The Poppy War (R. F. Kuang)

[chomiji]

The author of this book is a finalist for for the "not-a-Hugo" Campbell Award, give to "the best new writer whose first professional work of science fiction or fantasy was published within the two previous calendar years."

Fang Runin ("Rin") is an orphan, adopted mainly to do housework for a family with no daughter. Faced with a marriage to a suitor whose main qualification is the wealth he'll bring to her foster family, Rin takes one of the few avenues available: she studies herself nearly blind and demented and manages to snag a position at her nation's elite military academy, Sinegard.

Unfortunately, rather than being impressed with her determination and hard work, most of the faculty and students at Sinegard despise Rin for being a peasant. Some actively want her to fail out. Her situation becomes better in some ways and rather worse in others when she pledges herself to the eccentric Lore Master Jiang rather than one of the more respected masters. Jiang detects and encourages Rin's hidden potential for shamanic magic—"lore." She begins to think she may have found a place.

Meanwhile, the Empire is threatened by a powerful invader, the Federation of Mugen. When the Federation makes its move, Rin and the other Sinegard cadets have an all-too-real practical example of the benefits and limits of their military education. As many have noted, this is where the story takes a very dark turn. Kuang uses the accounts of real-world atrocities such as the Nanking Massacre as the basis for a series of horrifying scenes in which Rin and her new comrades, a band of intriguing misfits with unusual powers, do their best to stem the tide. One of the effects of all this is that Rin is finally able to tap the core of her powers.

The result is not pleasant. Raised with little if any sense of compassion or ethics, accustomed to having to push herself to the utmost for results, and lacking any superiors whom she respects, Rin starts to become a monster.

I will probably want to continue this series if only tp find out whether Rin ever comes back across the moral event horizon. But this is not a light-hearted read.

Comments

[sholio]

Ouch. I've heard that this book gets very dark, but I think this is the first time I've realized that it's not the main character being caught up in atrocities, it's the main character becoming the perpetrator, and I think that sounds like pretty much the opposite of what I like to read. I don't mind darkness in my fiction, and I don't even mind protagonists doing terrible things, but I don't like downward-spiral, going-darkside narratives.

[yhlee]

I was spoiled for that aspect of the book and it's one of the main reasons I keep hesitating over reading it--a lot of it sounds like I would enjoy it, but given Kuang's background in scholarship and the parts that are based on real history, I am terrified that this book will be too hard to read emotionally.

[ambyr]

With the caveat that I'm only halfway through now, I'm not even sure I would describe it as "downward-spiral, going-darkside," because Rin's character and motivations are fairly well established from page one. She doesn't have the power to do terrible things at the beginning, but that doesn't mean she has any sort of ethical structure suggesting that she should avoid them. To describe the book as being about a fall I'd have to perceive her as ever having stood on some sort of high point.

[chomiji]

Sorry, I probably should have marked for spoilers. But yes, that's exactly how I saw it. In fact very few of the people in this book are the sort I'd trust with great powers.

[chomiji]

Very sorry, probably should have marked for spoilers. I was re-reading James Nicoll's review before I wrote mine, and he laid it out in the clear, so I unthinkingly did the same.

On the other hand, a lot of readers would agree with you on not wanting to read a character arc of that sort, so maybe it's just as well. Frankly, the descriptions in most of the reviews were grim enough that if I hadn't wanted to do a creditable job on my Hugo voting, I might well have decided not to read it at all.

My guess would be that Kuang eventually plans to redeem Rin somehow. The (first?) sequel is due out in just a few weeks.

[chomiji]

Not going to lie, it's a pretty grim book. If I hadn't been trying to be a good Hugo reader, I might not have read it at all.

(On the other hand, several of the Lodestar finalists sound in some ways even worse, from my point of view, so I'm not going to live up to my own standards there.)

[sholio]

Re: spoilers - no, that's totally on me, don't worry about it! I could tell the post was going spoilery places and I would've looked away if I didn't want to know.

[ambyr]

Oh, no worries! I wouldn't say this is a book that depends heavily on twists--all of Rin's choices are extremely well-telegraphed, and, well, I am well familiar with the first and second Sino-Japanese wars (or the War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression, as the Chinese call WWII).