The Poppy War (The Poppy War, #1)

by R.F. Kuang

“The Keju doesn’t mean anything,” Rin said scathingly. “The Keju is a ruse to keep uneducated peasants right where they’ve always been. You slip past the Keju, they’ll find a way to expel you anyway. The Keju keeps the lower classes sedated. It keeps us dreaming. It’s not a ladder for mobility; it’s a way to keep people like me exactly where they were born. The Keju is a drug.”

But the misery she felt now was a good misery. This misery she reveled in, because she had chosen it for herself.

“I have taught her class the crushing sensation of disappointment and the even more important lesson that they do not matter as much as they think they do.”

Martial arts history seemed to be riddled with people making pointless sacrifices.

“The temples that were once havens of nonviolence became instead a sanctuary for anti-Northerner rebels and a center for revolutionary planning and training. Soldiers and sympathizers would don monks’ robes and shave their heads, but train for war within the temple grounds. In sacred spaces like these, they plotted the overthrow of their oppressors.”

I had high hopes for that pig. But in the end, swine are swine.