**A Debut Novel that Lit My Brain On Fire: A Review of "The Poppy War" by R.F. Kuang**

I recently finished listening to "The Poppy War" by R.F. Kuang, and I must say it was a truly immersive experience. The story is set in a fictionalized version of China during World War II, and it follows the journey of a young orphan named Rin who enrolls in a prestigious military academy and discovers her latent powers as a shaman. As Rin navigates this new world, she finds herself caught up in a brewing conflict that threatens to destroy everything she holds dear.

One of the things that struck me most about this book was its exploration of complex themes such as gender, war, and the human cost of violence. The author tackles these topics with sensitivity and nuance, never shying away from the harsh realities of what it means to be a woman in a patriarchal society or to live through trauma. At the same time, the story is full of action, adventure, and intrigue, making it impossible to put down.

As I listened to the audiobook narration by Emily Woo Zeller, I was struck by her ability to bring the characters and world to life. She does a fantastic job of conveying the emotional depth and complexity of Rin's journey, from her initial doubts and fears to her ultimate growth into a powerful shaman. The author's use of written as a character is also noteworthy, particularly near the end of the book, where it becomes a key aspect of the story.

I must warn readers that "The Poppy War" contains many trigger warnings, including descriptions of war, violence, and trauma. However, if you're willing to confront these difficult topics head-on, I highly recommend this book. The author handles them with care and respect, but it's ultimately up to each individual reader to decide whether or not they feel comfortable with the content.

I buddy-read "The Poppy War" with Russell over at Ink and Paper Blog, and we had a fantastic discussion about the book's many themes and plot twists. We both agreed that this was a debut novel that truly lit our brains on fire, and we're eagerly awaiting the release of the second installment in August of this year.

**Page Numbers for Trigger Warnings**

For readers who want to avoid certain sections of the book, I've compiled a list of page numbers where trigger warnings are present. Please note that these triggers may be distressing or triggering for some individuals, and it's essential to prioritize your own well-being when reading. The page numbers will be linked below for easy access.

**Audiobook Narration**

I was thrilled to hear that Emily Woo Zeller was chosen as the audiobook narrator for "The Poppy War". She does an excellent job of bringing the story to life, and her narration added depth and emotion to the listening experience. I've also enjoyed her work on other books, including "Bury What We Cannot Take" and "Soy Sauce for Beginners", which suggests that she may be a talented narrator with a strong voice.

**Conclusion**

In conclusion, "The Poppy War" is a debut novel that truly delivers on its promise of an epic fantasy adventure. With its lush world-building, complex characters, and thought-provoking themes, this book had me hooked from start to finish. I highly recommend it to anyone who enjoys fantasy, historical fiction, or books with strong female protagonists. Just be aware of the trigger warnings and take care of yourself while reading.

**Author Background**

R.F. Kuang is a debut author whose work has already garnered significant attention in the literary world. Her background in Chinese history and mythology lends an air of authenticity to her writing, and I applaud her for tackling difficult topics with sensitivity and nuance. As a fan of fantasy and historical fiction, I'm excited to see where her imagination takes us next.

