Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Unavailable
    The Poppy War: A Novel
    Unavailable
    The Poppy War: A Novel
    Unavailable
    The Poppy War: A Novel
    Ebook639 pages10 hours

    The Poppy War: A Novel

    By R. F. Kuang

    4/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    Listen to the audiobook instead

    About this ebook

    “I have no doubt this will end up being the best fantasy debut of the year [...] I have absolutely no doubt that [Kuang’s] name will be up there with the likes of Robin Hobb and N.K. Jemisin.” -- Booknest

    A Library Journal, Paste Magazine, Vulture, BookBub, and ENTROPY Best Books pick!

    Washington Post "5 Best Science Fiction and Fantasy Novel" pick!

    A Bustle "30 Best Fiction Books" pick!

    A brilliantly imaginative talent makes her exciting debut with this epic historical military fantasy, inspired by the bloody history of China’s twentieth century and filled with treachery and magic, in the tradition of Ken Liu’s Grace of Kings and N.K. Jemisin’s Inheritance Trilogy.

    When Rin aced the Keju—the Empire-wide test to find the most talented youth to learn at the Academies—it was a shock to everyone: to the test officials, who couldn’t believe a war orphan from Rooster Province could pass without cheating; to Rin’s guardians, who believed they’d finally be able to marry her off and further their criminal enterprise; and to Rin herself, who realized she was finally free of the servitude and despair that had made up her daily existence. That she got into Sinegard—the most elite military school in Nikan—was even more surprising.

    But surprises aren’t always good.

    Because being a dark-skinned peasant girl from the south is not an easy thing at Sinegard. 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. Exploring the depths of her gift with the help of a seemingly insane teacher and psychoactive substances, Rin learns that gods long thought dead are very much alive—and that mastering control over those powers could mean more than just surviving school.

    For while the Nikara Empire is at peace, the Federation of Mugen still lurks across a narrow sea. The militarily advanced Federation occupied Nikan for decades after the First Poppy War, and only barely lost the continent in the Second. And while most of the people are complacent to go about their lives, a few are aware that a Third Poppy War is just a spark away . . .

    Rin’s shamanic powers may be the only way to save her people. 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 . . . and that it may already be too late.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperCollins
    Release dateMay 1, 2018
    ISBN9780062662590
    Author

    R. F. Kuang

    Rebecca F. Kuang is the #1 New York Times and #1 Sunday Times bestselling author of the Poppy War trilogy, Babel: An Arcane History, and Yellowface. Her work has won the Nebula, Locus, Crawford, and British Book Awards. A Marshall Scholar, she has an MPhil in Chinese Studies from Cambridge and an MSc in Contemporary Chinese Studies from Oxford. She is now pursuing a PhD in East Asian Languages and Literatures at Yale, where she studies diaspora, contemporary Sinophone literature, and Asian American literature.

    Related to The Poppy War

    Titles in the series (1)

    View More
    View More

    Related ebooks

    Fantasy For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      The Bone Shard Daughter

      Sep 9, 2020

      RELEASED 10 SEPTEMBER 448 pages | Hardback/ebook/audiobook Author Andrea Stewart Publisher Orbit Books Epic fantasy has long had a thing for One True Kings. You know the drill: a dreadful tyrant is murdering people for fun and generally imperilling t

      1 min read

    • Article

      POISON ON Pink Paper

      Jan 2, 2020

      POISON ON Pink Paper
      8 min read

    • Article

      Quantum Radio

      Feb 22, 2023

      Quantum Radio
      5 min read

    • Article

      The Education of Mrs. R.

      Sep 6, 2022

      An adolescent shriek woke her. Cockerels, she thought, cockerels, with a wry twist to the word. She lay in the dark listening. There was no use in covering her head; the screaming still came through. The soloist was suddenly submerged in the chorus.

      13 min read

    • Article

      POISON ON Pink Paper

      Dec 23, 2019

      POISON ON Pink Paper
      8 min read

    • Article

      Sifting

      Mar 4, 2024

      CASSANDRA GARBUS is the author of the novel Solo Variations. Her fiction has appeared in Kenyon Review Online, American Short Fiction, Texas Review, Meridian, Louisiana Literature, and The Cortland Review. Lily slumps on the living room couch, absorb

      22 min read

    • Article

      Make A Stand

      Jan 17, 2024

      Make A Stand
      6 min read

    • Article

      A Leap In THE DARK

      Feb 1, 2023

      A Leap In THE DARK
      6 min read

    • Article

      Neighbourhood WATCH

      Apr 26, 2022

      Neighbourhood WATCH
      6 min read

    • Article

      Two-Stroke Toilets: The trouble with time travel.

