What I Am Reading: "The Poppy War" by R.F. Kuang

“The Poppy War” is a fantasy novel set in a (very) thinly-veiled China, fighting a medieval war against invading thinly-veiled Japan. At the start, it is a simple story, with a peasant girl from a backwater province taking a Confucian-style examination, acing it, and matriculating at the top military academy. There, while struggling against the class-based opprobrium of her peers, she learns that she is special, and is in contact with the world’s malevolent gods. The gods use shamans as vessels for their power before ultimately consuming them, and shamans all eventually end up sealed away, for the good of the realm. Eventually, as the war comes to the nation’s shores, the main character Rin must decide what she will do in defense of their country.

I sought this book out because I like fantasy settings that offer an alternative to Tolkien-derived Knights and Elves of medieval Europe. This offered that in a very straightforward way: the Chinese historical analogs were very clear, perhaps even blatant. It did have a section that retold the Rape of Nanking, which was harrowing and well-written. When I started reading, I was mostly in it for the Imperial Examination aspect, which ended up being highly streamlined and didn’t bear much resemblance to the real thing; as might be expected for a book about magic warfare. Once the training half was over with, it settled into being a fun, slightly magic war story. The magic had a fun psychedelia aspect that reminded me a little of (what else but) “The Illuminatus! Trilogy.” Other than that and the non-Euro setting, the book hit a lot of notes that I feel are common in fantasy novels: it had a training academy, it had a magic commando squadron, it had various hard-bitten commanders. However, it was a debut novel, and I thought it was well-paced and very readable.