The Poppy War

This book was interesting, but in the end, just okay. I'm rather upset that this book is trying to be some sort of historical fantasy, yet failing at being it. Let's dig into that shall we?

The typical YA fantasy that we've had recently really would focus more on the school years, and it would greatly lead to something. This book doesn't do that. The school years are glossed over in less than a paragraph, where the main character says “once I figured out how to meditate for one hour, I then learned for another year to meditate for five hours” and then we just glossed over two years. Tada! Now she's a third year and the war starts. The rest of the book, she talks about how little her master taught her, when in reality, if she had actually been learning under him for two years, she probably would have learned a lot! But we don't actually get that time, so we are made to believe she learned almost nothing except a historical topics on random things.

As one Reddit reviewer put it very nicely, this book brings in a lot of real life aspects that take the reader out of the story. Imagine if Lord of the Rings had said, “Frodo has to deliver the one ring to Mordor, which is in the magical land of... California.” In The Poppy War, Kuang often uses real people and places in the book, which draws us from the fantasy of it all. But then, this book is also so close to history, so why not just use the same names as the actual history? Why describe Beijing, Shanghai, and Nanjing but name them something else but allow Sunzi, Tianshan, and other places/people to stay? At that point, why even make it a historical fantasy? Why not just historical fiction? It also doesn't stick to history, instead mashing up different Chinese eras, such as the warring states, but also the WWII era. It's very interesting, but also like, why not just make a world that is not already done? Why mix and match these things that end up drawing the reader out of the book?

The crux of wanting to read the second book comes from the twist of our main character turning into the villain (or really always being a bad person). I truly thought “maybe it will be the Hesperians who somehow stop the Mugen because the US is the one who drops the atomic bombs right?” Wrong. Very wrong. Our main character drops the “bombs” but destroys more than just two cities. I don't understand how she justifies this is any way, and she even has some backpedaling, but then continues on her quest for vengeance? Confusing.

And in the end, the magic system doesn't make much sense. There must be some way to call the gods in a sustainable way, but we are not ever shown that in a way that makes sense. There's the Hinterlanders, who seem to have control, but they don't use the gods for power. At the end of the book, our main character understands that only she can give a god power. But if that is the truth, why are thousands of people locked up with the gods in them? If they can stop them just by thinking, why not? Why is she special? So far, we aren't told why.

So I'm disappointed. I would rather read a historical fiction book, or a fantasy novel that is built on real fantasy. Historical fantasy, interesting, but not something I enjoyed here.