middumullu 's review for:

The Dragon Republic by R.F. Kuang

4.75

challenging dark emotional mysterious sad tense fast-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: Complicated

Loveable characters: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

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Read this in literally two days (thank you for the snow day!!) because it drew me in so deeply. I think it continued the story set up in the first book well, and the first half especially engaged with repercussions of some of the events that happened towards the end of the first book. I want to shake a lot of the characters and chat with them about how to handle big feelings. There continued to be a lot of war and politics involved in this story, I loved seeing the relationships between characters develop. A new group comes into play so that was interesting to see, I'm very curious about how all of these elements will tie together in the last book. Also extremely graphic.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Ableism, Addiction, Body horror, Confinement, Death, Drug abuse, Drug use, Emotional abuse, Genocide, Gore, Gun violence, Mental illness, Misogyny, Panic attacks/disorders, Physical abuse, Racism, Rape, Self harm, Sexism, Sexual assault, Sexual violence, Suicidal thoughts, Torture, Violence, Blood, Vomit, Medical content, Grief, Religious bigotry, Murder, Schizophrenia/Psychosis , Fire/Fire injury, Toxic friendship, Abandonment, Colonisation, War, Injury/Injury detail, Classism

Moderate: Abortion, Pregnancy, Alcohol

Minor: Miscarriage