**Recommendation**

I wholeheartedly recommend "The Poppy War" to anyone who enjoys epic fantasies or historical fiction. While it may not be suitable for all readers due to its mature themes and content, the rewards are well worth it. If you're willing to confront difficult topics head-on, this book will transport you to a richly detailed world of magic, politics, and war.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enHello, I'm Kendra Winchester, and welcomeback to my channel! So recently, I reached4k—thank you all so much for subscribing!It's been wonderful being in thebooktube community, and so I posed aquestion to all of you: what do you wantme to do to celebrate? And you guys votedto have a Dylan blog. So that's whatwe're going to do. I'm gonna plan out aday for Dylan, and we're just gonnafollow him around on his adventures. It'sgonna be pretty great. So that's in theworks. And Samuel is actually excited to doit as well.So we're both very enthusiastic aboutour corgi care and adventures. So thatwill be coming later this month, buttoday we're gonna do the first part ofmy March wrap-up. So once again, I'vesplit it up into middle reader and YA afor today and next time we'll talk aboutsome different types of books as well.All right, so first up: I have a book that Ireread and that is TRULY DEVIOUS byMaureen Johnson. And this is a mysterynovel. Now it's actually part one of . . . Ithink it's a trilogy. It could be longer,but it's just part one. So it ends onthis huge cliffhanger, and I reallyenjoyed this book and the second timethrough was able to see theforeshadowing and different things. AndStevie is the protagonist of this book,and she has gone to this school. It'svery prestigious school in New England,and it's like a genius school. Andyou apply, and you get in. There's notuition, so she goes in as a crimesolver person. And the crime that shewants to solve is what happened to thefounder of the school's wife, and thathappened in the early 1900s. So we haveher trying to solve that larger mystery,but also some mysteries happen whileshe's at school. So last year this cameout, so I reread it, and then I startedwith THE VANISHING STAIR. And this is thesecond book in the series.I'm sorry Dylan's over there pouting andmaking these whining noises, so if youyou hear this like humph kind of noiseor his sigh, that's him. He lives a hard life.Anyway, so we have THE VANISHING STAIR. Nowthis one. . . this one I'm much more enjoyed theflashbacks to the original mystery a lotmore than the present-day mystery. I knowpart of this is because I'm not ateenager, and this is a YA book. But Ifound Stevie . . . she just always made thewrong decision. It was like any decisionshe was given it was like, What is thebest decision? What is the worst decision?I will make the worst decision and theneverything is so overly dramatic.Everything is such a big deal, and I knowthat's part of being a teenager. I knowprobably as a teenager, I would haveenjoyed that part. But that's just notsomething I enjoyed at the moment. I'mvery looking forward to finding out theend the mystery. I'm assuming that's thenext book and finding out what'shappening. I think it's a fun read, but Ifelt like some of the depth andcomplexity was lost in the second book.Because she set up these really awesomemysteries in the first book, and thereveals were a bit of a letdown for mepersonally. So yeah, I didn't enjoy thesecond one as much unfortunately I feltlike you had like this sophomore in theseries slump, though Maureen Johnson haswritten a lot of other books. But youknow I'm saying so those were those twobooks. I finally got my hold from thelibrary of WUNDERSMITH. This is thesecond book in the NEVERMOOR series. so Iread this one back in the fall, I think.and then this one finally came in for me,and I really enjoyed it. I mean, it wasjust as fun and quirky and complex asthe first one. I just love them so much.They're great material novels, andthere's definitely something I want tobuy my nephew once he gets old enough.And this is the calling the Morrigan Crowwhere this is where she is solving, Iguess, not mysteries. But she's likeproblem-solving, and it's like her storyin this magical Alice in Wonderland likeschool and the mysteries behind who sheis and what her magical abilities areand what they mean for her. I can'treally tell you the details. It's aspoiler. The first book but still just asdelightful as the first one, and so thisI think counts as my like middle readerMarch pick. It's it's a lot of fun. Ican't really think of anything else,It's perfect for whenyou're really stressed and you needsomething, like, calm. Now the next book isgonna be a little difficult for me toreview, and that is THE WOLVES byRoshani Chokshi. And that's because I asmany of you know of chronic dailyheadaches and migraines and have tolisten to the audio. So I listen to theaudio of all the books I've mentionedtoday, and I only really note them ifthey're really good or really bad. Andthis was a really bad narrator. Well, inone narrator technically the one Ididn't like. So this is a book set inParis in the late 1800s, but thenarrators are American, and they giveFrench accents to all of the characters.But then their main narration of likewhat's happening is in an Americanaccent, and if any of you have heard anAmerican do a French accent, it is so bad.It is so bad, and it makes it funny. Itjust doesn't work, so I can't recommendthe audio for this at all. I really . . . itreally made the book suffer. I think so,but I really enjoyed the story. I reallyenjoyed the adventure story the mystery,and it's just a fun book. It'sdefinitely a YA book, but I felt likeI just couldn't really get into itbecause of the narrator. If you want toknow what this is about, this is about agroup of like found family kind offriends living in 1800s. And there arethe secret societies, and this one guyhas been wrongfully denied his place atthe head of society because he is abi-racial guy. And there's a lot ofdiversity in this book. There'sneurodiversity as well in a character.There's racial diversity there is