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 ne...