      May 8, 2014

      What’s this?” I said, looking down at the change the old woman had put down on the counter between us. There were bills of the wrong size and color, clunky-seeming coins that were too big and too dull. I stirred a finger in the little pile. She glanc

      31 min read

    • Article

      Cupboard LOVE

      Jul 26, 2023

      Cupboard LOVE
      6 min read

    • Article

      In Love And War

      Jun 10, 2021

      April 1943 - Krakow, Poland Irena was bent over her needlework, stitching the frayed seam of her skirt when she heard a single gunshot ring out. She jerked and then scowled. After four years of war, she ought to be used to it. Why, the other night a

      11 min read

    • Article

      Dark DEEDS

      Jan 13, 2021

      Dark DEEDS
      9 min read

    • Article

      Great Dane

      Oct 23, 2022

      Great Dane
      7 min read

    • Article

      Child’s Play

      Mar 10, 2023

      The blackmail began in the boys’ locker room. It started with Travis Downing’s least favorite person, Rory Paxton, cackling like a hyena behind his iPhone camera. Rory loved taking photos of boys while they were changing, making sure to capture just

      9 min read

    • Article

      Frost FAIR

      Jan 18, 2023

      Frost FAIR
      11 min read

    • Article

      Long Lost

      May 13, 2020

      Long Lost
      8 min read

    • Article

      Two Poems

      Jul 1, 2023

      I The teenaged girl is searching for a placethat goes through, the holeto put the tampon inside. When she finds itshe asks her mother, Is this where the penis would go?Yes, her mother explains.Then I will never have sex. II Sweltering New York City.

      5 min read

    • Article

      The Silent Witness

      Jun 14, 2023

      The Silent Witness
      7 min read

    • Article

      The Mr Darcy MYSTERY

      Nov 23, 2022

      The Mr Darcy MYSTERY
      6 min read

    • Article

      Cricket League

      Jan 1, 2022

      It was an unusual birthday. Colorful banners blanketed the backyard. Kids chased each other through the grass. Adults talked. It all went downhill from there. My little sister was turning five. On her birthday cake, painted in frosting, was a fat, pi

      7 min read

    • Article

      The Silent Witness

      Jun 14, 2023

      The Silent Witness
      7 min read

    • Article

      The Other Side Of THE FENCE

      Mar 1, 2023

      The Other Side Of THE FENCE
      6 min read

    • Article

      Two Sisters

      Dec 15, 2018

      Two sisters lived together in a two-room apartment. They were very poor. For lunch, they usually had a boiled potato; for breakfast, a slice of bread with a glass of hot water. They were very thin but very neat, and kept their home spotless. Every da

      23 min read

    • Article

      A Temporary Arrangement

      Oct 2, 2023

      A Temporary Arrangement
      19 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for The Poppy War

