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Review | The Dragon Republic: R.F. Kuang’s follow-up to The Poppy War unites China’s bloody history with epic fantasy
- The young Chinese writer’s second book picks up where the first left off, with heroine Rin on the run
- 20th-century China inspires the action, while Game of Thrones-style fantasy ups the ante
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The Dragon Republic by R.F. Kuang, pub. Harper. 4/5 stars
R.F. Kuang’s The Poppy War (2018) was one of the more extraordinary debuts of recent years, in any genre.
Spinning a fantastical mythology out of China’s 20th century history, its slow-burn plot traced the ascent of a poor peasant girl named Rin, from a mystical martial arts school through the horrors of war to her eventual leadership of outlawed shamans the Cike.
Having surpassed her mentors, our thinly veiled Mao Zedong begins The Dragon Republicin control of the powerful phoenix but hardly in control of herself.
Addicted to opium, she has failed to assassinate the traitorous Empress Su Daji and, worse, is captured by the Dragon Warlord, Yin Vaisra.
James Kidd is a freelance writer based in Oxford, Britain. His writing has appeared in The Independent, Literary Review, The Observer, The Daily Telegraph, The National, Time Out and The Jerusalem Post among others. He hosts the This Writing Life podcast (thiswritinglife.co.uk), featuring interviews with writers such as Hanya Yanagihara, David Mitchell, Amit Chaudhuri and Meena Kandasamy, and co-hosts Lit Bits (litbits.co.uk), named by The Observer as one of its top three literary podcasts.
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