You searched for book_author:"R.F. Kuang"
If my reading lately has a theme, it seems to be stories about storytelling. Or in the case of Babel: An Arcane History, stories about language. The power of words. Writers are so meta sometimes, eh. In this alternative history, R.F. Kuang confronts the very real-life history of British colonialism and imperialism and asks us to consider how our relationship with language affects our willingness to participate in—and perhaps even incite—systemic change.
Newly orphaned…
The Poppy War might be the first novel by R.F. Kuang that I added to my to-read list, yet it has taken me this long to get to it. Oops. Shout-out to the colleague who lent me her copy. I’m excited that I was finally able to read this and see that, once again, the hype around a Kuang novel is justified. This is a war novel dressed up in fantasy clothes—and I’m not mad…
The Poppy War left me more, and fortunately my library was able to deliver (well, I went and picked it up, but you know what I mean). The Dragon Republic is the continuation of R.F. Kuang’s fantasy reimagining of twentieth-century Chinese history, mixed in with meditations on magic, gods, and monsters.
Spoilers for the first book but not for this one.
Rin is now the effective commander of the Cike following her genocidal actions at…
Finishing a whole trilogy in less than five months? Must be a new record for me. The Burning God is a hell of an epic conclusion to R.F. Kuang’s Poppy War saga. All I have to say is: George R.R. Martin, eat your fucking heart out. The Red Wedding? Bah. None of the gruesome acts in A Song of Ice and Fire come close to the mayhem and misery inflicted here. This book is dark…