    4/5

    1,238 ratings60 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 4/5
      The Poppy War is R.F. Kuang's debut novel, and it is a magnificent debut. Set in a thinly disguised fantasy version of China (called Nikara in the novel) the story follows Rin as she goes from being an impoverished and despised war orphan to being a powerful and despised war leader. Along the way, Rin faces obstacles stemming from her poverty and social standing, overcoming them with a dogged single-mindedness that draws the reader in and conceals the fact that Rin is, ultimately, really a frightening and in many ways unpleasant person. The true brilliance of this book is that Kuang guides the reader along Rin's path in such a skillful manner, making every step seem so perfectly reasonable that one doesn't realize how terrible the destination is until it is imminent and inevitable.MurgenSpeerHesperiaHinterlands[More forthcoming]
    • 4/5
      This is a book with substantial buzz this year, with reason. Kuang takes many tropes of fantasy--the chosen one with a humble start, a boarding school with nasty classmates, chaotic gods--and gives them a fresh twist inspired by Chinese history and mythology. The book is also daaaaaark. It's on the way-dark side of grimdark. As excellent as the writing it, that level of darkness isn't necessarily my thing, and as the book neared end and became even darker, I felt that even more strongly.
    • 4/5
      It's hard for me to say something that has not already been said about this novel but I will say that it was something of a stroke of genius to transmute the actual history of China into an epic fantasy and Kuang deserves every credit for not pulling any punches in the tragedy that she's telling. That said I'm not nearly as emotionally touched as I was by Bennett's "City of Blades," and that might be a function of how some of these characters we barely get to know before they're carried away. Then again, Bennett has had longer to hone his craft and this work is still damn amazing for a first novel.
    • 5/5
      Pros: brilliant worldbuilding, compelling characters, thought-provoking Cons: some brutal descriptions of wartime atrocities Fang Runin knows the Keju exam is her only way out of a miserable village life working as shopkeep for her adoptive opium smuggling parents. And only Sinegard charges no tuition. But getting into the Empire’s preeminent military academy is just the first hurdle she must overcome, for war is coming to the Empire. And she’s going to use everything she’s learned to win it, even the power of the gods themselves. This book is absolutely brilliant. The writing is lyric and feels so effortless you know the author worked HARD on it. The book is predominantly character driven, which I normally don’t like, but Rin is such a fascinating character that I loved it. With so much intricate history to learn with Rin as she goes through her classes, I never felt bored. The supporting cast was equally interesting from the eidetic memoried Kitay, the other two girls in her year, and her rival, Nezha. When the war starts there’s little talk of heroism, it’s a realistic portrayal of fear and butchery. There are some brutal descriptions of wartime atrocities committed by the enemy. Seriously horrific stuff. Like, nightmare fodder if you think about it too much. The worldbuilding was solid. There’s multiple branches of history, various races with their own customs, the people on the mainland have different dialects. The politics even in the Nikara Empire were messy and complex, not to mention the relationship they had with their neighbouring countries. There are some WWII reference with regards to the naming of characters and some of the horrors that happen at the end. While I’m not a fan of swearing in fantasy (or books in general) I’d say it was handled well here. It’s not excessive, and when it shows up it’s appropriate to the situation. There are several philosophical questions the book asks, especially towards the end. I love books that make me think. This book was brilliant. Pick it up if you haven’t already.
    • 4/5
      I really liked the first half of this book. I love training montages and going to boarding school with characters. I really enjoyed watching Rin grow and prove herself and deal with a super brutal, no holds bar school life and world. The second half was still really good, but some of the decisions that Rin made just didn't make sense to me. I mean, I get why she made them, but they were really shitty decisions to make. I enjoyed the author's portrayal of Rin and how she made me like a very flawed character, even if I thought she was nutso for most of the second half of the book. The development and character depth we got to see in Rin was amazing, and I felt like I understood her.I really enjoyed the other characters in this book as well, especially Kitay and Jiang. They were great, and even though Jiang was mysterious, he still felt like he had a depth to his character that we don't often get to see. The world building was really great as well. I liked that we got to see different parts of the Empire and learn about it's history - however messed up it is. It was really interesting, and I'd like to see more and see the different territories as well. Everyone is also talking about the ruthlessness of this world and how battles depicted and things that happen are kind of reconstructions of actual historical events - which is true - so I'm not going to go into too much detail here. What I really got out of this and the fact that the author put it into the book was that war is terrible, and humans can do atrocious things to each other, but that doesn't mean we should do them back. The retribution and revenge tales going on in this novel, I think, are meant to demonstrate that just because someone did something horrific to you, doesn't mean you should do something horrific back to them. You then have to live with the consequences and aftermath of it. Overall, this was a great novel and depiction of the brutalities of war. I enjoyed the character growth and development and the world created. Will definitely continue with this series.
    • 1/5

      The author is adept at her craft - I found it very hard to put down. But it was vile, senselessly violent. I found its allegories clumsy, and the themes of sexism and colorism seemed to be presented without challenge. I will not be reading the rest of the series.