peopleof different sexualities and backgroundsand different things. And I feel likethat is very well done in how sheincorporates that because there aredifferent historical things happening atthe time. And she kind of weaves that inthere, so it's not like she's just youknow checking off boxes. She's actuallylike they're here because of this reason,and I found that very interesting howshe wove that together. I also found itinteresting how she played upsociety with the different charactersand what's going to happen. So I willhopefully just like read the printversion the second one and get back withyou. But yeah that's the general plot, andI don't tell you anything else becausewouldn't you have secret societies thereare lots of spoilers. The last book I'mgonna talk to you today about is THEPOPPY WAR by R.F. Kuang, and this isfinalists for the Nebula Award, I believe.Right? Yes, hopefully it will be on theHugo list later this year, because Ireally enjoyed this book. This book isinspired by this I don't know for likeit sounds like ancient China, but it'sthe plot is actually based on the 20thcentury events happening in China. Butit's then removed from our actual world,and it's like in a totally high fantasyfantastical world just merely likeinspired by. And you can see on this map . . .you can see on the map there that youhave like this giant country like youwould have. There's what would beMongolia up there, and then you haveJapan, what would be Japan over there. AndI found that very interesting becausethere's a lot of parallels with thathistory, but obviously this is completelyfantastical world. And we follow Rin whois a young girl. She has a darkercomplexion than most the people, andshe's a war orphan from the firstpuppy war...? Previous war? Most recent war,which is like 20 years ago. And so anyway,she ends up in this school because shetakes this test she tests into like themost elite school. And it's a war likestrategy type of school, and she gets inand so the first part is her learning toyou know be at this school and thestruggles that she has just trying tostay in the school. And then the secondpart is like war breaks out again in thecountry and what that looks like andthis is a very interesting story. Andwhat the author does with written as acharacter is very interesting, especiallynear the end. And I don't want to giveany spoilers, but the big magic part ofthis is that there are shamans, and theycan commune with the gods. But theproblem is that a lot of times theseshamans eventually go insane,because the god is like speaking in theirhead and they just go insane. And sothey're like an elite group of peoplethat there's a lot of controversy aroundon what they're allowed to do. I will saythis does have about every singletrigger warning in the book and is verydescriptive. However, it is only oncertain pages, so what I'm going to do isa link a review by Sachi—she is abookstagrammer and she is JapaneseAmerica. And so she read this book, andthen she for me because I asked. I waslike can you write the page numbersfor me, so she wrote down the pagenumbers so that if you want to just skipthe chapter that I'm particularlythinking about, you can. And I don't thinkyou're gonna lose anything from thenarrative by just skipping the chapter.But if you know anything about thehistory of China during World War two,you probably know what I'm talking about.If not, no plot spoilers at all then. Soanyway, I buddy read this with theRussell over @ Ink and Paper Blog. I willlink his channel down below. We bothreally enjoyed this book, and it wasgreat to chat with him about all thatwas going on. I mean itthis book lit our brains on fire, andwe're just like going back and forthabout all the things that are happeningwith you know a discussion of gender,discussion of war, of plot complexities,and what she's trying to do with this.And what's going to happen in the secondbook, and that comes out I think inAugust of this year. And so I'm veryexcited for this. I believe the audiobooknarrator of this is Emily Woo Zeller, and shedoes a great job. I've read several booksthat she narrates, including I thinkBURY WHAT WE CANNOT TAKE, and I thinkSOY SAUCE FOR BEGINNERS might benarrators by her as well. I think own voicesnarrators are really important, so I wasso appreciative that they chose her asthe narrator. Yeah, this book isfabulous, and I, you know, I have somequestions that have happened at the end.And it was just a really like I justkept turning pages, like I didn't wantto have to put it down to go readother stuff for work or anything. I waslike I just wanted to read this, juststay. And it is a very long audio buttotally worth it, and I'm so excited forthe second one. And this is a debut,so any critiques I have would mainly bejust like some clumsy things that happenI think in a lot of debut novels.And it's just not as tight. It's not asfinished as it could be, but this is areally great debut novel it's really funnovel, period. But it's a really greatdebut novel, and I look forward to seeingwhere her imagination goes next. Socongratulations to R.F. Kuang, like solidbook. I'm not sure if it's technically aYA book, but if it is it's probably anolder YA because of the triggerwarnings that I mentioned. And I'm notsure if it's a an adult book. I don'tknow. The protagonists are teenagers, butif you do give this to a teenager justbe aware that there is that a reallyintense content in the book. And youmight want to read it first, or at leastgo over that particular content. Again, Iwill have like the page numbers andthings linked down below so you can gocheck that out if you need to. I justwant to make give people the tools tomake you know the decisions about theirreading life that they can I'm alwaysvery sensitive the content, so I justwanna make sure that people have thosetools that they need them. So anywaythat's all. Obviously, they still reallyenjoyed reading the book, so wouldrecommend. So that's it for me. Thisfirst part of my March wrap-up, I will beback with another wrap-up here in a fewdays. And yeah, I guess I'll see you nextone. Bye, guys!\n"