***MILD SPOILERS***
The Poppy War trilogy, the 2018 debut series of author R.F. Kuang, is a fantasy series based on the Second Sino-Japanese War as well as other aspects of East Asian history.
The trilogy follows Fang Runin, or Rin, a teenage orphan from a rural southern province of the fictional country of Nikan. Rin, determined to get out of the life she’s stuck in, aces the Empire-wide test to get into the elite military school Sinegard. Rin studies in the Lore track, where she learns to be a shaman. She faces scorn from classmates and teachers because of her chosen area of study, gender, and social class as she tries to prove that she belongs at Sinegard. Before Rin and her classmates can finish their time at Sinegard, however, the Third Poppy War begins and they’re thrown into war as soldiers in the Nikara army.
The trilogy pulls events from the Second Sino-Japanese War, and directly translates them to the world of Nikan. It can be a little heavy-handed at times, because many of the atrocities are taken directly from history, but it also adds a sense of reality to the story. While changed to fit the fantasy world, these events aren’t negligible: real people have experienced very similar ones throughout history.
Knowing the basics of the history that much of the plot is based on changes what’s expected from the story. The events aren’t one-to-one, but if you know about the historical era, you can get a pretty good idea of many of the plot points and the character arcs. There’s never any attempt to hide the fact that the Second Sino-Japanese War is what the book is based on, which allows the reader to draw parallels between the story and real life.
This isn’t a retelling of this war. The story is inspired by it, but it doesn’t pretend to show a different side to the war or to the Mao era. The Poppy War uses these events as a basis for the story, but still creates its own world and its own conflicts within the overarching conflict.
Because the story takes so much inspiration from a real war and real people, it also deals with the very real issue of how the cultures are portrayed. The Nikara Empire is based on China, and the other nations of Speer and the Federation of Mugen are based on Taiwan and Japan, respectively. Rin’s own biases are a huge part of her narration, and she is vehemently anti-Mugen and critical of Nikan because of how she’s grown up and the country’s actions.
Kuang doesn’t shy away from the darkest parts of war and humanity. The story starts with Rin’s journey to get into Sinegard, and then her time at Sinegard before the Third Poppy War begins. There’s an abrupt tonal shift shortly after the war begins, and everything after this event maintains a dark, pessimistic tone.
One of the strengths of The Poppy War is its complexity. While the characters aren’t the most fleshed-out, they are very nuanced. Every character does bad things, even the characters who are on the “good” side. Some of the characters can feel a little flat due to the lack of insight into their thoughts and Rin’s self-absorbed narration, but they still show complexity through their actions.
Despite being the protagonist of the trilogy, Rin isn’t meant to be seen as a good person or a hero. She’s based on the infamous dictator Mao Zedong, and she does lots of terrible things. Most people assume that Rin is someone that we should be rooting for and that we should like because she is the protagonist, but she isn’t and she’s never depicted that way.
The insight that we’re given into Rin’s motivations and thoughts might lead you to feel sympathy for her, but she isn’t a character that we as the audience are supposed to support. Rin is a complex character and an unreliable narrator, because she believes that she is doing what needs to be done and she drowns out every doubt that she has. She’s never depicted as someone who is making good choices or being a good person, because she doesn’t do either of those things.
Something that is important to keep in mind is that our main characters are teenagers. Rin is 16 in the first book, and by the last book she’s only 21. She’s been forced to mature because of her situation, but she’s still a teenager and it shows in her behavior. She’s decisive and determined while also being quick to anger and very egocentric, traits many teenagers display. Rin’s anger only grows during the series, which just makes these traits even more obvious as she becomes more and more unstable. While she’s not a good person by any means, some of her behaviors can be explained by her age and by the evolution she has throughout the series.
The conflicts are also nuanced. While one side is depicted as worse because of Rin’s perspective, both sides do terrible things because of the war. War leads and enables people to do awful things while suffering barely any consequences for what they’ve done, and the ethics and complexities of war are central motifs of the trilogy.
The trilogy explores the effects of genocide and colonialism and if the idea of ‘the end justifies the means’ is worthwhile. This plays into the nuances of the conflicts in the series because a lot of terrible things are rationalized as being for the greater good despite all of the negative consequences.
