Review by kaleyrdaniels - The Burning God

kaleyrdaniels 's review for:

The Burning God by R.F. Kuang

4.75

adventurous challenging dark emotional sad tense medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

The Burning God is an absolutely epic conclusion to the Poppy War trilogy. It’s an incredibly compelling story about hypocrisy, selfishness, and the allure of power: themes explored through the main character Rin. In her, we see the slow erosion of her morality until she and the evil enemy she’s fighting are almost indistinguishable.

It’s a story about war. It questions if idealism has a place in wartime, when everything boils down to black and white, us vs. them. It’s a story about what’s justified when a country full of people’s survival is on the line. It asks if the greater good is a justification for death and destruction, and if it is, then to what extent? Everyone thinks the glamorized ends justify the terrible means, but sometimes, the ends aren’t even all that great anyways.

As the last living Speerly, Rin is their vessel for vengeance. She’s imbued with decades of Speerly rage born from suffering and injustice. She is deeply flawed: she’s selfish, she’s hypocritical, and there is nothing she wouldn’t do to advance her cause. Her friends all seem to be a means to an end. She’s a prisoner of her own consciousness, she can’t look her own thoughts in the face without succumbing to hysteria. Despite how frustrating Rin is, I couldn’t help but root for her. I particularly enjoyed Kitay, as he tried to bring balance to Rin’s impulsiveness. In the end, he finally succeeded.

Rin had some massive character development: throughout the series she made dozens of sacrifices but wouldn’t think to sacrifice herself… until she did. She got past all her selfishness and idealism and saw that the only way to achieve what she claimed to want, peace for the people of Nikara, was to die. Of course, this was also an escape for her, because she couldn’t fathom living in a world without war. It’s all she knows and all she’s good at. Her attempt at ruling Arlong and being immediately put out by all the bureaucratic nonsense showed that.

The writing style and the worldbuilding were amazing. There were such epic battle scenes, that I could picture perfectly in my head. There was a perfect mix of downtime, combat, and exposition. The only thing in this novel that I didn’t like were some one-liners at the end of a section or chapter; some of them felt forced and stilted. Other than that, I massively enjoyed this novel. It’s probably my favorite in the whole series and I blew through it in 3 days.

Content Warnings