Book review: What makes a tragedy?
Apr. 22nd, 2021 02:27 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rainwatersparkThe Burning God by RF Kuang
Genre: Adult fantasy
Content warnings: Violence, gore, rape, self-harm, cannibalism, drug use
The Burning God is the third book in RF Kuang's Poppy War trilogy. I DNF'ed the first book, loved the second, and was prepared to love the third.
In reality, though, I ended up loving the first two-thirds of The Burning God, and then being massively let down by the ending.
The ending wasn't only a huge downer; it was also not what I expected, and not in a good way.
I've seen at least one Goodreads review claiming that people shouldn't be disappointed by the ending, because the Poppy War trilogy is supposed to be a tragedy. Which, fair, if The Burning God actually felt like a tragedy (although, for me, it's not just that the ending was depressing; it was also that the ending felt nihilistic).
My problem with that reasoning is that the book doesn't feel like it's written like a tragedy.
When I think of tragedy, I think Shakespeare—Hamlet, Othello, Romeo and Juliet, etc. I don't read a ton of contemporary books with sad endings, so Shakespeare is my main frame of reference.
So what makes a tragedy in my mind is:
The protagonist can be sympathetic, but they're also clearly flawed and clearly making bad decisions that will lead to a negative outcome in the end. Through these decisions, the book telegraphs that there will or could be a tragic ending (even if we're hoping for everything to work out).
And my problem with The Burning God was that it did not telegraph that there would be a bad ending (except maybe starting from the last 5% of the book).
Rin (the protagonist), for the most part, isn't making bad judgment calls; instead, she's doing the best that she can in an all-consuming war. Her opposition to the occupying/colonizing Hesperians doesn't feel like Well-Intentioned Extremism that would lay the foundation for her to become a villain protagonist; in the context of the book, it feels wholly justified.
Even more egregiously, Rin's emotional reactions are constantly overwritten throughout the book, so that it always seems like she's questioning herself and asking whether she's too cruel or monstrous. This...isn't how you write a villain protagonist. The most compelling portrayals of villain protagonists are when the protagonist does something shocking, and when someone else calls them out on it, they explain why they feel justified taking that action, showing the cognitive dissonance between how they view themselves and how others view them.
In the last 5% of the book or so, Rin becomes paranoid and starts isolating herself from her closest companions, with tragic results. But by then, this paranoid streak—while not completely unjustified—feels like an abrupt shift that isn't grounded in a natural evolution of her character. And Rin's final tragic decision in the book flat out makes no sense to me. Or, rather, it makes sense to me that Rin would die—it's true that Rin's character wasn't built by the author to be a ruler (although that confuses me as to why the author would want to incorporate part of Mao Zedong's story in Rin in that case?)—but while the what makes sense, the how and (in-universe, as opposed to metatextual) why doesn't.
So, no, I don't feel like The Burning God works as a tragedy.
Genre: Adult fantasy
Content warnings: Violence, gore, rape, self-harm, cannibalism, drug use
The Burning God is the third book in RF Kuang's Poppy War trilogy. I DNF'ed the first book, loved the second, and was prepared to love the third.
In reality, though, I ended up loving the first two-thirds of The Burning God, and then being massively let down by the ending.
The ending wasn't only a huge downer; it was also not what I expected, and not in a good way.
I've seen at least one Goodreads review claiming that people shouldn't be disappointed by the ending, because the Poppy War trilogy is supposed to be a tragedy. Which, fair, if The Burning God actually felt like a tragedy (although, for me, it's not just that the ending was depressing; it was also that the ending felt nihilistic).
My problem with that reasoning is that the book doesn't feel like it's written like a tragedy.
When I think of tragedy, I think Shakespeare—Hamlet, Othello, Romeo and Juliet, etc. I don't read a ton of contemporary books with sad endings, so Shakespeare is my main frame of reference.
So what makes a tragedy in my mind is:
The protagonist can be sympathetic, but they're also clearly flawed and clearly making bad decisions that will lead to a negative outcome in the end. Through these decisions, the book telegraphs that there will or could be a tragic ending (even if we're hoping for everything to work out).
And my problem with The Burning God was that it did not telegraph that there would be a bad ending (except maybe starting from the last 5% of the book).
Rin (the protagonist), for the most part, isn't making bad judgment calls; instead, she's doing the best that she can in an all-consuming war. Her opposition to the occupying/colonizing Hesperians doesn't feel like Well-Intentioned Extremism that would lay the foundation for her to become a villain protagonist; in the context of the book, it feels wholly justified.
Even more egregiously, Rin's emotional reactions are constantly overwritten throughout the book, so that it always seems like she's questioning herself and asking whether she's too cruel or monstrous. This...isn't how you write a villain protagonist. The most compelling portrayals of villain protagonists are when the protagonist does something shocking, and when someone else calls them out on it, they explain why they feel justified taking that action, showing the cognitive dissonance between how they view themselves and how others view them.
In the last 5% of the book or so, Rin becomes paranoid and starts isolating herself from her closest companions, with tragic results. But by then, this paranoid streak—while not completely unjustified—feels like an abrupt shift that isn't grounded in a natural evolution of her character. And Rin's final tragic decision in the book flat out makes no sense to me. Or, rather, it makes sense to me that Rin would die—it's true that Rin's character wasn't built by the author to be a ruler (although that confuses me as to why the author would want to incorporate part of Mao Zedong's story in Rin in that case?)—but while the what makes sense, the how and (in-universe, as opposed to metatextual) why doesn't.
So, no, I don't feel like The Burning God works as a tragedy.