    • 3/5
      Won all the awards but I found it dull.
    • 3/5
      Stopped reading with 100 pages left. Too much graphic, horrific violence
    • 4/5
      A very mature novel with complex themes. It started like a Harry Potter style that surprises you all the way to the end.
    • 4/5
      A high intensity read for sure. I loved the rags-to-riches elite academy first section and the final meditation on Rin's power hunger and its consequences. The middle geopolitical section drags a bit and is derivative (in style at least) of other works, but forgivable.
    • 5/5
      I loved every minute of it and will read the entire series. Book 2 here I come!!!
    • 5/5
      Very intense, grimdark fantasy take on Sino-Japanese War(s), plus some other 19th/20th historical references thrown in. Although, it seems to start out in more of a Harry Potter / Naruto vein -- youth wins a spot in a school for talented youth. The female protagonist is willing to do whatever it takes to get out of her life circumstances, and whatever it takes is sometimes quite a lot. I really loved the deconstruction of fate -- fate is really just the cumulation of choices the individual makes, and a convenient name for humans to try to avoid responsibility for their actions. The phoenix god lays out in unsparing details all the choices that the protagonist made to get her to the point where she makes a truly awful choice. Looking forward to the sequel(s).
    • 5/5
      Very good book.. I lived with them, ate with them, fought with them.
    • 4/5
      Excellent writing! She really pulls you in and let’s you be a part of the world and the characters. A note: trigger warning on gore and rape
    • 4/5
      This epic fantasy follows Rin, a orphan of the Poppy Wars. These wars occurred between her country, Nikan, and Mugen, their enemy from across the sea. Rin tests into the top military academy in the country and quickly learns all she needs to know to become a top military member for her country. But she also gets something else: access to a god she never knew about whose power is vast and uncontrollable.

      I've never read a military fantasy before, and I've certainly never read a fantasy based on Chinese history and mythology. It was really interesting, and it was interesting how Rin and the other characters had many faults and were realistic in that way. There were some events in the book that I recognized from Chinese (military) history, and props to the author for covering them and covering them well. They are certainly not easy events to talk about, but war is brutal, and I'm glad the author didn't shy away from that.

      I liked the book and will definitely read the next in the series.
    • 5/5
      Excellent first book in this trilogy of novels. There were times in reading this book that I was absolutely elated, disgusted, and completely enthralled. It is both shocking and inspiring to hear that the author, R. F. Kuang, wrote this novel at such a young age. The depth found here is astounding, and as a young person myself I was happy in knowing that one does not have to be wizened by just age to reach such heights in composition. The story found in these pages manages to be mystical and ethereal while also being real and in your face. This was one of the best books I have read in a long time. Excited for the next one!
    • 5/5
      L’utilisation de l’histoire récente de la Chine et la guerre entre la chine et le japon rend l’histoire tres credible. J’adore l’explication des shamanes et Rin est extraordinaire de vérité… tres bon livre
    • 5/5
      At times a little long- but never meandering; just a LOT of content for one book. Excellent writing, breathtakingly vivid. Could not put it down.
    • 5/5
      Absolute Gold!!!
      Can't get over it wow.
      My new favorite
    • 5/5
      Truly amazing! Run is so tenacious and smart! The side characters have so much personality! The story didn’t glorify war yet was still exciting. Honestly one of the best books I’ve read!
    • 3/5
      Early in the book the main character’s incessant internal conflicts and self-recrimination becomes tiresome, sophomoric. Reads a year older than Riordan’s books. The use of a modern expletive in on otherwise period fantasy is jarring, a cop-out in writing
    • 3/5
      Entertaining read. I was just very irritated by the voice the author gives to the characters. In historic Nikan (China) they express themselves like 21St century USAmerican teenagers . Maybe that was the authors target audience but to international readers it’s just annoying.
    • 3/5
      I enjoyed the book. The first third was great - a lot of world building a lot of excitement and I was genuinely interested in the school and the ways that Rin was adapting to her new environment. The rest of the book was kinda awkwardly paced and Rin seems surprisingly obsessed with men but seems to not care about the characters that are women. At moments it feels like the book is one moment away from being a romance (specifically with A). Also the last chapter felt extremely rushed and the ~big twist~ honestly fell a bit flat and felt underserved. But overall I did enjoy the book and will continue to read the series in the hope that the pacing and character development improves.
    • 4/5
      Don't read the blurb on the back cover! And definitely don't read the Goodreads summary. Spoilers all over the place.

      It's absorbing and fascinating, but be warned, there are really nasty bits.

