fantasy
Rin, a war orphan who has been suffering mistreatment by her
foster family, is desperate to escape her small town and arranged marriage. She
studies extremely hard and miraculously qualifies for a free education at an elite, competitive military school in a huge city far from her home town. After completing school, Rin
is assigned to an infamous unit to assist in the third Poppy War.
The Poppy War’s skeleton is similar to many other stories: a coming-of-age, underprivileged/undervalued/mistreated child with determination
and brains manages to break out of their terrible life, meets interesting
people, gains rivals/enemies and friends/admirers, faces more adversity, and
discovers special skills to, eventually, help them rise above their detractors.
There are so many novels I’ve read with this basic outline. But it still entertained
me.
Rin was a particularly hardened character—putting up with an
outrageous amount of pain and hardship in order to create a new life for
herself. She was tough and determined and this reader couldn’t help but root
for her. Set in an intriguing China-like
setting, I was willing to put up with the book’s battle strategy sections
(which normally turn me cold) because the characters were terrific and the
mystery around Rin’s power was compelling.
RF Kuang did a remarkably great job of continually shaking
things up. She frequently introduced new facets to the story that would bring
all the characters to a different environment and/or situation. It really kept
things moving and managed to keep me from getting unhappy with the war aspects
of the story. It was never boring and a great adventure.
WARNING: This book has some very harsh sections…lots of
extremely descriptive violence (including rape) that gets worse as the book
goes on. And, not because of this,
exactly, but because the characters are motivated by hatred, I will likely not
read any more in this series. There is enough hatred in this world and I don’t
relish stories glorifying haters, no matter how understandable (in some cases).
The narrator of the audiobook, Emily Woo Zeller, was
phenomenal! She had to voice so many characters and did an excellent job with
the multitude including multiple male voices!
Truly, an amazing repertoire! And her voice acting was perfection. Even when characters were out of the story
for a while and later re-appeared, I knew exactly who they were based on her
voice for that character before the story announced their name. A+ for sure!
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