The Burning God

I'd previously ripped the piss out of the The Poppy War for overusing the word “ensconced”, after the author obviously discovered it halfway through writing the book and couldn't stop showing it off. Imagine my joy at seeing it return a few pages into The Burning God, used completely incorrectly (“fire ensconcing everything she saw”), an ill omen that I should've heeded.

Anyway, I came at this with my expectations at rock bottom because The Dragon Republic was the worst book I'd read this year – badly written, badly characterised, pointless stodge – but I wanted to see how the story ends because I'm a sunk-cost fallacy girl. I didn't find it as grating to read as the previous two, as Kuang's grasp of prose has tangibly improved, but The Boring God drops the ball in almost every other way.

I'm not sure how a 600+ page book can achieve so little in terms of plot, worldbuilding, or developing a cast of characters. Kuang really must've mastered the art of bullshitting the word count on an essay. The pacing drags, too much is told through dry exposition, the magic system loses all internal logic, and Rin is still one of the most irritating protagonists ever written.

“She's actually Mao!” and “She's been through a lot!” aren't good enough justifications for how contrived and incoherent Rin's reactions and decisions are. She has no politics, no internal consistency. She'll believe something with 100% certainty one moment, then another character will tell her what to think and she'll change her mind instantly. She spends half the book having the same revelation almost every chapter (“Oh no, maybe the fantasy-Japanese are humans just like us!”), and then shrugging it off and setting people on fire. Any attempts to give her inner conflict and self-reflection just ring hollow after the umpteenth rehash.

The second half of the book is a series of anticlimaxes, each less whelming than the last. The Trifecta, like the Cike, are an utter waste of time. Rin's constant disappointments might be thematically meaningful, but they don't make for an engaging narrative. Almost every single side character and potentially interesting challenge is wasted in Rin's pursuit of the lamest tactical bungles possible. She's a character with no skills or solutions to offer other than violence, who's seen and committed untold atrocities, yet who's still somehow a vapid chump. The height of her military genius is putting up a big tarp so that she can cast fire when it's raining. Why are we following her, of all people? Why is anyone following her?

It struck me in this book, more than the others, that the world feels so sparse and empty – and not in the intended way of a devastated, war-torn land. Every single character is just a chess piece. There are no incidental people in this world to add flavour, depth, and colour. Undeveloped new characters appear only to serve plot points later, which Kuang foreshadows with all the grace of a dump truck delivering concrete. It's all just so joylessly mechanical, like nothing exists outside the demands of shunting Rin from one disjointed objective to another. It's hard to care for the stakes of a setting and characters that feel like cursory window dressing.

It doesn't help that the prose, despite being more considered than the previous books, still falls short of the deep themes and seismic conflicts the author is trying to tackle. The number of times Kuang relies on this phrasing stuck out enough to irritate me:

“This wasn't about lust, this was about power.”

“It wasn't about the violence. It was about the power.”“

This wasn't about humiliation. This was about survival.”

“This wasn't about grief, this was about paying respects.”

“This wasn't about troops, this was about pride.”“

It's not about pride. It's about sacrifice.”

“It wasn't about surrender. It was about the long game. It was about survival.”

Lady, I know. I'm reading the damn story. It's already not subtle. Every author has their tics and tropes, but this one really epitomises Kuang's lack of trust in the reader, and her inability to convey theme and subtext outside of bludgeoning truisms. Having now read all her books, I think that's it for me and Kuang. Her ideas are good, but her execution is always bafflingly lacklustre. As she'd probably put it: it isn't about the ideas, it's about the execution. Her workings and research are so transparent in the text. When she discovers a cool new word (see “ensconced”), you know it. When she discovers a cool new phrase like “power asymmetry” or “conventional warfare”, Christ, don't you just know it. I don't like seeing the wheels of the author's craft spinning so nakedly when I read.

Overall, it's a poor trilogy for me, and not even consistently poor within itself. The Poppy War has the most memorable plot but the most juvenile writing. The Dragon Republic has slightly better prose but the worst plot and characterisation. The Burning God has the most polished wording but precious little else. I don't even mind the ending, but the journey there isn't worth it. In terms of characters, worldbuilding, theme, tone, dialogue, and general prose – everything, basically – these books are just a sorry mess.