"...You’ve brought down forces you don’t understand into your pathetic little material world, and your world would be infinitely more interesting if someone smashed it up for a bit.” [p. 464]
Rin is a war orphan, effectively a slave to her foster family: to avoid an arranged marriage and escape a life of poverty and oppression, she studies for the Empire's Keju test, which promises admission to the academies -- and she passes with flying colours. Her admission to the elite Sinegard academy brings its own challenges: in this respect, The Poppy War is a typical school story. Rin makes friends and enemies, clashes with teachers, discovers that she has hidden talents or gifts (in this case, shamanic powers), and is determined to use them and thus prove herself, despite her mentor warning her of the dangers.
Then it all goes grimdark, and there are some deeply unpleasant and upsettingly graphic descriptions of genocide, torture and desecration. It's easy to read Rin as monstrous, even if the reasons she has become -- or been made -- a monster are sympathetically depicted. The worldbuilding (and especially the theology) is interesting, as is Rin's character arc, but I found the increasing brutality, and the sheer misery, alienating, and I'm disinclined to read the rest of the series.
Fulfils the 'A Fantasy Novel by an Asian Author' prompt of the Reading Women Challenge 2021.
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