Blue
Note: This story was listened to in audiobook form. I'll add a separate small review for just the audiobook at the end.
Content warnings: War crimes, sexual assault/rape, violence, self harm
Spoilers discussed in detail within this review
Warning, long review up ahead.
It's fun to write a review for a book if you love it or you hate it. For a book that's simply just disappointing, there's not that same kind of enjoyment.
This is one of those reviews.
As a person of East Asian descent, I was very excited to read this book. Mainstream fantasy has so often been defined by all the same European (mostly Western European) derived culture and history. But from the real world, the inspiration of even the wildest of stories, there is so much more than West Europe (and the USA, I'd like to add). Whenever I see fantastical and/or speculative fiction that derives from something else, I always get excited. As someone who is East Asian, seeing a book inspired by a significant event from that region got me hyped to read this.
I've recently gotten into audiobooks while working my job, and so I got this audiobook and couldn't wait to hear an exciting saga to liven up my work day. At about 1/3 of the way in, it was already becoming a struggle to finish it. It was only through sheer willpower that I got through the entire audiobook. I found myself making faces at what I was hearing through my earbuds.
I was under the impression that this book would be a sprawling and dense, maturely written saga. The first section of the book sounded like a teen sitcom. I don't want to sound disrespectful to YA fiction as a whole and the people who read them, but I mean to say that this was not the dense and complex writing I was hoping for, but when I heard about this book having rich characters and dramatic conflicts, I was not expecting your typical public school drama with one-note stereotypes.
Let me back up a little. The very first section of the book, with Rin escaping her foster family to go to the prestigious school of Sinegard, was very gripping. Already, I was invested in this character's determination to rise above the poverty she had endured to an entirely new setting with a new culture. And then the school section of the story began and I was severely underwhelmed. I'm not joking when I say you could take out the names and setting details and put just the dialogue in your typical late '90s early 2000s teen drama sitcom, and nothing would seem out of place. All of the usual cliches are there. Now, I understand cliches are present in every story, but usually people try to offset them a little with an original twist or add some kind of interesting catch to them that makes them at least somewhat entertaining to read and less shallow. There is none of that here. Literally, every character in this beginning section of the book is a cardboard cutout of a trope. This was the deep characterization and writing that people had been raving about?
Rin's the new girl who nobody likes because she's different and a little better than her peers. She's got the typical nerdy best friend/sidekick. The bully who literally exists just to be utterly irredeemable with no other qualities. The preppy pretty girl. Yes, there is a goddamn prep girl character in this war saga novel. There is nothing else to them, no motivations or deeper explorations of who they are other than the archetypes. It's frustrating because there are instances where you could delve deeper into the character, showcase them as why they are the way they are. Oh, the bully is the war lord's son? How might that affect him into being a bully? But no, he's just there to beat up Rin and be the bad guy.
Everyone is defined as being either “good” or “bad” depending on if they are an ally of Rin or not. Rin's nerdy friend, the professor who sympathizes with her, and her original tutor? Basically all good guys, nothing more. The bully, the prep girl, the teacher who hates Rin? All of them are unequivocal jerks because of course only a jerk could be mean and not like our main character. The only mildly interesting character in this part of the book is Jiang, because he's kind of weird and had a potentially interesting backstory. But even then, “weird teacher who kind of vibes with the main character because said main character is an outcast” isn't something that's really rare.
And then comes the second portion of the book, that focuses on the invasion and the characters being thrust into the war.
The whiplash I felt from the extreme tone shift was nearly physical, it was so bad.
I have never read a book with a more inconsistent tone between the two halves of the book. It felt like Kuang had written two entirely different books, one a typical YA coming-of-age school drama book, and the other book a gritty and grimdark war novel, and then decided to arbitrarily put them under the same cover. I was actually staring open-mouthed at my phone at some parts in disbelief that this was still the same story. We suddenly go from teenage school drama to extreme violence. The enemy forces invade, and Rin is now at the front lines with her new magical training. There are no more prep girls or bullies to deal with. Now, we start dealing with massive war atrocities. Despicable war crimes, children being murdered in the fight and people viciously killed and mutilated. Corpses littering the streets, women being violently raped and brutalized.
