The Burning God

3.5/5 but a rare case when I'm going to round down, because having this as a 4 star doesn't feel right.

This not the book I wanted or had much interest in getting. Kuang made a lot of choices that made me roll my eyes - Rin gets dumber than a block of cheese for half this book, plotlines are dropped entirely, characters are killed off-screen because she didn't have a use for them anymore, the villains having a seeming huge shift in motivation that is never made much clearer than “because they're bad now”, not enough time spent on characters that are not Rin, depicting a war with the most bare bones details possible, etc.

But what I think her goal is in this novel, and series in general, is still impressive. I read most of this book in a day even though those elements bothered me because I was still engaged. I thought the second half especially was very good. This series is just...not what I wanted it to be based off the first two books, and Kuang has different interests than I do. Her characters became obvious stand-ins for the themes she wanted to explore and because of that, I don't think their actions always made a lot of sense, and we are pretty reliant on just accepting how we are told these characters feel about each other and not given a lot of evidence for why they would feel that way.

So, I'm vaguely disappointed, but it still made me think. It still made me appreciate what Kuang was going for; exploring the trauma of war, of colonialism, of genocide. There were still badass moments, and great fight scenes. So all in all...still a good book.