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bethharbour 's review for:
The Poppy War
by R.F. Kuang
dark
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Ehhhhh I thought I was going to love this book, and then my enjoyment of it just absolutely nosedived. Rin is such an unlikeable MC in my opinion, her motivations are confused (she discovers she’s a Speerly, barely makes any effort to learn about it but suddenly takes on their anger and vengeance for herself and loses all the development she went through with Jiang in favour of mad bloodlust ), and apart from Jiang and Ramsa, I didn’t really like any of the other characters. It’s well written, but as other reviewers have mentioned, some of the violence seems gratuitous and unnecessarily graphically described at times. It really felt like it flip flopped from a YA fantasy in the first half to a really dark war story in the second half, not for me really.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Addiction, Child death, Death, Drug abuse, Genocide, Rape, Sexual violence, Violence, Murder, War