What in the hell? What kind of shift is this? I'm not saying that the beginning of the book was all peachy clean. There are clear references to self-harm, marital rape, drug abuse, and violence. But the leap from minor details to full-blown descriptions and focus on violence is such a tonal shock. I'm not saying it's impossible to do this, or that it's a bad idea. Ender's Game started out as a kid's academy that deals with child soldiers and the real consequences of war put onto a young, developing kid. Harry Potter is a coming-of-age story that notably grows darker and more intense as the books go on. The difference between these two books and The Poppy War is that the tonal shift is handled leagues better, a more gradual and natural shift. We know the stakes in the beginning of Ender's Game see how they are revealed and delved into deeper as the story goes on, and even then, it's not like we get pages of graphic descriptions of women and children being brutalized. Harry Potter was a gradual change that happened over years and dealt very organically with the changes in psychology and circumstances during a war.
Kuang does not handle the shift with the same finesse. Characters who were once one-note archetypes are now suddenly fighting in a brutal war and subject to intense brutality themselves. Shallow characters are not sufficiently developed in an organic way, and suddenly we're watching them change in the midst of a war. And to think this is only book one of a trilogy...this kind of transition would have been better spread out across all three of those books!
While the story and characters were agonizing, that's not to say that I didn't enjoy aspects of this book. The world-building, being based on Chinese history, was very interesting to read and I enjoyed the setting very much. Seeing the history of past wars being talked about was actually interesting, if a little infodump-esque. Even the dropping of real world names and historical figures (Sun Tzu being the most noticeable) didn't bother me that much because I see it happen all the time in Western-derived stories. To me, it's very little different from a Eurocentric fantasy story having extremely obvious stand-ins for real-world ethnicities, nations, and religions (or in some cases, just flat out having a Christian-esque God in a fantasy world). I think we're more used to it in Eurocentric stories and tend to excuse it there more. If anything, it made Kuang's world seem more like an alternate history kind of setting to me than straight-up fantasy.
Among those who are critical of the book like me, I'm actually opposite of the major opinion and think Rin became more interesting as the book went on. She started out as a pretty common character trope of wanting to be better and rising above her position, being the new girl at school that nobody likes, and then suddenly finding she really is special through her magical powers. Watching her become more hardened and making ethically reprehensible choices as the story went on made her a much more intriguing character to me. I am utterly fascinated by characters like that, and I think it's much more realistic. Imagine being a vulnerable child, orphaned by a horrible war and raised by abusive people, knowing very little of love and nurturing and living in poverty. Now imagine being a young teenager (Rin seems to be about 14-15 in the beginning of the book and ages to around 17-18? when the war starts) and being ostracized by your peers, pushed beyond your limits, singled out with very few friends on your side. And now you have some kind of mystical power that proves you are superior in some way to your peers and are trusted with power over others.
You're not going to magically become a good guy who saves the day and always does the right thing, especially in a fantasy world where there is no such thing as “the right thing.” Not to say that typical good hero stories are bad. I love them very much and cherish them. But I cherish character stories like Rin's in a different way, because they give such a raw and powerful outlook on a vulnerable person being put in a position of power. The part where she commits genocide on an entire ethnic population and now has aspirations to take over much more...that kind of development is chilling. Is she likable? Not really. Is she a good person? God, no. But you don't need to be a good person or even likable to be a compelling character. It's probably the only good thing about the tonal shift, though this would have been much better developed more naturally over the course of three books than crammed into one.
I'm honestly torn over whether to continue the series or not. The final development of Rin are very intriguing, and I do want to see what more happens, if Rin falls further into being a despicable person or if she somehow tries to find a way to pay for her sins. But Kuang's writing is such a struggle to get through, and I don't know if the amazing setting and Rin's development will be enough to get me through the rest, especially with how long the stories are.
But I am considering buying a physical copy of this book and re-reading it. And that's because...
