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A review by dhrish
The Burning God by R.F. Kuang
4.0
C/W: dehumanisation, racism, amputation, canon typical violence, animal violence, drug addiction, war, starvation, cannibalism, implied sexual violence, colourism (I definitely missed a lot more warnings).
As usual please look up the content warnings for this book before reading. I would suggest picking this trilogy up if you're just starting out in adult historical fantasy fiction. While the reading experience is quite heavy, the story itself is really simple to follow even with all the talk of military strategy.
While the TPW trilogy draws from a very specific set of histories. Not all the events of this trilogy are unique to the region or time period. A lot of what is written is a very relevant and real commentary of many corners of the world. To ignore this would be callous.
TPW trilogy isn't a set of books I probably would have picked up on my own. Rave reviews and urgings are what kind of brought this book into my hands.
The writing of warfare is as close to perfect as one can get with a character like Rin who is incredibly flawed. Rin is a person who shouldn't be a leader. Frankly, she may be a terrible one, but that's where I think Rin endears herself to most people. In a journey for self-liberation, she leads an army and that change isn't easy for anyone to handle.
The side characters were amazing and incredibly charismatic. The pacing and story have improved so much since book 1. The story makes use of every plot point brilliantly and it definitely mimics the ebb and flow of battle well.
I've seen a bit of criticism about the way colourism was tackled in this book, these are my thoughts on the topic and it may contain spoilers. I just want to emphasis that it is unreasonable to expect a non-white author to deal with every part of a culture and its impacts perfectly. This is just one darker-skin, South Indian perspective and my interpretation could be very wrong.
I agree that TPW as a trilogy never set to dismantle colourism, but I think what gave me pause about it in terms of Rin was her descent to paranoia could be seen as being a Speerly-thing (even with the historical context of her character). The dehumanisation of Speerlies and by extension dark-skin characters is something TPW trilogy never shies away from. While this reads true to real-life; at a point of reading TBG and Rin's descent in Part 3, it felt like part of Rin's inability to make sound decisions arose from the fact that she can't run away from being Speerly.
That by Rin being Speerly it meant that all she was good for to anyone was to be a weapon and therefore wasn't seen as a person. We see this theme often in the TPW trilogy. However, without another dark-skin character (as dark as Rin) humanised and not dead; Rin's downfall may read as an effect of her being Speerly rather than her just having to live with her terrible decisions. Especially if we look at the language used by other characters to talk about Speer and Speerlies.
I probably wouldn't apply this to Altan because I kind of read him as more of an extension of Rin's subconscious especially because we see him mostly through Rin's eyes.
I think this is why I was kind of disappointed with how colourism was handled even if the TPW never set out to dismantle it.
Objectively I cannot deny the very real impact this trilogy has made in terms of representation and history
Subjectively, I wasn't as invested as a lot of others around me.
As usual please look up the content warnings for this book before reading. I would suggest picking this trilogy up if you're just starting out in adult historical fantasy fiction. While the reading experience is quite heavy, the story itself is really simple to follow even with all the talk of military strategy.
While the TPW trilogy draws from a very specific set of histories. Not all the events of this trilogy are unique to the region or time period. A lot of what is written is a very relevant and real commentary of many corners of the world. To ignore this would be callous.
TPW trilogy isn't a set of books I probably would have picked up on my own. Rave reviews and urgings are what kind of brought this book into my hands.
The writing of warfare is as close to perfect as one can get with a character like Rin who is incredibly flawed. Rin is a person who shouldn't be a leader. Frankly, she may be a terrible one, but that's where I think Rin endears herself to most people. In a journey for self-liberation, she leads an army and that change isn't easy for anyone to handle.
The side characters were amazing and incredibly charismatic. The pacing and story have improved so much since book 1. The story makes use of every plot point brilliantly and it definitely mimics the ebb and flow of battle well.
I've seen a bit of criticism about the way colourism was tackled in this book, these are my thoughts on the topic and it may contain spoilers. I just want to emphasis that it is unreasonable to expect a non-white author to deal with every part of a culture and its impacts perfectly. This is just one darker-skin, South Indian perspective and my interpretation could be very wrong.
I agree that TPW as a trilogy never set to dismantle colourism, but I think what gave me pause about it in terms of Rin was her descent to paranoia could be seen as being a Speerly-thing (even with the historical context of her character). The dehumanisation of Speerlies and by extension dark-skin characters is something TPW trilogy never shies away from. While this reads true to real-life; at a point of reading TBG and Rin's descent in Part 3, it felt like part of Rin's inability to make sound decisions arose from the fact that she can't run away from being Speerly.
That by Rin being Speerly it meant that all she was good for to anyone was to be a weapon and therefore wasn't seen as a person. We see this theme often in the TPW trilogy. However, without another dark-skin character (as dark as Rin) humanised and not dead; Rin's downfall may read as an effect of her being Speerly rather than her just having to live with her terrible decisions. Especially if we look at the language used by other characters to talk about Speer and Speerlies.
I probably wouldn't apply this to Altan because I kind of read him as more of an extension of Rin's subconscious especially because we see him mostly through Rin's eyes.
I think this is why I was kind of disappointed with how colourism was handled even if the TPW never set out to dismantle it.
Objectively I cannot deny the very real impact this trilogy has made in terms of representation and history
Subjectively, I wasn't as invested as a lot of others around me.