A review by lolaslalaland
The Burning God by R.F. Kuang

challenging dark slow-paced

2.0

 The final installment in the Poppy War Trilogy. A young girl fighting a war on multiple fronts: civil, foreign, mental, spiritual and physical. 

Pros: 
✅ historical parallels 
✅ impactful themes of war and the crimes and brutality that follow it 
✅ strong atmosphere of pain and suffering across an entire nation 

Cons: 
❌ very little character development. they mainly felt like chess pieces moved around or added to progress the war 
❌ massive pacing issues... no down time! it's just war, war, war, war. no time to build any kind of connections 
❌ magical elements were virutally useless and lead to nothing SPOILER:
Spoiler So much hype for the Triad just for them to all get defeaeted at the top of a mountain byt eh same army their thought they could defeat with just the three of them... so incredibly disappointed and what a waste of time throughout the entire trilogy.
 
❌ a well written unlikeable character but who is incredibly infuriating in her stupidity! She somehow always ends up in the same situation over and over and over again... I needed something new to happen at least once. 

What I want to end this review with is that I am glad I read the trilogy because the themes it brings up are important and to have them in a "fantasy" setting lets the author explore them more deeply and with less limitations, but I also think this trilogy tried to do too much theme building and not enough story and character development. Perhaps R.F. Kuang is not the author for me. I will still read her standalone Babel though and find out! 

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