Review - "The Poppy War"
"The Poppy War" (2018), written by R.F. Kuang, explores the brutal impact of warfare on the everyday person, something that many fantasy novels have overlooked in their attempts to romanticise and glorify battle. She highlights the heart-breaking impact of addiction, and the trauma that pushes one to depend on the numbness that substance abuse rewards. The raving reviews it received plus the medieval Asian inspired setting were easy reasons to pick it up, seeing as 'Unegen: The Burning Tree' takes so much influence from 11th century Mongolia.
I've seen the series described as "grim-dark", a fantasy subgenre with dystopic or violent settings. It certainly takes a few grim turns, but I don't think the entire novels fits under that category. I don't have a problem with this, I prefer stories that can be genre flexible. With heartwarming moments of progress and page-turning excitement, you learn and grow with the protagonist, Rin; a strong-willed character that I'm excited to read more about in the remainder of the series.
I'm going to drop some semi-spoilers here, so in case you're thinking of reading "The Poppy War" maybe read this blog post afterwards. They're not major spoilers so don't worry too much.
I had an unexpected surprise somewhere in the middle of the book when a character named, Unegen was introduced. Naturally, I was pretty startled, as that is the name of our protagonist. Not only did they share a name, but they're both shamans. I stopped reading and sat there for a while considering this coincidence. How have we both written a character that shares the same name and are both shamans in a medieval Asian influenced setting? Did this even matter?
After reading a little more, my worries quickly faded as I realised this all made sense. The coincidence made me stop and consider how I found the name, Unegen, and how we've both ended up using it in our story. Unegen is a Mongolian name originating from the Mongolian word for fox. I picked this name for the fox spirit that was linked to Unegen in our early version of the story. As we've mentioned before, the fox spirit is no longer a part of our series. Unegen in "The Poppy War" uses narcotics to shapeshift himself into a fox, which indicates a reason why R.F Kuang also chose the name "Unegen".
The more questions I asked myself, the more this coincidence started to make perfect sense - we're both building worlds influenced by Central Asian cultures, so naturally, there's going to be similarities. This just happens to be a niche coincidence.
Kuang's Unegen is entirely different to our Unegen. Hers is patient, cautious and a little on the nervous side; ours is calculative, stubborn and confident. Unegen in "The Poppy War" is a side character, in our story, he's the main character. If anything, our Unegen is more similar to Rin, the protagonist of "The Poppy War", both are confident risk-takers, willing to make great sacrifices for what they think is right.
As to both Unegens being shamans, Kuang's story explores shamanism in a different way. Our characters both experiment with narcotics to achieve a higher state of being, but Kuang uses them to communicate with literal gods that grant them power; the Unegen in our story uses the sap to understand the surreal visions it grants him; an important plot device in our series.
They are very different characters and I needed to lay these thoughts out to reassure myself that I didn't have to change our main character's name. Which, if required, we'd be more than happy to do, you just don't expect it to have to do for the main character that you've been writing for over ten years.
It's interesting how in many fantasy novels, like in "Name Of The Wind" or "Tales Of Earthsea", knowing a character's "true name" is something quite powerful. Ironically, names are something that I think you can easily let go of in writing, but the true nature of the character remains intact. Maybe that's what the "True Name" means and their chosen name is just a label to wrap up all the complexities of a single character into one word.