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A review by kaymrenee
The Poppy War by R.F. Kuang
Did not finish book. Stopped at 60%.
I wanted to love this book, and at times I did greatly enjoy it! The first half of the book did grab my attention, it brought in a new interesting system of magic, martial arts fighting, and a unique retelling of what a boarding school story could really be. I loved the bleed over of militarization into the aforementioned boarding school, and the training of children to become military leaders. All of this was fascinating and gripping and truly intriguing.
But that all disappeared almost completely. The unique and exciting fight sequences from the school were replaced with boring sword fights that had no indication that the martial arts training even really mattered. The magic system overwhelmed every other aspect of the fighting that remained. And the main character, once brash but still sympathetic and intelligent, became even more brash, lost all sense of her own morals (in that she became ambivalent about what previously seemed to be core moral beliefs), and no longer had any sense of military strategy that once was so key. Rather than these decisions feeling like intentional character development (maybe to highlight the difference between schooling vs real life battle), it feels like the author turned the protagonist into a doll to make whatever point she (author) was trying to make at that point in the book. This also seems to be the case as nearly every side character or supporting character becomes one-dimensional, serving one role in the story to teach one lesson, and once that lesson is taught they disappear or are killed.
In an effort to keep reading, hoping that maybe I had just reached the low point in the book, I read further reviews and plot summaries and based on everything I could find the first half of this book seems to be an outlier which was unlike the rest of the series. I am thoroughly disappointed and saddened that I did not enjoy this book to the point of a dnf. I had even recommended this to my partner based on the super interesting martial arts aspect seen in the first half, but had to tell them to not read the book after that aspect was dropped completely.
But that all disappeared almost completely. The unique and exciting fight sequences from the school were replaced with boring sword fights that had no indication that the martial arts training even really mattered. The magic system overwhelmed every other aspect of the fighting that remained. And the main character, once brash but still sympathetic and intelligent, became even more brash, lost all sense of her own morals (in that she became ambivalent about what previously seemed to be core moral beliefs), and no longer had any sense of military strategy that once was so key. Rather than these decisions feeling like intentional character development (maybe to highlight the difference between schooling vs real life battle), it feels like the author turned the protagonist into a doll to make whatever point she (author) was trying to make at that point in the book. This also seems to be the case as nearly every side character or supporting character becomes one-dimensional, serving one role in the story to teach one lesson, and once that lesson is taught they disappear or are killed.
In an effort to keep reading, hoping that maybe I had just reached the low point in the book, I read further reviews and plot summaries and based on everything I could find the first half of this book seems to be an outlier which was unlike the rest of the series. I am thoroughly disappointed and saddened that I did not enjoy this book to the point of a dnf. I had even recommended this to my partner based on the super interesting martial arts aspect seen in the first half, but had to tell them to not read the book after that aspect was dropped completely.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Addiction