Reading order
| # | Title | Published | Author | Buy on Amazon |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | The Poppy War | 2018 | R.F. Kuang | Buy |
| 2 | The Dragon Republic | 2019 | R.F. Kuang | Buy |
| 3 | The Burning God | 2020 | R.F. Kuang | Buy |
Rin is a war orphan from a southern province who tests into Sinegard, Nikan’s most elite military academy. She’s an outsider among aristocrats. When she discovers she has shamanic powers that connect her to the gods, her teachers warn her that this kind of power destroyed civilizations. Then the Federation invades, and Rin learns what her power actually costs.
R.F. Kuang began writing The Poppy War at 19, while studying modern Chinese history at Georgetown. The novel maps fantasy onto real events. Nikan is China. The Federation is Imperial Japan. The Mugenese invasion parallels the Second Sino-Japanese War. The atrocities in the book reflect documented historical events, which Kuang has described as a deliberate choice to confront history rather than sanitize it.
The trilogy follows Rin’s transformation from desperate student to military commander to something closer to a god. Each book darkens. The Dragon Republic deals with civil war and political manipulation. The Burning God follows Rin as she becomes the kind of leader she once fought against. Kuang has cited Mao Zedong’s trajectory as an influence on Rin’s arc.
Kuang published the trilogy between 2018 and 2020, completing all three books by her early twenties. She went on to write Babel and Yellowface, both of which became bestsellers. The Poppy War remains her most ambitious work in scope, covering decades of war across a continent.