A review by kris_tea516
The Poppy War by R.F. Kuang

adventurous dark sad tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? No

2.0

 
Synopsis: Rin is a poor, foster child to a drug-dealing foster mother & opium-addicted foster father. However, she is incredibly intelligent and convinces a local teacher to teach her before a big exam that lands her a place in a prestigious school. During her training, Rin discovers she can commune with gods and access powers other humans cannot. A quirky professor takes her under his wing to train her privately. Soon war breaks out and Rin joins a special team of mercenaries to battle the evil Federation of Mugen. 
 
Review: There were times when I genuinely liked this book and others when I absolutely hated it. What I hate about the book outweighs what I enjoyed so I’m giving it 2 stars. So many people love this book so I had high hopes for it but, sadly, I was disappointed. I will also add that, even though I would not recommend this to anyone under 17 or 18 years old, it felt like & has been classified as a Young Adult novel. That is a genre that I cannot honestly say I’ve ever found anything that I enjoy; so, my dislike of this book might be partly due to the genre style. 
 
This audiobook is almost 20 hrs long. I think it could have been half that and been a better book. I don’t mind long, epic sagas but they need to draw me in so much to the story that I don’t want to leave that world. This book just wanted me to escape as soon as possible. It's a book about war & has many unnecessarily graphic & horrific descriptions of child abuse (physical & sexual), rape, torture, and violent death. I know war is horrible but I really couldn’t figure out what was so great about this nation that made these people want to fight so hard for it. None of the descriptions about the world made me want to be there. 
 
This book is also about a group of humans who can call upon their gods to give them supernatural powers. I like that idea but the motivations and how this magic worked were very confusing to me & I still cannot explain it. I understand that this is the first book in a trilogy and that most of my questions and confusion may be answered in subsequent books but I felt like the direction of how the magic worked in this world changed so much that I wasn’t sure if even the author knew where she was going with it all. There was one part that really got me interested in the history of these gods & what their motivations were but it never came up again. In my opinion, that was probably the most interesting moment of the book & it was just dropped in at a weird moment and then never to be revisited or tied into the rest of the story. I would also say that this book felt like it really should have been divided into 2, possibly 3, books. It felt like such distinct stories being told that it was almost unsettling. By the time I finished, I had forgotten about so much of the beginning that it felt like it had been an entirely different book. 
 
I understand that this is the first book in a trilogy but I don’t feel like I was given enough information in this first book to draw me into the next. And, so much of this book was so disgusting and horrific that I don’t have any desire to return to the story anytime soon. 
Expand filter menu Content Warnings