increasing chaos, increasing aimlessness, increasing pain with no purpose, and it's hard to see any possible outcome beyond just everyone dying and millions of people starving. Also, as a bonus we introduce the colonizers in this book, because we desperately needed to add some racism!
Anyway, I said there were two good things. Those were:
1) Rin being forced to get off opium. I hate addictions storylines so much. I hate them.
2) Kitay and Rin. Because I love Kitay, and also we pretty much don't have any other relationships to lean on for this ENTIRE book.
In the next one, I need a point. A cause. Something. I know Rin was like "we go to war for the South!!!" but excuse me if I don't really trust her at this point, given all the equally vehement vacillations she's gone through already. (She just was disavowing the South like, minutes ago!)
I just need to know there's SOMETHING to fight for. And given that's exactly what Rin needs too, I'm hopeful. I also wouldn't be mad if Chaghan came back and for once became a character with a purpose beyond knowing more things than other people and also antagonizing Rin for no reason.