The Poppy War
Going in to The Poppy War, I really thought I knew what I was getting in to. Everyone's been gushing about this book since it came out. And with the recent release of the sequel, that gushing has only increased. It seemed like a standard high fantasy adventure, albeit with the background based in Chinese history rather than European history. I figured I'd get a fun story and learn a bit about another culture thanks to osmosis.
The first third of the book played right in to these expectations. It felt startlingly similar to the University sections of The Name of the Wind. Rin is a poor war orphan whose only chance of escaping marriage to a much-older man is to ace a nation-wide test that would win her admission and a scholarship to a prestigious school where she could train to be a general. She nearly kills herself studying for this exam for two years, but it pays off when she scores high enough to escape her provincial life. And when she discovers that her classmates are nearly all children of wealth and privilege who have been preparing to study at this school for their entire lives, well that's just another obstacle to overcome.
So she ends up having to work twice as hard to maintain a precarious position. Her main champion at the school, Jiang, is so similar to Elodin that Rothfuss' entire world started to feel a little less original. Especially since Rin is one of the only students at the school studying "real" magic in addition to the general curriculum of strategy, martial arts, and basic medicine. She has to learn to expand her mind and hone her body and it's all a lot like Kvothe's story.
But then the war starts and the book takes a turn into a much darker, much more intense place than I was expecting. The horrors of war are front and center. And when it turns out that the enemy views this conflict less as a war and more as a genocide, well that's all described in horrific detail, too. Rin becomes a monster much more definitively than Kvothe ever does, becoming solely focused on revenge and seeking power at the expense of all the values her teachers attempted to instill in her. By the end of the book she's committed some horrifying atrocities in the name of "eye for an eye" and is steadily ignoring the warnings of everyone around her. She refuses to listen to anyone who implies that she might have gone too far.
I'm both eager to read the next book and a little scared of it. This book was so dark and intense, and I'm not sure I'm up for more of that just yet. At the same time, I want to know whether Rin can be redeemed. Whether she'll ever try to be redeemed. Whether Jiang and Kitay can ever get through to her or if she'll proceed even further down her path towards vengeance. If nothing else, Kuang has created a fascinating moral conundrum centered on Rin, a monster I can't help but root for.
The first third of the book played right in to these expectations. It felt startlingly similar to the University sections of The Name of the Wind. Rin is a poor war orphan whose only chance of escaping marriage to a much-older man is to ace a nation-wide test that would win her admission and a scholarship to a prestigious school where she could train to be a general. She nearly kills herself studying for this exam for two years, but it pays off when she scores high enough to escape her provincial life. And when she discovers that her classmates are nearly all children of wealth and privilege who have been preparing to study at this school for their entire lives, well that's just another obstacle to overcome.
So she ends up having to work twice as hard to maintain a precarious position. Her main champion at the school, Jiang, is so similar to Elodin that Rothfuss' entire world started to feel a little less original. Especially since Rin is one of the only students at the school studying "real" magic in addition to the general curriculum of strategy, martial arts, and basic medicine. She has to learn to expand her mind and hone her body and it's all a lot like Kvothe's story.
But then the war starts and the book takes a turn into a much darker, much more intense place than I was expecting. The horrors of war are front and center. And when it turns out that the enemy views this conflict less as a war and more as a genocide, well that's all described in horrific detail, too. Rin becomes a monster much more definitively than Kvothe ever does, becoming solely focused on revenge and seeking power at the expense of all the values her teachers attempted to instill in her. By the end of the book she's committed some horrifying atrocities in the name of "eye for an eye" and is steadily ignoring the warnings of everyone around her. She refuses to listen to anyone who implies that she might have gone too far.
I'm both eager to read the next book and a little scared of it. This book was so dark and intense, and I'm not sure I'm up for more of that just yet. At the same time, I want to know whether Rin can be redeemed. Whether she'll ever try to be redeemed. Whether Jiang and Kitay can ever get through to her or if she'll proceed even further down her path towards vengeance. If nothing else, Kuang has created a fascinating moral conundrum centered on Rin, a monster I can't help but root for.
Comments
Post a Comment