The Poppy War

by R.F. Kuang

Rin is a war orphan who tests into Sinegard, the most elite military academy in the Nikara Empire. There she discovers she has shamanic powers connected to the old gods — powers that her nation both needs and fears. When a neighboring federation invades, Rin must choose between human restraint and divine annihilation. Inspired by the Second Sino-Japanese War and the Rape of Nanking.

44 characters, locations, and items in this world codex.

Characters

• Altan Trengsin — The last son of Speer — golden-eyed, beautiful, furious, and burning himself alive from the inside out on opium and Phoenix fire because he'd rather d
• Baji — The Cike's berserker — a shaman who channels a war god and fights with a joy that borders on religious ecstasy, the only member of the unit who seems
• Chaghan — The Cike's seer — an albino shaman who walks between the spirit world and the living one, sees futures no one wants to hear, and carries his gift like
• Chen Kitay — The cleverest person in any room he enters — a strategist's son who became Rin's anchor to humanity in the most literal sense possible, binding his mi
• Chen Lianhua — The Nikara Defense Minister and Kitay's father — a career bureaucrat-general who serves the Empire's military establishment with competence and politi
• Doctor Shiro — A Mugenese scientist who experimented on Speerly children in laboratory camps — the face of clinical cruelty, who tortured Altan for years and treated
• Fang Runin — A war orphan who tested into the most elite military academy in the Empire, discovered she could call the god of fire through her blood — and spent th
• Feylen — A shaman driven mad by his connection to the wind god — sealed in the Chuluu Korikh because his power couldn't be controlled, and released by Rin as a
• General Tyr — A Nikara military commander — one of the generals who leads conventional forces during the Federation War and represents the professional military est
• Master Irjah — Sinegard's Strategy Master — the academic mind behind the academy's war-planning curriculum, who teaches students that battles are won on maps before
• Master Jiang — The Lore Master of Sinegard — a cheerful, possibly insane old man who teaches the one subject the academy considers useless, and who is the only perso
• Master Jima — Sinegard's Combat Master — a woman who earned her position in a male-dominated military academy through being unambiguously the most dangerous person
• Niang Niang — An ancient woman imprisoned in the stone mountain — mad, prophetic, and holding knowledge about the Pantheon, the Trifecta, and the true history of sh
• Qara — Chaghan's twin and the Cike's beast-caller — she commands animals with a thought and anchors her brother to the physical world so his visions don't sw
• Queen Mai'rinnen Tearza — The last Queen of Speer — a Phoenix shaman who ruled the Speerly people before their destruction, proof that the fire god's power could be wielded wit
• Ramsa — The Cike's explosives expert — not a shaman, just a teenager who is terrifyingly good at making things blow up and joined a squad of god-touched warri
• Sister Petra — A Hesperian missionary-diplomat — she comes bearing medicine and education, and behind the charity is an empire that considers Nikara's people subject
• Su Daji — The Vipress — an ancient shaman who has ruled the Nikara Empire for centuries by wearing different faces, manipulating every faction, and keeping the
• Suni — The Cike's strongman — a quiet, gentle giant whose shamanic power grants him superhuman strength, and whose temperament makes him the least likely ber
• The Dragon — The god of water and order in the Pantheon — where the Phoenix burns, the Dragon drowns; where fire is chaos, water is control; and Nezha's reluctant
• The Phoenix — The god of fire and destruction in the Pantheon — not a benevolent patron but a force of annihilation that offers unlimited power in exchange for tota
• Unegen — The Cike's shapeshifter — a shaman who can alter his appearance at will, used for infiltration and espionage, whose ability to become anyone makes peo
• Yin Nezha — A warlord's son who started as Rin's petty rival and ended as her mirror opposite — equally willing to burn the world, but for order instead of freedo
• Yin Riga — The Dragon Emperor — the Trifecta's warrior, the strongest of the three heroes, who liberated Nikan and then ordered the genocide of the Speerly peopl
• Yin Vaisra — The Dragon Warlord — a military genius who wants to modernize the Nikara Empire by any means necessary, including allying with the colonial power that
• Yin Venka — Nezha's sister and Sinegard's sharpest socialite — born into war-planning aristocracy, she navigates court politics the way her brother navigates batt

Locations

• Golyn Niis — The city where Mugen committed its worst atrocities — the trilogy's Nanjing, a name that means systematic horror and the complete failure of civilizat
• Hesperia — The western colonial power — technologically advanced, racially supremacist, and arriving in Nikara with trade agreements, missionaries, and the unsha
• Khurdalain — A major Nikara city that becomes a battleground during the Federation War — one of the strategic targets whose fall or defense determines the war's tr
• Mount Tianshan — The highest peak in the land — at its summit, a temple through which mortals can enter the Pantheon and stand before the gods.
• Sinegard — The most elite military academy in the Nikara Empire — a mountain fortress-city where the Empire's future generals, strategists, and weapons are forge
• Speer — The Speerly homeland — a destroyed island whose people carried the Phoenix in their blood, wiped out by Mugen because a nation of potential fire gods
• The Chuluu Korikh — The stone prison — where shamans too powerful to kill and too dangerous to free are sealed alive in rock, cut off from their gods, preserved in a livi
• The Cike — The Nikara Empire's shaman special operations unit — a squad of god-touched outcasts who do the Empire's dirtiest work and are feared by the people th
• The Dragon Province — Yin Vaisra's domain — the most militarily powerful of Nikara's twelve provinces, where the Dragon Warlord builds his republic and his army.
• The Federation of Mugen — The island federation that invaded Nikara — inspired by Imperial Japan, it committed genocide at Golyn Niis and destroyed Speer, and views the mainlan
• The Night Castle — The Cike's hidden headquarters — perched in the Wudang mountain range, a fortress for shamans who operate in the Empire's shadows.
• The Nikara Empire — A fractured empire of twelve provinces held together by shared history and the threat of external enemies — inspired by China, it is ancient, proud, i
• The Pantheon — The spirit world where the gods reside — a realm of pure power that shamans access through meditation, opium, or extreme emotion, and that would swall
• Tikany — Rin's hometown — a poor southern market town where a war orphan ran a shop, studied for the Keju exam by candlelight, and burned herself to stay awake

Items

• Opium — The key to the gods and the chain around the neck — opium opens the door to the Pantheon and ruins the person walking through it, and the Empire that
• Shamanism — The magic system — channeling gods from the Pantheon through altered consciousness, where the power is always available, always free, and always costs
• The Keju Exam — The imperial examination — the one meritocratic gateway in a deeply unequal Empire, the test that took a southern orphan and put her in the room where
• The Trifecta — Three war orphans who became legends — Daji, Riga, and Jiang, who climbed Mount Tianshan, entered the Pantheon, poisoned the twelve warlords, and reun

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