These conflicts are often caused, at least in part, because of the vicious classism and racism in Nikan. The Poppy Wars and a lot of terrible events happen because of the effects of the oppression that the poor people, southerners, and Speerlies face both from Nikara people and from Mugenese people, and even decades on from the first two Poppy Wars this behavior hasn’t changed. The Speerlies are regarded as less than human, and until one of the last remaining Speerlies came to study at Sinegard and became one of the top students, most people didn’t think that the Speerlies were capable of complex thought. This incessant racism is being taught at the most prestigious school in the country, and it’s similar to the way that a lot of harmful stereotypes are reinforced through schools. When racist, sexist, or otherwise bigoted ideas and teachings are taught in schools, the students end up taking away the same ideas and spreading them, which is one reason we see so many US states with poor education systems vote red.
The treatment Rin receives because she’s from the South is similar to how Southerners from the US, especially people of color, are treated. She’s thought of as stupid because of where she’s from, despite getting into the top Academy in Nikan. Every one of her accomplishments is diminished, because she’s “just here to fill up the quota.” Rin has to try twice as hard to be thought of as worthy of being at Sinegard, while almost everyone around her is working against her. Rin is also made fun of for her accent even though she has no control over it, to the point where she trains herself out of it. Sinegard, despite being an incredibly elite school, is where a lot of this bigotry takes place. Most people at Sinegard are Northerners, and they actively put down Southerners because they’re from the South just like Northerners in the US often do when they write off everyone living in Southern states because the states often end up voting red.
In her time at Sinegard and beyond, Rin faces intense bigotry and backlash because she is a woman from the rural Southern province of Tikany. To the people at Sinegard, the vast majority of which grew up privileged, Rin matters less than them because of where she’s from and the color of her skin. It’s shown over and over, but one of the most blatant examples of the bigotry Rin deals with is when she gets into a fight during Combat with Yin Nezha, the son of one of the most powerful families in Nikan. Nezha attacks her first, but he gets off with only a week of suspension while Rin is banned from Combat for the rest of her time at Sinegard, as well as being banned from using any of the equipment or asking for help from anyone. Her punishment is so harsh specifically because she’s from a rural province, which her teacher shows when he tells her, “You… are just peasant trash.”
While the battles and political aspect of the story was very interesting, the technology in the story was a little confusing. The available technology isn’t described in much detail, which makes it hard to picture. While some of the weaponry is clearly chosen to mirror real-world events, a lot of it seems to be pulled from multiple different eras, making it more difficult to figure out what technology is available in this world.
I went into this trilogy only knowing the basics of this time period of East Asian history, which gave me a different perspective than someone who went into this series with a lot of knowledge about this time period. Excluding the most well known events of the Second Sino-Japanese War, I wasn’t able to parallel the actual historical events with the events in the book the first time I read it.
This meant that I missed out on a lot of the smaller details and references that Kuang made, but I also was more surprised by the events of the novel because of my lack of knowledge. Reading this series did inspire me to learn more about Chinese and Japanese history, because I wanted to know more about this time period and I wanted to be able to understand the events that Kuang referenced.
I really enjoyed The Poppy War trilogy as well as Kuang’s other books. Babel is another fantasy novel that deals with the effects of colonialism, but it follows a group of teenagers in 18th century London who deal with being outsiders because they are people of color in an all white world of academia. Babel’s magic system is also very language based, and a lot of the effects of colonialism are explored through this system and how it has affected the protagonists and his friends. Yellowface is realistic fiction that follows a white woman, June Hayward, who steals the unfinished manuscript of her friend, rising author Athena Liu, after Athena dies in a freak accident and passes it off as her own. Both books have a very different feeling than The Poppy War, but Kuang’s writing only continues to get stronger as her career progresses.
If you enjoy The Poppy War, you might also enjoy The Green Bone Saga by Fonda Lee. It’s another political fantasy trilogy that is heavily inspired by East Asian culture, but it doesn’t have the same historical influence that The Poppy War does. Geopolitical conflicts are the center of both trilogies, with The Poppy War taking place during a major war that our main character fights in and The Green Bone Saga following a gangster family and their impacts on the political system and international conflict.
The Poppy War trilogy is great for readers who enjoy retellings and history and don’t mind reading books where there are no characters to root for. To enjoy this book, you have to be okay with a main character who you can’t root for. It’s not that Rin is a bad character, but she isn’t someone who you can read about and support her actions. The Poppy War is not a ‘feel-good’ kind of story, but it’s one that’ll leave you thinking about it long after you’ve finished it.