R. F. Kuang’s Triumphant Military Fantasy: ‘The Poppy War’ Series is Nothing I Expected
‘Oh, but history moved in such vicious circles.’
- The Burning God, R. F. Kuang, 2020
At 19 years of age, Rebecca F. Kuang was writing her first fantasy novel that would go on to be published only two years later: The Poppy War, a novel deeply inspired by Chinese history, the conflict between China and Japan, and the Opium Wars. Part of me cannot believe that this book, this absolute triumph of military fantasy that has such complex and difficult content, was written by a woman so young, who has managed to juggle a lot of higher education alongside writing and publishing the series. The other part of me hates her for it (respectfully) because I have no clue how she managed it.
These past few months, I finally got around to giving it the time and energy that it deserves – and I had absolutely no idea what I’d signed up for. Perhaps ignorantly – though I often like to avoid knowing too much about books other than “This is great, you should read it!”, I had no idea that The Poppy War series is better considered a military fantasy. One that does not shy away from the stark and brutal nature of large-scale warfare, both civil and between warring countries.
The Poppy War ponders who should be in power and why. What sacrifices do those in power have to make and how far can they go until they cross a line? What is the line? How can rulers know they are crossing the line when they are completely removed from the real fallout of war – the war that does not cross their strategy desks? What happens when powerful people stop seeing others as humans but as weapons they can deploy? Is it still wrong if they are willing weapons?
It is not scared about asking questions of the reader: giving them real moral questions as we sit back and watch Rin make the decisions she does with the power she possesses.
It is Rin who makes this series so brilliant and so unpredictable –the decisions she makes are a direct result of her own personal circumstance, and her motivations are driven by her pain and insatiable lust for revenge. The sense of justice that she builds herself.
I won’t be discussing plot points in depth, and there won’t be any major spoilers in this review, but I will be talking a little bit about the general content in all three books – so if you don’t want to know much more: stop reading.
At the start of The Poppy War, we are introduced to Fang Runin, or Rin, as she is preferred to be known. She is a fourteen-year-old war orphan taken in by a family in one of Nikan’s poorest Southern provinces, desperately preparing herself for the Keju: a test that can be taken by anyone in Nikan, but has almost impossible standards. Every year, it is practically only the rich and educated in the Empire that do well enough to get a place at Sinegard – Nikan’s prestigious military academy that educate their students in combat, strategy, history, and the subject Rin is drawn to by its mystery and eccentric professor: Lore. If Rin does not get into Sinegard, her adopted family will sell her off to any old man who wants to marry her.
Rin is an inherently difficult character to like. She may not make the same choices I would, and yet I understand her. I understand that the decisions she makes come from the trauma of being thrown into war headfirst and as an outcast, after being trained for absolutely nothing else. She believes there is nothing she can do as well as waging war. She is nothing but a blunt blade to be sharpened by the Empire, and so she must learn for herself who she wants to fight for; what she wants to fight for.
In that internal struggle, Rin is consumed by her anger and her pain over and over again. She is controlled by the ghosts of her past and often does not have sole ownership of, or access to, her body. We are in her head all the time and it is not an easy place to be.
Similarly, the content of The Poppy War is not easy. It goes into deep and gruesome detail of war violence, genocide, mutilation, sexual abuse – it’s not something I was able to power through, and I often had to take breaks to take myself out of that place. While I was reading, it usually felt like Kuang illustrated these things for a reason: to show that colonisation and historically glorified forms of war are anything but glorious. Though while reading other reviews of the series, I’ve seen that some argue the atrocities Kuang writes about are held at arm’s length, or feel like they have no place in the story, and therefore their gravity is minimised. Especially since these events are based on real historical atrocities, I can see the argument for this, however I would also argue that Kuang does go to great lengths to criticise, rather than glorify, the acts of war, Empire and colonising forces. She shows how war is filled with all sorts of suffering that is buried under years of spun narratives. Kuang often points out that the real power is held by the people who are able to rewrite history, those who can bury the names and faces of their enemies to spin their own stories out of the truth.
We learn with Rin that playing at war is not exciting, despite how she may feel when she has power at her fingertips. And it is often pointless – sovereigns win control of a country that has been completely decimated by its own warfare, and find that the repercussions (starvation, uprising, environmental damage) are just as threatening.
The side characters and relationships developed over the course of the series often feel like, on the surface, they might take a back seat, but the emotional entanglement of Rin, Kitay and Nezha weaves itself throughout the entire narrative. They bond through their shared traumatic experiences of the war, consistently finding their ways back to each other to be torn apart again.
What I love about the way that Kuang writes these relationships, particularly between Rin and Kitay, and Rin and Nezha, is that they feel scarily real. They don’t have the same motivations or the same end goal. They don’t approach situations the same way at all. And they argue because of it. They say horrible things to each other and love each other anyway. I find it so difficult to read books that depict characters who have to work together for the greater good and yet can’t communicate properly, or be around each other whatsoever for some trivial reason. Rin and Kitay consistently disagree about how to continue their campaign – Kitay providing an essentially human, empathetic balance to Rin’s detachedness – and yet each time they push each other to the point of breaking, they are still desperately loyal.
Selfishly, I wish Kuang had dug into certain plot points and side characters slightly more, such as the Cike – the division of Nikan’s military that harbours only a small contingent of shamans. They are the spies and assassins of the Empire. As someone who loves a band of outcasts coming together to defeat their oppressors, I really wished this group had been given more time for their dynamic to develop. Every moment spent with Baji, Suni and Ramsa was golden, and I really wished we’d been given more time to dive into the relationship between Altan and Chaghan.
And yet each direction that the series was taken in didn’t feel guided by tropes or to serve mindless audience enjoyment. I imagine there were many easier storytelling decisions that Kuang could have taken when writing this series, and I’m glad she didn’t. Instead, The Poppy War is like nothing else I have read, and I think I would be happy never reading anything like it again.