Reviews with content warning for Toxic relationship - The Dragon Republic

The book is quite strong for much of it. However, in the tail end with excessive large battle scenes you lose a lot of the excellent character dynamics of more one on one battles, conversations and interrogation scenes that are Kuang’s strong suit. The Dragon Republic is strongest when focused on character dynamics in the face of the greater war politics. The inequalities and bigotries shown by different groups is quite prevalent throughout the book. Rin’s self hate toward her ethnicity is quite apparent through the narrative too. The book does a really good job of showing that all supposed great leaders ultimately have selfish interests. Some of the added backstory elements are really intriguing. The real life historical background references are very apparent if you know your stuff but it’s also got enough of a veneer of fictionalizing if you don’t. This middle book is a slight step back from “The Poppy War” but not by much and it’s mostly due to pacing hiccups. Please note the role that alcohol and drug use plays in the narrative if you are sensitive to such content. There’s a lot of it.

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fedekanejbrainrot's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional informative reflective sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

my favourite book in the series, loved the plot, the themes, the characters and relationships growth, and that last 3 chapters? illegal

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being_stupid's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark emotional tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

I have a love hate relationship with Rin, she's really well written. Like she has some kind of growth but refuse to reflect and stay really easy to manipulate due to her stubbornness. She's so full of herself that she refuses to believe she's wrong while simultaneously hating every part of her.

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coolfool_reads's review

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adventurous challenging dark emotional tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.25

This book was definitely not what I was expecting. I knew from the first book that this book wouldn’t take a happy turn but nothing would prepare me for what would happen. It had plot twists that I wasn’t expecting and character deaths that I would never imagine to happen. Rin struggled in this book as she did in the first book. Her opium addiction is explicitly mentioned during the first part of the book and was a major downfall for her. In this book, we follow her as she tries to summon the fire back and overturn Daji’s empire. I think what was most difficult about this book was how insufferable the characters are. How nothing ever seems to lighten the mood and how it’s just a constant misery to read. The only character that I seemed to slightly root for was Rin when she got the fire back. I don’t think the characters are complex but just hard to read about. Their motivations are all over the place and it was disappointing to read about how Rin was set up for a constant downfall. But, I still found this book intriguing to read. I always thought that both books were such an immersive read because of how plot heavy it is. The page count doesn’t bother me because of how quickly it captures you. So, even though this book isn’t perfect I still found it to be interesting and I will be reading The Burning God.

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