Audiobook Review
Okay, so it took me a while to get into audiobooks. I tend to zone out when trying to listen, and I'm very sensitive about sounds (I'm one of those highly sensitive people who physically cannot stand the sensation of ASMR into my ear, including whispering and certain kinds of noises). But after training myself up to it, I've been getting more into it and getting better at listening to stories. And it's such a great way to consume more books when you can't exactly read them, like at work.
So, this audiobook. My first impressions are that the narrator's voice is kind of whispery and soft, which ties into that whole ASMR thing. But that's 100% subjective and shouldn't at all be considered valid.
And then I continued listening.
Maybe my reaction to the story was partly influenced by the narration. She was so exaggerated in her reading of characters that it was almost laughable. It sounded like a parody. She sounded like she had to act out the characters to a class of children. I don't know how you can take this grimdark story seriously when she's lowering and making her voice sound gruff, or drawing out her words for older men in such a comical way. Her gasping and crying for Rin's emotional dialogue were so excessive. In some parts, I had to stifle my laughter at how unintentionally comedic she made the voices.
She gave Kitay, Rin's nerdy friend, something like...I don't even know how to describe it, like an urban, California surfer accent? It was the opposite of immersion. Probably the worst was Venka. I am not joking when I say she gave Venka a literal stereotypical prep girl accent. You know, the high-pitched, kind of Valley girl voice? I was half expecting Venka to say “And, like, you better not wear the same dress as me to, like, prom, okay girlfriend?” or something equally ridiculous. These voices sounded like imitations of something from a Disney teen sitcom from 2000 to 2005.
I don't know, maybe some people enjoy the extra acting in voices. It was too over-the-top and comedic for me, especially considering this is the same book where corpses are piled up and litter the streets after a brutal invasion. But again...tonal whiplash.
I think I've said more than enough, so I will end all of my rambling here. I will be on the lookout for more Asian-inspired fantasy. Hopefully, I will enjoy it more than this one. Perhaps there is improvement in the other books of this trilogy? I'll only find out if I read them, and I don't know how likely that will be.
Note: This story was listened to in audiobook form. I'll add a separate small review for just the audiobook at the end.
Content warnings: War crimes, sexual assault/rape, violence, self harm
Spoilers discussed in detail within this review
Warning, long review up ahead.
It's fun to write a review for a book if you love it or you hate it. For a book that's simply just disappointing, there's not that same kind of enjoyment.
This is one of those reviews.
As a person of East Asian descent, I was very excited to read this book. Mainstream fantasy has so often been defined by all the same European (mostly Western European) derived culture and history. But from the real world, the inspiration of even the wildest of stories, there is so much more than West Europe (and the USA, I'd like to add). Whenever I see fantastical and/or speculative fiction that derives from something else, I always get excited. As someone who is East Asian, seeing a book inspired by a significant event from that region got me hyped to read this.
I've recently gotten into audiobooks while working my job, and so I got this audiobook and couldn't wait to hear an exciting saga to liven up my work day. At about 1/3 of the way in, it was already becoming a struggle to finish it. It was only through sheer willpower that I got through the entire audiobook. I found myself making faces at what I was hearing through my earbuds.
I was under the impression that this book would be a sprawling and dense, maturely written saga. The first section of the book sounded like a teen sitcom. I don't want to sound disrespectful to YA fiction as a whole and the people who read them, but I mean to say that this was not the dense and complex writing I was hoping for, but when I heard about this book having rich characters and dramatic conflicts, I was not expecting your typical public school drama with one-note stereotypes.
Let me back up a little. The very first section of the book, with Rin escaping her foster family to go to the prestigious school of Sinegard, was very gripping. Already, I was invested in this character's determination to rise above the poverty she had endured to an entirely new setting with a new culture. And then the school section of the story began and I was severely underwhelmed. I'm not joking when I say you could take out the names and setting details and put just the dialogue in your typical late '90s early 2000s teen drama sitcom, and nothing would seem out of place. All of the usual cliches are there. Now, I understand cliches are present in every story, but usually people try to offset them a little with an original twist or add some kind of interesting catch to them that makes them at least somewhat entertaining to read and less shallow. There is none of that here. Literally, every character in this beginning section of the book is a cardboard cutout of a trope. This was the deep characterization and writing that people had been raving about?
