So. Um. Where to begin?
I’d heard about The Poppy War so many times, it was unavoidable as my first read of the year. People said it was devastating. Heartbreaking. Heavy. About 2/3 of the way through the book, I thought “Huh?” Sure, the subject matter was a little grim, but nothing unusual. It was just a well-written coming-of-age fantasy story about a young girl learning magic in a military school.
Then the last 1/3 of the book happened.
It was horrifying. It turned my stomach. My damn eyebrows were stretched toward the ceiling for hours on end. And it was heartbreaking. Just not in the way I expected. (Warning: mild spoilers ahead).
I found Rin to be extremely relatable. Her trauma response is (to me) quite familiar . She makes difficult choices because — well, she has to. She drips wax on her arms to stay awake while studying. She chooses medical sterilization (actually one of my favorite parts of the story). She kills. Many times. She does what she needs to do to survive, and it’s matter-of-fact. She doesn’t dwell on it, at least not in the moment. Every choice, even the terrible, life-altering ones, makes perfect sense.
That’s the gut-punch. Things were either going to suck or they were going to suck in a different way. And to be honest, I like that in a book. I’m a fan of moral relativism. I like stories that tackle the idea that, while you can change things, you can’t necessarily fix them.
The author compared this book to a darker, more fucked-up Avatar the Last Airbender. That assessment seems pretty spot-on. Emphasis on the “fucked up”.
So would I recommend this book? Wholeheartedly, but only to those with a strong stomach and a fondness for dark, fatalistic fiction. I can’t wait to read the next one.
