Blurb (spoilers):
After saving her nation of Nikan from foreign invaders and battling the evil Empress Su Daji in a brutal civil war, Fang Runin was betrayed by allies and left for dead.
Despite her losses, Rin hasn’t given up on those for whom she has sacrificed so much – the people of the southern provinces and especially Tikany, the village that is her home. Returning to her roots, Rin meets difficult challenges – and unexpected opportunities. While her new allies in the Southern Coalition leadership are sly and untrustworthy, Rin quickly realizes that the real power in Nikan lies with the millions of common people who thirst for vengeance and revere her as a goddess of salvation.
Backed by the masses and her Southern Army, Rin will use every weapon to defeat the Dragon Republic, the colonizing Hesperians, and all who threaten the shamanic arts and their practitioners. As her power and influence grows, though, will she be strong enough to resist the Phoenix’s intoxicating voice urging her to burn the world and everything in it?
Review:
I’m the kind of reader who will remember a series based on its ending. For me, it’s the kind of thing that can make or break a story.
The ending to The Burning God? It’s… well, phew. It’s memorable. It’s everything you’d expect from R.F. Kuang, and a few things you wouldn’t.
Much like the Dragon Republic, the finale to the Poppy War trilogy focuses almost entirely on the realities of war. Rin isn’t just a student any more. There is no barrier between her and the atrocities of the world. In fact, she broke down some of those barriers on purpose. Rin’s story here builds on the foreshadowing in earlier books. She becomes the person we should have expected her to become, had we been paying attention. All that anger, all that rage, all that self-hatred… it finds a target. Again, and again, and again, and again.
Of all the books in the trilogy, this one took the longest for me to find my immersion. The first 15% or so felt oddly “separate” from the previous books. A bit like a new season of a TV show that had answered most of its big questions in the previous season’s finale. It felt a little like I was retreading old ground until the book found its footing.
There was also something about the pacing that didn’t quite sync with me. Don’t get me wrong, this book is almost non-stop action from beginning to end. But some parts in the first third seemed to drag, some plot-arc conclusions passed by too quickly, and quite often I found myself wishing there was more room to breathe. This is very likely a YMMV situation, but it did have an impact on my enjoyment.
Perhaps even more so than the previous two books, The Burning God leans heavily into its grimdark aspects. This book has every content warning it is possible to have. But this dark atmosphere, with all the paranoia and fear and exhaustion that comes with it, allows for some interesting exploration of Rin’s character and her relationships. We’ve seen Rin pushed hard before, but this time around it is relentless. She is pushed to her limit and held there until she is almost suffocated by the weight of her past and the stress of her present.
Rin’s first instinct, of course, is to react to this in the way that Rin usually reacts to things. But the fascinating question posed by this novel is: what happens when she can’t?
I said before that I’m the kind of reader who will remember a series based on its ending. And this ending will definitely stick with me for a long while. All the worldbuilding lore, the character work, the plot threads about history and colonialism, they all come together in a satisfying cascade of maybe-metaphorical explosions.
Taken individually, I don’t think this was my favourite book of the Poppy War trilogy. That honour would go to the Dragon Republic. But the Burning God is still an engaging, challenging read, and a fitting conclusion to one of the most exciting trilogies of the past few years.
Buy tissues.
