A review by breezie_reads
The Dragon Republic by R.F. Kuang

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

4.0

This book had me just as captivated as the first one did. It wasn't anywhere near as dark, in my opinion, as the first book was, but the action was just as intense. There were still graphic depictions of violence and war, but I was actually able to stomach it in this one because they weren't as violent and weren't as frequent.

The relationships Rin had with everyone were all over the place. She admitted to herself and others that she wasn't a good friend, she wasn't a good commander or soldier (which is wild, because she knew how to fight and was a good fighter before she was able to control the fire), but continued to be surprised when her shitty actions and words made people not like her or disagree with her. The majority of the first half of the book she spent throwing tantrums, threatening to burn entire towns when she didn't get her way, and vomiting on herself. 

Which leads me to my most unbelievable part of the book: Rin's romance-coded interactions. Because how the hell could Nezha, someone who hated her with every ounce of his soul for the first three years they knew each other, fall in love with someone who is screaming and threatening to burn or kill thousands of innocent people and vomiting on herself every time he sees her, when in the first book he believed she was nothing but uneducated, Southern trash who didn't belong anywhere outside of her province? He even called her "Speerly trash" several times in the second book. So... you want me to believe that he's in love with her? And she's in love with him? And somehow she's been in love with Altan too? None of that makes any sense, and the amount of times it was mentioned in the book got really annoying really fast.
I get people have said this is an "enemies-to-lovers" kind of thing, but damn. It all felt forced because whatever relationship development had been going on had been happening off-screen. And it still didn't make sense for it to be happening at all with how nasty everyone was to each other.

Rin's character development (or devolving, in this case) makes sense if you look at it as her going mad or struggling for power with the God and the Seal, but it did give the book a scatterbrained feel to it. Rin's decisions throughout the book seemed to be all over the place and not thought out at all and I understand the need for it, but - She had so much potential in the first book and then threw it all away to become the people she despised and then end up changing her mind anyway.

The next book is about to absolutely crazy, I can already tell.
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