God story but very lacking

the story is generally good, and just the kind of story i like! However, it lacks a lot of detail, and sometimes I couldn't help but think that it lacked reasoning for what they did.

The main character isn't very likeable - she is too rushed and lack thoughts behind her actions. It's the writer's first book, and you can clearly feel that, even with the prices it has gotten.

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Excellent

I loved this book and have already bought book 2 which I am going to start right now. Happy days

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Great setting, great cast.

A fantastic take on fantasy politics in a vibrant yet gritty setting.

Arguably the most compelling lead characters I have come across in a fantasy setting.

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Good but slow

Sadly not as good as I hoped.
There was a lot of good and interesting parts but there was a lot of slow parts to. I liked all the characters, the magic was interesting but a bit confusing, the idea of the story was good and the narrator was good. The thing that lower the overall score is the slow parts, which I think there was too much of.

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Bloody, Fantastical, Mesmerising

The darkest of stories told with so much heart, the journey of a young girl with ambitions that take her from opium dens to encounters with incredible creatures and world defying consequences. The trauma of the past haunts this world and everyone in it as political machinations, awakenings and blood drips from every chapter. And yet no matter the horrors the characters and their journeys are totally compelling and the destinations of each so unpredictable. a thrilling read, voiced brilliantly.

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Amaaaazing

Great narration, morally grey characters, unpredictable plot, fantastic escalation of events. Had me on my toes from page 1.

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Great start but lost its way

The premise of the story is great. Brilliant scene setting and character building. It loses its way once the training is over though with character transformations that I struggled to believe. Also felt some of the darker scenes tipped from descriptive into unnecessarily grim.
I feel for the narrator too. She is clearly talented but not the right choice for this book. Too many characters sounded like Kermit!

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Confusing in places but really good!

I really enjoyed this book. I was lost in places where some of the story didn’t make a lot of sense but I’m going to blame my own lack of intelligence for that!

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Great but very dark

So first I thought this was going to shape up like a Hogwarts-esque training camp before some run of the mill battles against the federation. But it gets v nasty and grim on many levels. It was a great story, and I do feel somewhat upbeat at the end, but seriously. Some nasty stuff gets described imo. But definitely feels very original and fresh and different.

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3 people found this helpful

School, genocide, and tripping balls. An odd combo

Books like this: Book of the Ancestor, Bloody Rose, Mistborn

TLDR: The story of a young woman forced to come to grips with her powers and the darkness of human nature in an original fantasy world set within an Asian analogue. A novel magic system and dark deeds make this a unique read that hits a lot of points that most fantasy novels seem to miss.

Now I nearly didn’t give this book the chance it deserved. I’ve been spoiled recently by finding a series that was so good that I blasted through ten books in the space of 6 weeks. So fast, in fact, that I never actually had time to write a single review for any of them. So, when I stood atop the mighty pedestal that I had placed that series upon (Spellmonger, by Terry Mancour) and stared down upon my next target, my judgement was always going to be a little harsh. That said, even with my opinion bar forcibly lowered to a more reasonable level, The Poppy war still got off to a bit of a slow start for me. It certainly wasn’t a bad start and it was very well written, but I nearly stopped after the first twenty minutes like I have with the two previous audiobooks that I had started that week. However, I carried on, and I’m glad that I did, because once you give it a little time, The Poppy war becomes a very good listen/read.
A single female perspective fantasy novel set in an analogue of medieval china. Already this book is a bit different to anything else I’ve listened to lately. The shift of perspective to an Asian culture and away from the usual European backdrop that most fantasy novels follows was genuinely refreshing. It was novel, something that I struggle to find in books these days after tearing through so many in the genre. Although I didn’t bond with the main character at first, before too long I was subconsciously rooting for her far more than I thought I would, which to me shows a brilliantly written character. I can’t say that there were many other characters for which I developed the same level of attachment, but they were all presented well and most certainly had enough depth to them to remain entertaining.
The world within which the book is set is well thought out with a great backstory that is entirely believable. I didn’t just see the land as a stage upon which the character act but more a canvas upon which the story itself was painted. It can sometimes get a little too specific about certain aspects and at other times gloss over areas that I would love to hear more about, but overall, the universe the book creates is sound. The magic system as well is fairly original, with the very few magic users in the world, and those that can use magic being primarily dependant on psychedelic drugs to induce their powers. I like this a lot. It’s both unique and rooted in real-world shamanism, though it doesn’t really explain a whole lot about the specific powers people have. They simply have abilities without going into how they work. They just work by magic, leading me to the first of my issues. There are certain aspects of the magic system that make the shamans completely OP, to the point where I’m thinking that they likely would have done some serious damage the people, ecosystems, and even underlying geology of their entire continent before the events of the books. Its not like their ultra-powers haven’t existed before the events of the books, and yet only in this book are they used with such catastrophic consequences in situations that surely would have arisen before to some degree. It soils the otherwise very grounded nature of the novel and left me constantly asking why this hadn’t become an issue in the thousand years that the main nation had existed prior to the book.
My second issue is that at times (one time in particular) there is illogically senseless levels of violence carried out. Now, one of the greatest aspects of this book is that it takes a much more rounded view of the consequences of war by concentrating quite heavily on the plight of the civilians that get caught up in the wake of a major and brutal conflict. This is a brilliant angle to play and something that I believe needs to be done more both as a literary technique and to make readers and listeners actually think a bit more about the true consequences of war, not just the sword flashing and heroics of our protagonists. That said, there is one point in particular where the ‘bad guys’ do something so heinous that it just doesn’t make sense. These guys are portrayed as Uber-Nazi’s in their belief that they are a superior race (though to be more accurate it may be more Imperial Japan-like considering the context), but they commit such barbaric acts at times that I simply can’t take the book seriously. It’s like R.F Kuang was trying so hard to show us that these guys are truly evil that she pushed their atrocities beyond the realistic, beyond even the obscene, and the effect is to have them ending up straight in the realms of ridiculous. What was worse was that it didn’t make listening to their descriptions any easier. I’m the first to say that I’m a bit of a gore fiend and it takes a damned lot to make me say ‘wow there, calm down,’ but this just went a little to far. I can quite happily accept that such horrible things get carried out when they serve a purpose: slaughtering people to save food in a siege, executing civilians in horrific manners as part of a concerted terror campaign to demoralise the enemy, murdering thousands in the most brutal fashion because their fear and pain is used to fuel some macabre device. Those are three very believable reasons for such horrors that I thought of just off the top of my head. However, in this case I simply cannot see the reason why such a well-trained military force would take so much time from their hectic invasion schedule to partake in such blood-chilling atrocities when simply killing those same people quickly and efficiently would have made far more strategic sense. If there was an actual reason for those horrible acts that is made apparent in later books, it could really do with being shown earlier.
Beyond those little nit-picky faults that I just had to vent, I enjoyed the book. I’m not rushing to listen to the second, but I certainly will do at some point in the near future.
As for the narration, a good performance. Emily Woo Zeller’s portrayals of the wide range of characters was brilliant, and in particular her conveying of the deep emotional strife that runs through the latter half of the book for many of the characters was wonderful.

Personal score: 3.5 stars
Professional score: 3.75 stars

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1 person found this helpful