      I am quite surprised to find that it is part of a series and that there are two more books.
    • 4/5
      This book starts off in a really good place. We see the protagonist escape her old life and begin to build a new one. However, things get dark very fast and never seem to get better. Kuang retells history in a very distinct way, making sure that readers know what historical events she is mirroring, while maintaining the frame for the universe she has created. I believe that the author has done a wonderful job pacing the story out, especially because she covers so many years in one book. At first, it was hard to read because I felt like we were skipping too many years, but Kuang chose to include and flesh out the significant events and fast-forward through the mundane bits. The characters we are introduced to seem to grow and change throughout the story and alter their mindsets when they are thrown into new situations. It is refreshing to read about a group of characters who are not rigid in all of their beliefs and who alter their reactions based on the information they are given. Though there were times I wanted to shake Rin in Part II because I didn't agree with her choices, but they made sense for the person her character had become.
    • 5/5
      Do get past the starting, which is good but resembles’Name of the Wind’ and this story will take you on a tour de force.
    • 4/5
      This fantasy novel, like many, is built of metaphors. Their source is the history of what Westerners call the Far East in the 20th century taken by fiction and hyperbole to some possible conclusions. As such it makes you think about some important things and leaves the reader with questions rather than answers and these are good things in a fantasy novel. Perhaps my only criticism is that ultimately the book's concerns are larger historical themes and as such the many personal relationships between its interesting characters may seem relatively unfulfilled, but surely this was necessary to the story the authors tells. Of course, I'm morbidly curious about why the author chose to absolve the US for its unleashing of elemental forces on the island empire, under circumstances far less compelling than those which motivate Rin. My guess is there just was not room in her story for my nation, but perhaps it was a conscious choice.
    • 5/5
      Okay, this book is amazing. It is compelling, the writing is good and sucks you in, it is not predictable. It is also one of the most traumatizing fantasy books I've ever read, because it draws heavily from the Japanese invasion into China. This book happens in four stages, each one long enough to be its own novel, and each one edging deeper and deeper into the horror of war. At the end of some chapters, I lay awake for hours just thinking. After I finished the book, it stayed stuck in my brain for weeks.

      And yet, I STILL give it five stars. Because while parts of this book are not fun, they are necessary.

      I did not and could not predict the ending. It went somewhere I didn't expect. Many books try to boast a protagonist unlike any other, but this one is the first one who makes decisions that I, the reader, did not believe she could make.
    • 5/5
      4.75

      R.F Kuang's the Poppy War is my favorite book of this year. (At least so far...) It is so many other things, though. It is fantasy genre fiction that is epic in scale and chocked full of historical context that has been drawn from Kuang's research on The Rape of Nanjing. It is literary fiction in its accomplishments with symbolism and the often lyrical descriptions of a brutal and dark (so brutal and so very very dark) portrait of war. It is Xianxia fiction in its depiction of immortal heroes, martial arts and it's constructs of shamanism/wuism. Mostly, this book is amazing coming from such a young writer who, if this introductory novel is her cutting her teeth, I can't wait to see take a chomp out of the literary world.

      The world is so vivid, at times you beg for rose-tinted glasses. The main character was also well developed by Kuang. She (Rin) had to work hard for everything she had. Unlike many genre fiction novels where the main character is just "special," Rin's failures and successes are both shown under an equal microscope. As a reader you watch Rin become a part of this war and watch her tread the line from attachment and detachment from the absolute merciless conflict she is surrounded by and ultimately a large part of. She is often times confident, at times incompetent, and merciless in her need for vengeance. I deducted a mere quarter of a star because I would have loved to see some of the supporting characters fleshed out as fully as Rin was.

