I am going to start this review by bowing to R. F. Kuang! What a plot! What a story! It feels crude to comment on a story about wars being fought with barely 20 year olds at the helm but that is the fact about wars - it concerns us all. The book clearly laid out the nature of colonialism, invasion and the lamentable fact that the rich survives and the poor dies. The military and strategic aspects were fascinating to read about. I also liked how towards the end the narrative focused on how within a country there sometimes remain a division that indicates that people belonging to certain regions are favoured more than others. 

Why does everyone call Rin the immoral character when in fact, almost everyone in this book is equally immoral as Rin is?  Everyone was being high and mighty and judging Rin for wiping out the entire Muganese population which consisted mostly of women and children back at home, but they are the ones who had no qualms about killing the Southerners when it came time to save their own skin. Even Kitay who was so angry at Rin, who is always portrayed as a good one, the one with the brains, the one with the moral judgement intact in him, the one who judged Rin the most, even when Rin killed the Hesperian soldier for raping Nikara woman just because he thought that now the hesperians will withdraw their support. Nezha was a coward, though I understand the pain and the trauma he went through when he was just a child, and I understand where his disgust comes from, but that doesn’t negate the fact that he should have had the spine to go against his brother Jinzha who was making one mistake after another and saved the Republican Army at the crucial time. He spoke up way too late and had the audacity to judge rin who at least had spoken up before. I have zero sympathy for Nezha who is  just an optimistic fool, and so blinded by his father’s ideology and incapable of forming his own opinion. I will never be a champion of this ship Rin x Nezha. 

I was mad at Rin too when she did not stand up for the Cike who had given her a home when she had none, and even when she got back her power and called her herself a speerly, she couldn’t even had the might to fetch extra food for her brother. 

I simultaneously loved and hated the three characters in this book that goes to show that in a war, no one is able to keep their moral judgement intact. Everyone has blood on their hands whether you are fighting for a good cause or not. R.F.Kuang left no stone unturned in building the story and the characters in this book.