Though she does not want to live, she refuses to die until she avenges the traitorous Empress who betrayed Rin’s homeland to its enemies.

Aratsha’s death: She was disappointed because he was “an immensely useful chess piece and now she couldn’t use him anymore. We bear that legacy of pain on our shoulders—our backs are bent beneath their weights and our heads beaten down.

This is a grim book, written with more mature and refined prose; the character’s darkness and personality elicited emotional responses of all kinds from me. she was strong before, but now she is straight up lethal and i fully expect the next book in the series to be the death of me. Targeted from the outset by rival classmates for her color, poverty, and gender, Rin discovers she possesses a lethal, unearthly power—an aptitude for the nearly-mythical art of shamanism.

But as she finds out more about the god that has chosen her, the vengeful Phoenix, she fears that winning the war may cost her humanity . Nezha saw a huge dark shape—something muscled and coiled like a serpent—before a massive wave rose above him and slammed him facedown into the water. And that could have been interesting to explore, but it felt like Rin was always getting a free pass for what she was criticizing others for doing (genocide, racism, emotional manipulation, war crimes, etc. It was followed by The Dragon Republic, which was published in 2019 and The Burning God, which was published last month.They believe in a singular and all-powerful deity, which means they cannot accept the truth of other gods. Jinzha and Muzha played with him whenever he wanted, and they never told him to get lost the way Jinzha had done so often to Nezha. Who both got to laugh at me for spiraling about tridents, got to listen to my heavy breathing over my OTP, and also crying as every theme developed.

The Poppy War was first published by Harper Voyage in 2018 and was named book of the year by publications including The Washington Post and the Guardian. The Petrel glided past Adlaga’s port officers with little trouble and made berth as close to the city walls as it could get.After saving her nation of Nikan from foreign invaders and battling the evil Empress Su Daji in a brutal civil war, Fang Runin was betrayed by allies and left for dead. Thus, while everyone sought to retain both a compliant native government and equal opportunity for investment, the Soviet leadership initiated a dual policy of support for both Chinese parties, backing CPC with money and spies and aiming to reorganise KMT along the ideals of the Comintern—an international organisation founded by Russia that advocated world communism. So many reviewers portray Rin as a strong protagonist, but anyone who relies that heavily on threats, emotional manipulation, and drugs, is weak, in my opinion.