The Poppy War (The Poppy War, #1)
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Read between January 13 - February 4, 2025
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A husband for Rin, money for the matchmaker, and drugs for the Fangs.
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“Yes, but they think I’ll be more useful in the import inspector’s bed.”
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In Tikany, an unmarried girl like Rin was worth less than a gay rooster.
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Well, fuck the heavenly order of things. If getting married to a gross old man was her preordained role on this earth, then Rin was determined to rewrite it.
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The Empire had been formed a millennium ago under the mighty sword of the merciless Red Emperor, who destroyed the monastic orders scattered across the continent and created a unified state of unprecedented size. It was the first time the Nikara people had ever conceived of themselves as a single nation. The Red Emperor standardized the Nikara language, issued a uniform set of weights and measurements, and built a system of roads that connected his sprawling territory.
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Which was the god of test scores? Which was the god of unmarried shopgirls who wished to stay that way?
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Give me a way out of this shithole. Or if you can’t do that, give the import inspector a heart attack.”
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He tried to cling to her waist, but she pushed him away with more force than she had intended. Kesegi stumbled backward, stunned, and then opened his mouth to wail loudly.
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She was a student of the most prestigious academy in all of the Empire. Surely that insulated her from the city’s dangers.
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for a country that had been at war more often than it had been at peace.
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“We barely won the war.” He shoved her back into a sitting position. “And there’s a reason why all your instructors at Sinegard care only about winning the next one.”
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“The women here are so white,” Rin marveled. “Like the girls in wall paintings.”
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“The driver was smart,” said Tutor Feyrik as they wobbled over the bumpy road. “You cripple a child, you pay a disabilities fine for their entire life. But if you kill them, you pay the funeral fee once. And that’s only if you’re caught. If you hit someone, better make sure they’re dead.”
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Everywhere she traveled, everywhere she escaped to, she was just a war orphan who was not supposed to be there.
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“I’ll kill you,” Nezha snarled at Rin. “I will fucking kill you.”
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He was dressed as if he’d forgotten orientation was happening and had thrown on a formless brown cloak at the last minute.
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We did such a terrible job defending our country that it took genocide for Hesperia to intervene.
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And Kureel raised her knee and jammed the ball of her foot into Jeeha’s groin.
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“Just as you said.” Rin dipped her head into a mocking bow. “I only know one kick.”
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“Power dictates acceptability,” Kitay mused. “If the capital had been built in Tikany, I’m sure we’d be running around dark as wood bark.”
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Raban grinned widely.
C
fight club...
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“He’s got red eyes because he’s Speerly, you idiot,” Kitay said. “All the Speerlies had crimson eyes.”
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Centuries ago the Red Emperor had taken the island by storm and forced the Speerlies into military service, turning the island warriors into the most feared contingent in the Militia until the Second Poppy War wiped them out.
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They had very little to offer culturally or technologically—in fact, they seemed centuries behind the rest of the world. Militarily, however, the Speerlies were worth their weight in gold.”
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“The Speerlies were terrifying,” Nezha said. “Primitive, drug-loving freaks. Who wouldn’t want them gone?”
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the Vermilion Phoenix of the South. But that was only ever a ritual. Not a martial ability.”
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He fights well because he’s been training since he could walk. Altan is the last scion of a dead race. If the Speerlies prayed to their god, it clearly didn’t save them.”
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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.”
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“So you’re not dying, sweetheart, your body is just shedding your uterine lining.” Rin’s jaw had been hanging open for a solid minute. “What the fuck?”
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But the misery she felt now was a good misery. This misery she reveled in, because she had chosen it for herself.
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“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.”
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In another world she might have grown up at an estate like this, with all of her desires within reach. In another world, she might have been born into power.
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How did you explain to a child the idea of gravity, until they knew what it meant to fall?
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But no one actually believed that you would have bad luck for the rest of the year if you forgot to light incense to the Azure Dragon. No one really thought that you could keep your loved ones safe by praying to the Great Tortoise.
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Because she knew that something was real. She knew that on some level, there was more to the cosmos than what she encountered in the material world. She was not truly such a skeptic as she pretended to be.
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“How has the roster of Nikara gods changed over time, and how did this reflect the eminence of different Warlords at different points in history?”
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It felt wrong to be sitting so still, to have nothing occupying her mind. She could barely stand three minutes of this torture, let alone sixty.
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These seeds, used with the proper mental preparation, give you access to the entire universe contained within your mind.”
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When man begins to think that he is responsible for writing the script of the world, he forgets the forces that dream up our reality.
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It feels good to hate, doesn’t it?
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Tyr could do nothing then but die. He sank back into the darkness. Back into the deep, where sounds could not be heard, sights could not be seen, where nothing could be felt, where nothing lived. Back into the soft stillness of the womb. Back to his mother. Back to his goddess.
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“What does it matter? They’re coming, and we’re staying, and at the end of the day whoever is alive is the side that wins. War doesn’t determine who’s right. War determines who remains.”
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Children ceased to be children when you put a sword in their hands. When you taught them to fight a war, then you armed them and put them on the front lines, they were not children anymore. They were soldiers.
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Fear bubbled in the back of her throat, so thick and tangible that she almost choked on it. Fear made her fingers tremble violently so that she almost dropped her sword. Fear made her forget how to breathe.
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Amateurs obsess over strategy, Irjah had once told their class. Professionals obsess over logistics.
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As if he could sense her gaze, Nezha looked up. Their eyes met under the moonlight. Rin’s heart leaped.
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He was so beautiful then, standing right in the space of the road where a beam of moonlight fell across his face, illuminating one side and casting long shadows on the other.
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A boy made of flesh and bone could not be so painfully lovely, so free of any blemish or flaw.
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The bug might feel pain, but what did that matter to you? If you were the victim, what could you say to make your tormentor recognize you as human? How did you get your enemy to recognize you at all?
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She knew she would bear full responsibility for the murders she was about to commit, bear the weight of them for as long as she lived. But it was worth it.
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