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The Poppy war

Kuang, R. F. (Rebecca F.) Book - 2018 Fantasy / Kuang, R. F., Adult Book / Fiction / Fantasy / Kuang, R. F. None on shelf 10 requests on 6 copies Community Rating: 4 out of 5

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Downtown 2nd Floor
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Fantasy / Kuang, R. F. 4-week checkout On Hold Shelf
Downtown 2nd Floor
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Fantasy / Kuang, R. F. 4-week checkout On Hold Shelf
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Adult Book / Fiction / Fantasy / Kuang, R. F. 4-week checkout Due 04-20-2024
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Adult Book / Fiction / Fantasy / Kuang, R. F. 4-week checkout Due 04-17-2024

A war orphan rises from her humble beginnings to become a powerful military commander, and perhaps her country's only hope for survival.

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COMMUNITY REVIEWS

Intense submitted by zmclaugh on July 12, 2018, 7:29pm An intense book that pulls from bits of the Second Sino-Japanese War and places them in a fantasy setting.

THE POPPY WAR delivers fantasy & war novel submitted by chuntoon on June 15, 2019, 11:38am Wild turns, brutal (in the right way), absolutely compelling — the kind of fantasy that reminds you to check your own understanding of the “real” world.

Amazing fantasy, undercurrents and currents of war, great characters submitted by redmuse on August 15, 2021, 10:17am Best book I've read in a long time, hits all the points. Highly recommended.

Great, until it wasn't submitted by Susan4Pax -prev. sueij- on June 11, 2022, 10:56pm This book was a 4-star (on the leaning-toward-5) for me all the way until the end, then became so singularly one-note that it dropped the whole book to 3 stars.

For vastly most of the book, I was enamored of the story, the characters, the world, and the plot. I loved how Rin’s experiences moving from rural to city/academy gave us a wide view of the country, and the academy classes were a clever way to give the history of the country in a natural frame. There was an excellent balance of characters who were naïve and those who were experienced, idealistic and cynical, young and old, rural and city. The supernatural elements were melded in smoothly and believably. Basically, I was hooked.

(Small thematic spoiler follows.) Until the end. Two central characters become so singularly one-note focused on anger, revenge, and violence that I felt that all the brilliance of the 450 previous pages washed away in a stroke of red fury. There was no real story left, though there were pages still to read. This isn’t why I read books. I nearly didn’t finish this, and am deeply unlikely to read the sequels… and that is just SO disappointing after the excellent writing that created the story in the first place.

A different kind of fantasy submitted by lopezhin on July 25, 2023, 3:45pm If you’ve ever read RF kuang you know she’s going to write conflicting characters that at times are hard to root for. This book is particularly interesting because it’s inspired by real events. I would recommend reading about the history to get a deeper perspective. 5/5

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SERIES
The poppy war
1



PUBLISHED
New York, N.Y. : Harper Voyager, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers, [2018]
Year Published: 2018
Description: 530 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm
Language: English
Format: Book

ISBN/STANDARD NUMBER
9780062662583
9780062662569
0062662562

SUBJECTS
Imaginary wars and battles -- Fiction.
Military education -- Fiction.
Shamans -- Fiction.
Magic -- Fiction.
Goddesses -- Fiction.
Fantasy fiction.