📝 What is The Poppy War about?:
Rin, a war orphan, escapes her poor province by surprising everyone and earning her place at a prestigious military academy, Sinegard. While at the school she is bullied and discovers her shamanic ability to connect with ancient gods. As tensions rise in the empire and a military enemy attacks, Rin realizes that her newfound powers might be the key to saving her people, at the possible cost of her humanity.
📚 Genre: Fantasy
🎧 Format: E-book
💞 Feels: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
This book was fascinating. When I finished it I couldn’t really say why it was 4 stars and not 5, other than I wasn’t completely in love with it.
I’m interested to see what happens to Rin next. And I did try to check out the next book from my library – no luck, there’s a 13 week wait!
But so many things happened over the course of the book. 5 years passed over the spam of the book. Rin strives to leave behind her adopted family only to be thrown into the unknown of politics, war and shamanism.
I liked that the book was about Rin discovering her heritage as a war orphan. It made her a sort of blank slate. Her opinions are being formed as the reader is learning with her. Would you make the same choices she did? Do you understand her motivations or do you empathize with other characters?
Getting technical
I disliked how long the chapters were, but that’s just my preference to take breaks between chapters. This book made it hard to do that. So sometimes I had to take breaks when there were scene breaks within chapters. When you’re reading an e-book and see reading time say 45 minutes until end of chapter you’re left to debate can I stay engaged in the story for that long? Or should I be doing something else? Like making dinner?
So I wish the book could’ve been shorter, but I have no notes on what to cut. It all seems very necessary. I’m excited to see how the authors writing style changes over the course of the series. Will the landing stick? Some more recent series I’ve read have fumbled the bag, in my opinion. So I’m cautiously optimistic that this series will improve upon itself rather than devolve.
When I was in the beginning of the book, I was feeling very strong Fourth Wing vibes. Like every few pages I would wonder did The Poppy War inspire Fourth Wing? I think I even googled it cause I couldn’t shake the thought.
We’re at a war college, characters are training to be soldiers and some of them do have powers…and I’ve heard mention of dragons in this series. Didn’t see any dragons in this book, but one can hope they’re coming (fingers crossed). There are a few male lead heartthrob contenders…but again I googled this book and it’s not a romantasy like Fourth Wing. And by midway we’re definitely just trying to win the war and survive, not fall in love.
You’ll like this book if…
You’ll like The Poppy War if you’re more of a fantasy fan than a romantasy fan. You enjoy retelling’s of history, but in a fantastical form. Dramas with political intrigue, self-discovery and one protagonist to follow along the way; a la Arya Stark (I could’ve just watched her and been fine), this is the book for you.
✅ Spinoff novella nomination:
I can’t wait to know more about Chaghan and Qara. I wish we’d been able to see where Chaghan was before he appears in the story. What he and his sister are thinking and feeling when they went North.
I really want know more about all of the characters who go off and continue to live their lives outside the pages of the book. They’re all so compelling and I wanted to follow all of them.
What are you reading? Let me know in the comments.