Damn! What an ending. Phenomenal. Grim series but I loved it. ( )

The Burning God is the third and final book in the Poppy War trilogy by R.F. Kuang.

Content Note: rape, genocide, addiction, abuse (and pretty much everything else)

Plot:
Rin has withdrawn to Tikany, the city she is from. There, she makes new plans to defeat everybody who threatens her people and the shamans. For now, that means not only her former allies of the Dragon Republic, but also the Hesperians who are preparing to bring their culture to the land and the people - and that means eradicating the already existing culture, and especially any trace of the gods. But her quest for liberation is also a quest for vengeance, and with the Phoenix urging her to destruction, Rin might be on the wrong path.

Endings are difficult, and the longer a story becomes, the harder it can be to actually finish it. The Burning God is a rare example of a really, really good ending - in terms of quality, definitely not happiness. But it wasn't good enough to make me fall in love with a series that so far had only made me moderately enthusiastic.

Read more on my blog: https://kalafudra.com/2024/08/04/the-burning-god-r-f-kuang/ ( )

I finished this book a few days ago, and I can not stop thinking about it. The way the book ended was so heartbreaking and just so.... real. I am a puddle of emotions and am not ready for this series to be done but I guess it ended on a somewhat hopeful note? This trilogy covers a history I think everyone could benefit from learning more about. ( )

The Burning God picks up the torch where the Dragon Republic left off. While rather surface level, we get more history Nikan, the characters that loom larger than life like the Trifecta, and more explanation on the Pantheon and its role.
The Burning God also continues the unflinching look at war and its aftermath, colonialism and its affects on a colonized people, and military tactics and strategy. In this book Rin is introduced to guerilla warfare styles—I appreciated the fact that she has to relearn strategy as she fights with the underdogs.
I appreciated Rin’s struggle between different feelings-defiance, mercy, and the true difference between what is right and wrong, and how what seems obviously “good” or “bad” becomes clouded, especially during war. And she’s not the only character that has these struggles! The conflicts between loyalty, duty, love, and doing what is “right” are all present in this book.
This book is longer than the last one, and there are so many different battles, marches, skirmishes. It still feels like maybe we could have sacrificed some of that for some more world-building, but I just read an article that was talking about how modern novels really are action-centric, rather than character or world-centric, so I think I’ll just have to accept that. Rin’s character development has more depth in this one than any other, and I do think that the ending was very good. A good finish to a good trilogy. ( )

This book, and the trilogy as a whole, was a difficult one for me. I went into the series with quite high expectations based on the fact that it was a fantasy series couched in Chinese mythology and culture (which is a rare spawn) and also due to the high praise that I'd seen on a lot of internet reviews and reading lists. However, I ended up having a two main issues with it that significantly impacted my enjoyment, even though there were some very powerful aspects to the story.

The first was the use of the Chinese mythos and history. I'm not sure if this is just a result of cultural background, but I grew up with a lot of Chinese stories and folklore, especially the Journey to the West. The Poppy War draws a lot of these, but while these elements was creatively used in some ways, many of the references felt very on the nose to me. For a more Western comparison, it would be the equivalent of having a story set in a fantasy alternative universe, but having Zeus or Hercules being dropped in. This definitely broke the immersion for me, and together with the very overt historical allusions also, I felt the worldbuilding could never decide on whether it was trying to create it's own setting with its own lore, or whether it was just reinterpreting and amalgamating aspects from the real world.

The second was that I did not find any of the characters inherently likeable. While I understand that Rin was not intended to be the typical hero that the reader is meant to root for, I found her incredibly difficult to engage with, mainly because everything that she did or experienced was an extreme. As a rather rationally minded person myself, it was very frustrating to see the lack of character development in this sense, how even with everything she goes through, down to the very last chapters she continues to make rash decisions and be completely unreasonable. This frustration is exacerbated by the fact that the reader is constantly reminded about how 'powerful' she supposedly is, so much so that she considers herself a 'god' by this last book, yet she is constantly upstaged either in scenarios where her abilities aren't sufficient, or she just acts on impulse or is reckless. The result is that very few of her victories felt deserved, and it often seemed like she managed to achieve what she did by chance, or just by virtue of being the main character. Some of the other characters were more convincing - Nezha for instance saw good development - but because the story is almost entirely from Rin's perspective, the reader isn't able to get a wholesome picture of any of them. As others have mentioned, this is very much a series that could have benefitted from multiple perspectives, as well as more distinctive character voices.

It also has to be said that I'm not particularly well-versed in grim-dark fantasy, and from what I've seen, The Poppy War series has a lot of the trademarks of that subgenre. It may be that this kind of fantasy is just not for me, because although I felt Rebecca Kuang did a phenomenal job in depicting the horrors of war, both physical and psychological, the overall tone of the books, together with the issues I had above, meant that my level of actual enjoyment gradually diminished the more I got through the books, and I was more motivated by the goal of finishing than actually having fun reading. The final verdict is that while I can appreciate what the books were trying to achieve, they didn't end up ticking the boxes for me. ( )