The Dragon Republic by R.F. KuangMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
R.F. Kuang debuted last year with a historically-inspired piece of dark, violent, terrifying fantasy in The Poppy War, and now that we've moved past this timeline's analogue to World War II, the analogue to Mao's Revolution takes center stage. With Rin knowing that Nikara's present leadership can't be trusted, of course she aligns with a charismatic new force in the Dragon Warlord, who promises to overthrow the corrupt empire in favor of a western-style democracy. It's just too bad Hesperia, the western superpower of this universe, isn't as good as they want you to believe they are based on their press. Hesperia, after all, was the original colonizers of Nikara, even before the Mugen Federation tried to do the same. And as they return to Nikara in this book, they bring all the usual tricks and tools you can expect from a Western imperalist toy bag: physical size advantages, men with no qualms about rape, powerful weaponry, an incomprehensible and inelegant language, and disgusting racism and self-superiority (hell, there's a point where a Hesperian scientist and sister outright calls her people the "white race," ironic since Rin's third-person narrative describes them as having the color of a "freshly gutted fish..." but I digress.) Middle book syndrome? What's that? Kuang doesn't know, and nor do I know where she's going to go with the third and final book of the trilogy. Logic says that China's rapid industrialization will come into play, but given how creatively Kuang has played with historical influences already, there's really no way to predict where she'll take us.
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