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The Poppy War (The Poppy War, #1)

R.F. Kuang

Start date: September 1, 2019

Finish date: September 30, 2019

Discussion: September 2019

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September 2019

Where the Crawdads Sing
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last updated Sep 04, 2025 02:16PM

The Picture of Dorian Gray
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last updated Sep 02, 2019 03:21PM

What Members Thought

Mar 13, 2021 Harshi rated it it was amazing

Shelves: all-time-favourites, fantasy, dystopian, dark-ish, to-recommend, re-readable, morally-gray-characters, first-book-in-a-series, it-made-me-feel-things, ships-i-stan

I have no idea where to start.
It's so hard to review books I loved. I seriously cannot express the feelings I had reading this. It's much easier to criticise books and point out all their mistakes than trying to put into words why I loved a book. It's sounds bad, but it's the truth haha.

First things first, this was recommended to me by Varshika, and I'm so so grateful to her for introducing me to such a wonderful series!

This first book was one hell of a journey. I was hooked from page 1. It sta I have no idea where to start.
It's so hard to review books I loved. I seriously cannot express the feelings I had reading this. It's much easier to criticise books and point out all their mistakes than trying to put into words why I loved a book. It's sounds bad, but it's the truth haha.

First things first, this was recommended to me by Varshika, and I'm so so grateful to her for introducing me to such a wonderful series!

This first book was one hell of a journey. I was hooked from page 1. It started out as one of those YA academy kind of books in Part 1, and then took a sudden turn and became a proper dark war novel, and then Part 3 was something else entirely. It really was a roller coaster ride and I enjoyed all parts of it!

What I loved the most was the morally grey characters and that the author doesn't shy away from anything. She doesn't sugarcoat anything and explains a lot of aspects of our protagonist's struggle that most authors don't talk about. I love how war isn't glorified at all. It's a fantasy book, but probably the realest book I've ever read.

Another thing I loved was that there is NO romance arc, I respect the author so much for this. It was refreshing to read because literally every single YA dystopian book has a love triangle.

I also really loved that it was set in China and borrows stuff from Chinese history and culture and mythology, I though it was really cool. (Although some people have pointed out that there were problems with the cultural part, I'm sorry I don't know enough about it to comment, but personally it didn't really affect my reading experience).

It's really hard to describe the tone and atmosphere of the book, you'll just have to read it yourself to find out haha. I also can't describe my feeling about the mc Rin, let's just say it's complicated. But I really really love that she gets to where she is through her hard work and determination and merit, and isn't the "chosen one".

I've been calling the book YA, but I'm not sure I'd categorize it as that. Because throughout the book there's a lot of graphic violence and it's generally really dark. But I also think teens are mature enough to read it. So I'm not going to shelve it as either of those.

Bottom line is that I really loved this first book, it has some really powerful stuff, and am excited to see where the author takes us in the sequel. The book is just brilliant, and I think everyone should check it out. Highly recommended. It will keep you turning the pages. ...more

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