Rin's the new girl who nobody likes because she's different and a little better than her peers. She's got the typical nerdy best friend/sidekick. The bully who literally exists just to be utterly irredeemable with no other qualities. The preppy pretty girl. Yes, there is a goddamn prep girl character in this war saga novel. There is nothing else to them, no motivations or deeper explorations of who they are other than the archetypes. It's frustrating because there are instances where you could delve deeper into the character, showcase them as why they are the way they are. Oh, the bully is the war lord's son? How might that affect him into being a bully? But no, he's just there to beat up Rin and be the bad guy.
Everyone is defined as being either “good” or “bad” depending on if they are an ally of Rin or not. Rin's nerdy friend, the professor who sympathizes with her, and her original tutor? Basically all good guys, nothing more. The bully, the prep girl, the teacher who hates Rin? All of them are unequivocal jerks because of course only a jerk could be mean and not like our main character. The only mildly interesting character in this part of the book is Jiang, because he's kind of weird and had a potentially interesting backstory. But even then, “weird teacher who kind of vibes with the main character because said main character is an outcast” isn't something that's really rare.
And then comes the second portion of the book, that focuses on the invasion and the characters being thrust into the war.
The whiplash I felt from the extreme tone shift was nearly physical, it was so bad.
I have never read a book with a more inconsistent tone between the two halves of the book. It felt like Kuang had written two entirely different books, one a typical YA coming-of-age school drama book, and the other book a gritty and grimdark war novel, and then decided to arbitrarily put them under the same cover. I was actually staring open-mouthed at my phone at some parts in disbelief that this was still the same story. We suddenly go from teenage school drama to extreme violence. The enemy forces invade, and Rin is now at the front lines with her new magical training. There are no more prep girls or bullies to deal with. Now, we start dealing with massive war atrocities. Despicable war crimes, children being murdered in the fight and people viciously killed and mutilated. Corpses littering the streets, women being violently raped and brutalized.
What in the hell? What kind of shift is this? I'm not saying that the beginning of the book was all peachy clean. There are clear references to self-harm, marital rape, drug abuse, and violence. But the leap from minor details to full-blown descriptions and focus on violence is such a tonal shock. I'm not saying it's impossible to do this, or that it's a bad idea. Ender's Game started out as a kid's academy that deals with child soldiers and the real consequences of war put onto a young, developing kid. Harry Potter is a coming-of-age story that notably grows darker and more intense as the books go on. The difference between these two books and The Poppy War is that the tonal shift is handled leagues better, a more gradual and natural shift. We know the stakes in the beginning of Ender's Game see how they are revealed and delved into deeper as the story goes on, and even then, it's not like we get pages of graphic descriptions of women and children being brutalized. Harry Potter was a gradual change that happened over years and dealt very organically with the changes in psychology and circumstances during a war.
Kuang does not handle the shift with the same finesse. Characters who were once one-note archetypes are now suddenly fighting in a brutal war and subject to intense brutality themselves. Shallow characters are not sufficiently developed in an organic way, and suddenly we're watching them change in the midst of a war. And to think this is only book one of a trilogy...this kind of transition would have been better spread out across all three of those books!
While the story and characters were agonizing, that's not to say that I didn't enjoy aspects of this book. The world-building, being based on Chinese history, was very interesting to read and I enjoyed the setting very much. Seeing the history of past wars being talked about was actually interesting, if a little infodump-esque. Even the dropping of real world names and historical figures (Sun Tzu being the most noticeable) didn't bother me that much because I see it happen all the time in Western-derived stories. To me, it's very little different from a Eurocentric fantasy story having extremely obvious stand-ins for real-world ethnicities, nations, and religions (or in some cases, just flat out having a Christian-esque God in a fantasy world). I think we're more used to it in Eurocentric stories and tend to excuse it there more. If anything, it made Kuang's world seem more like an alternate history kind of setting to me than straight-up fantasy.
