The Dragon Republic

Wow, this book improved upon The Poppy War in every way! Kuang's prose, sense of tone, plotting, and characterizations went way up. I was riveted the entire time by Rin's journey, the plot, the supporting characters, and the worldbuilding. I am a huge sucker for “people find out about more technologically advanced societies”, and watching Rin discover more about Hesperian culture was great.

Lots of dark things happen in this series and Kuang displays such a maturity in dealing with them. Another thing I love about this series is the male/female friendship is done very well. It's so rare for m/f friends in media to admit to loving each other and actually saying it out loud to each and risking their lives for one another without there being some sort of “bUt oNe oF thEM is aKUALLY in LUV”.

Rin is such a well-written character, one of my favorites ever. I absolutely hate almost every decision she has ever made, and yet, I root for her to get justice, to get revenge, to save the nation. This is so hard to pull off because if I was around Rin for more than 11 seconds, I would probably kick her in the shins.

That said, I do have one minor problem with this book, involving characterization. I'll mask the issue so that people who haven't read it aren't spoiled but people who have read it will know what I'm talking about:

Character A is incredibly upset at Character B. Character B did something unforgivable. Character A spends a portion of the novel not speaking to Character B. They have a brief chat discussing their reactions to trauma, and then they are friends again. Not long after, Character A has to make an INCREDIBLY LIFE ALTERING SACRIFICE to help Character B. Character A does it immediately, without hesitation, without knowing the risks/rewards, and with Character B protesting that they do it at all.

This just didnt work for me at all. As great as Kuang is at characters and dealing with their trauma, this definitely felt like “I need X to happen, so they're just gonna forgive each other immediately” and I hate that. I understand that for the story to go where Kuang needed it to, event X had to happen. But the journey of forgiveness or maybe the decision to make the sacrifice should have been done over a longer time/with more depth. It was such a series-altering and life-altering decision and I couldn't believe character A would do this so quickly.

But that said- I thoroughly enjoyed everything else. I cannot WAIT to dive into book 3.