The Dragon Republic R.F. Kuang

The Dragon Republic 

R.F. Kuang

Ms. Kuang was born in Guangzhou China on May 29th, 1996, but she grew up in Dallas Texas after her family moved there in 2000. She graduated from Greenhill school in 2013 and attended Georgetown University as part of the debate team. She was in China during a gap year working as a debate coach when she began writing the first book of this series: The Poppy War, which was published in 2018. This is the same year she graduated from Georgetown with a degree in Chinese History. She is currently pursuing her Masters of philosophy in Modern Chinese Studies at Cambridge University, where she is researching the wartime fiction of Northeast writers from 1931 to 1945 (Nice!). The Poppy War itself made quite a splash, being listed by Amazon, Goodreads, and The Guardian as one of the best books of 2018, additionally, I reviewed it and gave it an A. The novel also won the Crawford and Compton Crook Awards for Best First Novel and was nominated for a World Fantasy Award. The internet also embraced this for the most part with Reddit dubbing Ms. Kuang Grimdark's Darkest Daughter and in this novel, Ms. Kuang shows no interest in pumping the breaks. Before I jump into this, there are going to be spoilers for The Poppy War here. I want to take this moment to really encourage you to read that book first and then come back and read this review.

The Dragon Republic picks some months after the end of The Poppy War. Our main character Rin has learned of her heritage as a Speerly. The Speerlies were an island people who worshiped the Phoenix, one of the sixty-four gods of the Nikan Pantheon (and others). Because of this, they could connect with the Phoenix to channel fire. Rin forged a connection with the Phoenix and became a Shaman: a person who has a direct connection with one of the gods and can use their powers in the physical world. This comes at a massive price, as Shamans must constantly duel their gods for control of their bodies and if they lose, often destruction and death are the results. Worse, eventually, every Shamen does lose and is overtaken by the god who is connected with them. The only solution for this historically was to entomb them alive in coffins of stone inside a mountain with properties that prevented the gods from breaking out. So if you thought your job had a crap retirement package, at least you have a retirement package (I mean, strictly speaking, this is a retirement package. She will be retired while being kept inside a package of sorts.). Rin isn't thinking about that however, as her list of immediate concerns is vast and overwhelming. First off is dealing with (or refusing to deal with) the fact that Rin used the powers of the Phoenix to trigger a massive volcanic eruption on the home island of her enemies the Mugen Federation and basically genocided their civilization (Is there a Hague? Someone build The Hague!). Second is the fact that her own Empress sold out Nikan to the Mugen and Rin refuses to die until the Empress is dead (Death to the monarchy!). This is gonna be a problem because the Empress is herself a Shaman and the Viper isn't an easy god to get rid of. The third is the fact that she and the rest of her Shaman empowered unit the Cike are outlawed with a massive bounty on their heads. Fourth her somewhat marginal alliance with a Pirate Queen (based on a historical figure like so many characters are in this book) isn't really paying off for her. Fifth, the Mugen Federation may be dead but there are still large armies of Mugen in the field and they are running rampant in the countryside, meaning the nation is an utter shambles. Lastly, it's hard for her to care about any of these problems or do anything to really solve them because she is so far gone in the throes of opium addiction that rational lucid thoughts are novel experiences (That seems like a really bad way to keep an angry god in check… someone get her Narcan and addiction counseling!). Now I'm not trying to knock Rin for that because look, you try surviving the invasion of your homeland by a vastly more advanced and better-organized foe, being experimented on like a lab rat and losing the only person you felt understood you and see where you end up (I’d probably end up snapping and becoming Stalin…).

Rin has few if any human ties left and a desire to keep the Phoenix from eating her soul. Opium at least lets her have a few hours of peaceful oblivion, so I see the temptation. Even if the addiction is slowly killing her. However, that option is going to be taken away from her. Her old classmate Nezha’s family not only survived the war but kept their power base intact. You see Nezha's father is the ruler of the Dragon Province and because the province avoided the invasion, their biggest problem is dealing with refugees (All on my own… with a million refugees… A cookie for the reference!). Looking out at the burning wreckage that once was the rest of their country, they've decided there's only one answer to this crisis. A good old fashioned civil war, but Vaisra, Nezha's father and the man in charge has a new vision for Nikan. He's going to create a Republic, even if everyone else has to die to get it (Oh this is gonna be bad…). Especially if the Empress has to die, which certainly gets Rin full-hearted support. In this book, we get a closer look at Nezha who served as an antagonist in the first half of The Poppy War. He was everything that Rin wasn't, wealthy, privileged, and prized by teachers and their peers. However, Nezha has his own secrets and his family has their issues boiling under the surface. Just how much they're going to impact the war and Rin is something you'll have to read the book to find out. Another burning issue is that the Dragon Province can't do it alone and the Empress isn't about to meekly shuffle off stage so Vaisra is turning to the other great foreign power beyond the sea.