Among those who are critical of the book like me, I'm actually opposite of the major opinion and think Rin became more interesting as the book went on. She started out as a pretty common character trope of wanting to be better and rising above her position, being the new girl at school that nobody likes, and then suddenly finding she really is special through her magical powers. Watching her become more hardened and making ethically reprehensible choices as the story went on made her a much more intriguing character to me. I am utterly fascinated by characters like that, and I think it's much more realistic. Imagine being a vulnerable child, orphaned by a horrible war and raised by abusive people, knowing very little of love and nurturing and living in poverty. Now imagine being a young teenager (Rin seems to be about 14-15 in the beginning of the book and ages to around 17-18? when the war starts) and being ostracized by your peers, pushed beyond your limits, singled out with very few friends on your side. And now you have some kind of mystical power that proves you are superior in some way to your peers and are trusted with power over others.
You're not going to magically become a good guy who saves the day and always does the right thing, especially in a fantasy world where there is no such thing as “the right thing.” Not to say that typical good hero stories are bad. I love them very much and cherish them. But I cherish character stories like Rin's in a different way, because they give such a raw and powerful outlook on a vulnerable person being put in a position of power. The part where she commits genocide on an entire ethnic population and now has aspirations to take over much more...that kind of development is chilling. Is she likable? Not really. Is she a good person? God, no. But you don't need to be a good person or even likable to be a compelling character. It's probably the only good thing about the tonal shift, though this would have been much better developed more naturally over the course of three books than crammed into one.
I'm honestly torn over whether to continue the series or not. The final development of Rin are very intriguing, and I do want to see what more happens, if Rin falls further into being a despicable person or if she somehow tries to find a way to pay for her sins. But Kuang's writing is such a struggle to get through, and I don't know if the amazing setting and Rin's development will be enough to get me through the rest, especially with how long the stories are.
But I am considering buying a physical copy of this book and re-reading it. And that's because...
Audiobook Review
Okay, so it took me a while to get into audiobooks. I tend to zone out when trying to listen, and I'm very sensitive about sounds (I'm one of those highly sensitive people who physically cannot stand the sensation of ASMR into my ear, including whispering and certain kinds of noises). But after training myself up to it, I've been getting more into it and getting better at listening to stories. And it's such a great way to consume more books when you can't exactly read them, like at work.
So, this audiobook. My first impressions are that the narrator's voice is kind of whispery and soft, which ties into that whole ASMR thing. But that's 100% subjective and shouldn't at all be considered valid.
And then I continued listening.
Maybe my reaction to the story was partly influenced by the narration. She was so exaggerated in her reading of characters that it was almost laughable. It sounded like a parody. She sounded like she had to act out the characters to a class of children. I don't know how you can take this grimdark story seriously when she's lowering and making her voice sound gruff, or drawing out her words for older men in such a comical way. Her gasping and crying for Rin's emotional dialogue were so excessive. In some parts, I had to stifle my laughter at how unintentionally comedic she made the voices.
She gave Kitay, Rin's nerdy friend, something like...I don't even know how to describe it, like an urban, California surfer accent? It was the opposite of immersion. Probably the worst was Venka. I am not joking when I say she gave Venka a literal stereotypical prep girl accent. You know, the high-pitched, kind of Valley girl voice? I was half expecting Venka to say “And, like, you better not wear the same dress as me to, like, prom, okay girlfriend?” or something equally ridiculous. These voices sounded like imitations of something from a Disney teen sitcom from 2000 to 2005.
I don't know, maybe some people enjoy the extra acting in voices. It was too over-the-top and comedic for me, especially considering this is the same book where corpses are piled up and litter the streets after a brutal invasion. But again...tonal whiplash.
I think I've said more than enough, so I will end all of my rambling here. I will be on the lookout for more Asian-inspired fantasy. Hopefully, I will enjoy it more than this one. Perhaps there is improvement in the other books of this trilogy? I'll only find out if I read them, and I don't know how likely that will be.