A review by snowlemur25
The Poppy War by R.F. Kuang

adventurous dark tense fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

I wanted to like this book so badly because the premise is so interesting, but there are some serious flaws with it for me personally. My main issue with the series is that the setting/world building feels lazy. The overall setting is "fantasy" WW2 with a focus on Japan vs China. As in the author took a couple of events, changed the names of the parties involved, and put them into the book. They reference SunTzu's the Art of War a lot, but his name is Sunzi in the fantasy world. There are quite a few references to Chinese mythology but a lot of these names are not changed at all. It just made the world feel very fake and not really lived in. It gives me the same feeling when watching isekai in anime where the main character is reincarnated into another world and in this way you avoid having to do any real character development. I think it would've been more impactful to have this historical fiction with a layer of magic added to make it different because as it is it feels very shallow. Moving on to what I liked about this series: I thought the magic concept was interesting and has a lot of potential. I also enjoyed the main character's growth throughout the series. She consistently chooses the worst decision possible, but you can see her reasoning behind it, however flawed. 
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