The Hesperians are basically westerners, they're white, blue-eyed, blonde and tall. Even more technologically advanced than the Mugenese with firearms and airships and because they have a whole continent to themselves in the west, they're more numerous (No! Don’t do it! They’ll enslave your people in colonial oppression!). They worship a single male creator deity and consider the people of Nikan to be racially inferior to them. Ms. Kuang doesn't pull any punches here, as the Hesperians actions and history in Nikan basically mirrors the West in our world. In short, deeply exploitative and imperialist action covered by high minded rhetoric that falls flat in the face of the pervasive racism coloring everything they say and do. When I say the West here, yeah I am including the United States, as our own history in China is full of exploitative actions. While we never sought to make a colony out of China like we did the Philippines, the fact of the matter is we spent a lot of manpower, time, and money using Chinese labor for our economic benefit and trying to remake China in our own image. The desires of the Chinese be damned (And then we went and passed the Chinese Exclusion Act so they couldn’t even emigrate out of the clusterfuck we helped create. And the army slaughtered Chinese rail workers who demanded better conditions etc etc.). You can debate whether or not the individual westerners in China had benevolent intentions or not but you can't debate that people who are being told they're racially inferior and need to allow the erasing of their entire culture and identity aren't going to see that way. Especially when their nation is being carved up into special zones and they're being exploited for all they're worth; but back to the novel. Our main interaction with the Hesperians is through the Grey Company, a band of priests of the Hesperian god (Oh hell) who have come to decide whether or not Vaisra is socially advanced enough for aid and to study Rin like a lab animal (Thus proving that they are in no position whatsoever to determine who is or is not socially advanced.). The Hesperians are big believers in order (As judged by them, with all their ridiculous self-serving biases.{I’m not sure how you judge social advancement without falling prey to bias, it’s a slippery thing to judge}) and Shamanism is chaotic at the best of times. So the Hesperian’s response to this is to try and find ways to shut down Shamanism whenever possible (Never mind the fact that it is a concrete and certain manifestation of Gods who actually exist. {Ehhh, considering what the gods do here, I’m not sold at taking them at their word as to what they are, clearly they’re supernatural beings of great power but there’s more than one kind of supernatural being} Sure, but at that point defending monotheism, especially aggressively expansionist monotheism, becomes a bit difficult.). I can kind of see the Hesperian argument here, after all, remember that eventually, each Shaman is going to go mad and have to be entombed alive to prevent the god in their head from going on a rampage. On the flip side, Rin is a person and doesn't deserve to be poked and prodded against her will and told she's inferior in every way by a group of judgmental foreigners. Given her experiences with the Mugenese, you can understand why she's not happy about this (Yes).

Rin starts this book lost but still tied to the memories of the people she lost in the first book and unable to believe in herself. This makes her easy prey for Vaisra even though she doesn't believe in democracy. Again being fair, why would she? Rin has never seen or experienced Democracy, it's an alien system that turns everything she knows and has experienced upside down. Especially since having grown up in the poor rural south of Nikan, she knows just how close-minded, ignorant and selfish the average voter would be (See, democracy is great, but there’s a certain… I’ll call it social infrastructure that has to be built up for it. You can’t just impose it on a population by fiat without, ironically, having the political investment of the population first. If you do they won’t be invested in the norms that allow democracy to function.). She's however willing to kill and even die for Vaisra's ideals of a Republic because she can't accept the idea of operating under her own power and agency (See what I mean? Democracy requires exactly that and without it… well…). Rin has to wrestle with the idea that there's no one she can trust to tell her what to do and she needs to chart her own course and make her own decisions. Being Rin, she will, of course, have to learn this the hard way... The very hard way as she has to confront the Empress and worse while worrying about just how far will Vaisra go to protect her from the foreigners he insists he needs more than anything. This might seem like odd behavior for a woman who can summon forth the power of a god, but it makes perfect sense for someone reeling under the weight of the last big decision they made. After all, when you ask yourself what's the worst that can happen and the response is you could destroy entire civilizations in a fit of rage and grief... You tend to want to avoid making decisions. Rin doesn't have that luxury because - given her power - everyone will try to use her or get rid of her. So rapidly the choice is for Rin to become a disposable pawn in someone else's game or become a player in her own right. There's also the question of if Rin doesn't believe in the old imperial system or in the new Republic that is being promised, what does she believe in? What is she going to be fighting for beyond her own freedom, especially since she's gonna need people to sign on with her? Who are those people going to be, what is she going to offer them, is she even going to do this or decide to stay a pawn and avoid the crushing weight of responsibility?

In The Poppy War, we saw the creation of Rin's personality and power. I noted that in The Poppy War, Rin had plenty of choices. She could have chosen a different path than Shamanism, she could have tried different ways to succeed but she didn't. Because she wanted the power. However, as we see in the Dragon Republic having power is one thing, knowing what the hell you're doing with the power or why you use it is another. Rin learns what and why she's using her powers for and whether that's something she can get from someone else or if she can only generate that from within herself. It's far from the only conflict in the book. This is a book full of grand naval battles, magical duels, shocking reveals about the past and even an elemental duel in the sky above a massive naval battle for the fate of a nation. I like the fact that Ms. Kuang doesn't pull her punches here, the Empire is one massive mess in the aftermath of the Mugen invasion. On top of that, the end of the invasion doesn't end the factionalism or divisions within the Nikan nation but makes them worse by adding pressure to the fault lines. This isn't a cheerful book but it's one I had trouble putting down and it's one operating on several different levels. The Dragon Republic by R.F. Kuang gets an A, as it matches the skill and intelligence that The Poppy War showed and then some. As Ms. Kuang has promised book 3 either in 2020 or 2021. I'm looking forward to it. If only to see how much bigger a mess Rin makes.

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Red Text is your editor Dr. Ben Allen
Black text is your reviewer, Garvin Anders.