      I am eagerly awaiting the second book in this trilogy, though I fear where we will go from here. Given the ending note (which I won't spoil), the next book will have so much to live up to.
    • 1/5
      “When Rin aced the Keju, the Empire-wide test to find the most talented youth to learn at the Academies, it was a shock to everyone: to the test officials, who couldn’t believe a war orphan from Rooster Province could pass without cheating; to Rin’s guardians, who believed they’d finally be able to marry her off and further their criminal enterprise; and to Rin herself, who realized she was finally free of the servitude and despair that had made up her daily existence. That she got into Sinegard, the most elite military school in Nikan, was even more surprising.”In “The Poppy War” by R. F. KuangI’m going all metaphorical on this one...Take the following entirely fictitious example:Side character: "The key was inside you all along."Hero: walks awaySide character: "Wait? Where are you going?"Hero: "I'm off to dig a hole and find a bush with a lot of leaves."A writer could take any of these weaker tropes and turn them on their heads. For example, that "you were the key this whole time" bullshit...let's say our protagonist has been suffering a lot on his journey to find this key. Everyone around him keeps dying, he's nearly died himself more than a couple times, and he's starting to wear down. By the end of his quest, he's tired, he's discouraged, he's grieving, and he's wondering how all of this could possibly be worth it. Then, the mystical priest or whomever, tells him, "you were the thing you've been seeking this entire time. Sorry all your loved ones are dead." The protagonist then proceeds to kill the priest, everyone in the temple, and even takes out a small village for good measure. When we meet him again in the second book, he's pretty much the villain. With magical key powers. Everybody's screwed. Enter new hero, who may or may not be connected to the former hero in some way.It's not perfect, but if people want to use abused tropes, they need to utilize twists and a little more creativity to keep them interesting. Problem is, "turning tropes on their heads" is not a new concept and normally it's always done in the same 2 or 3 ways, so those "inverted tropes" have become new tropes themselves...you end up with the same problem. Also, tropes are not inherently bad; it's how you use them, how many of them you use and if you add anything to them. You take a stop by SF Tropes in Clute’s SF Encyclopedia, search for your favourite, most immaculate perfect book and you'll be treated to a list of 300+ tropes they've used.That every use of the trope is bad, just when they're used uncreatively. Yeah, when tropes are abused it is bad and pretty obvious sometimes, but twisting the tropes can be fun too. For example in some Fantasy novels male protagonists are sometimes a dick to women but everyone still wants his body- turns out he is actually gay and he was cursed to be irresistible to the opposite sex. Or maybe the key dude is a leader of a group. When the leader decides the journey is too tough and not worth it, his group reveals to him he's the key himself and orders to go home but his followers restrain him and force him to lead on. I call this ”Bullshit Fantasy”I was thinking in amusement of a dude going through so much shit and then a wizard coming along like “Oh yeah! You was the key all along!” Only for the hero to be mortified like “I WAS THE KEY????” Plus the guy has been so mentally screwed up he can’t take it anymore and stabs himself. Meanwhile the wizard just stares down at him like “Welp! We’re fucked.” And then it ends with the villain winning and messing shit up.In some cases, a few cliches aren’t bad, their good even, they give the audience something familiar to entertain them. It’s the over reliance on cliches and stereotypes that is bad; you should have more original ideas in your story than cliched ones, and you shouldn’t take too long to incorporate your original ideas into a story either. Some authors will take you on a long cliched story only to upend the tropes at the end, but by that point you’ve taken too long. One of my favourite fantasy series has a mystical swordsman as the hero, and instead of going on the cliched heroes journey of every man peasant to king, he learns how to meditate and draw on a zen state of mind to resist being possessed by demon spirits. This power is necessary because he hunts a demon who killed his mother. He kills the demon, but by seeking revenge over protecting the innocent he allows a good person to be killed. Then his enemies manage to subvert his zen training by making him angry with the knowledge that the demon he killed was a victim of another worse evil, and he is possessed by a demon and attacks his friends. It’s a pretty cool arc and its unlike anything I’ve seen in fantasy before.What about “The Poppy War”? Cliches left and right. Moreover, if I want to read Inhumane Stuff I’ll go watch the news. Honestly, half way through I couldn't stand it anymore. Got sick of Rin, of the little character development, the random flows in the pages. I started loosing interest when the characters stopped developing and they just kind of started doing things just to move the plot forward. By the end of the book I really had no idea what was driving the characters to do what they were doing. I'm still confused as to whether all those history lessons were actually important or just fillers because if they did have any importance to the story it was definitely lost on me. Why can't protagonists be characters and their gender not be the focal point of the book? I want Depth, I want insight! And I don’t want a frigging mainstream novel disguised as Fantasy! It's an easy marketing ploy to loop in gullible readers. But don’t mind me. I’m just a cynical cantankerous bastard...This is not Grimdark. It´s utter crap.SF = Speculative Fiction.