The Burning God

Written by R. F. Kuang

Narrated by Emily Woo Zeller

The exciting end to The Poppy War trilogy, R. F. Kuang’s acclaimed, award-winning epic fantasy that combines the history of twentieth-century China with a gripping world of gods and monsters, to devastating, enthralling effect.

After saving her nation of Nikan from foreign invaders and battling the evil Empress Su Daji in a brutal civil war, Fang Runin was betrayed by allies and left for dead. 

Despite her losses, Rin hasn’t given up on those for whom she has sacrificed so much—the people of the southern provinces and especially Tikany, the village that is her home. Returning to her roots, Rin meets difficult challenges—and unexpected opportunities. While her new allies in the Southern Coalition leadership are sly and untrustworthy, Rin quickly realizes that the real power in Nikan lies with the millions of common people who thirst for vengeance and revere her as a goddess of salvation. 

Backed by the masses and her Southern Army, Rin will use every weapon to defeat the Dragon Republic, the colonizing Hesperians, and all who threaten the shamanic arts and their practitioners. As her power and influence grows, though, will she be strong enough to resist the Phoenix’s intoxicating voice urging her to burn the world and everything in it? 

• Language: English
• Publisher: HarperAudio
• Release date: Nov 17, 2020
• ISBN: 9780063034235

R. F. Kuang

Rebecca F. Kuang is the #1 New York Times and #1 Sunday Times bestselling author of the Poppy War trilogy, Babel: An Arcane History, and Yellowface. Her work has won the Nebula, Locus, Crawford, and British Book Awards. A Marshall Scholar, she has an MPhil in Chinese Studies from Cambridge and an MSc in Contemporary Chinese Studies from Oxford. She is now pursuing a PhD in East Asian Languages and Literatures at Yale, where she studies diaspora, contemporary Sinophone literature, and Asian American literature.

Reviews for The Burning God

[Natale Michaud · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Not only did I enjoy the whole series which takes 66 hours to listen to, the narration was very well done. It was a perfect trilogy that kept me so engaged on my long drive. While I understand the ending, I wasn't happy with it.

[Greg Black · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

Was a great series until the last half of this last book. Long winded and I get the ending but, it’s been done before and it’s always a let down.

[cay250 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

devasting ending

[bodagirl · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This has been one of the best series I have read in a long time. It's fantasy but just barely; the fantastical elements were limited to a few characters and the focus was much more on military strategy and colonization. Rin is a complex, yet naïve character who I empathized with yet also wanted to strangle at various points. This may sound strange, but this was a very realistic novel with flawed characters and major consequences to major actions, and the fairy-tale HEA ending that has been very prevalent in a lot of my recent fantasy reads was not there. A great change of pace and way to diversify my reading.

[luminous4path · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Tiger's tits! Great tortoise, what a ride. Be careful though. This series will stomp on your heart. Tragedy, friendship, nonstop action, magic, dark dark dark.

[neurodrew · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Shamanism and war in a lightly disguised China, Rin wielding the Phoenix but suiciding in the end of the Poppy War trilogyA long and very involved end to the Poppy War trilogy.  Rin is back, as angry as ever, becoming more paranoid towards the end of the book. Kitay, her anchor in reality when she calls the fire, pleads with her constantly to spare villages, and consider negotiating.  She finds the previous empress, then brings Jiang out of the stone.  Her army does a long march kind of trek over the mountains, and allies with Mongol like clans, to free Riga, the last of the Trifecta, the previous shamans who ruled over Nikany.  He turns out to be so nasty that it is a good thing the Hesperiens promptly bomb him to smithereens, losing many dirigibles in the process, so that Rin's army has an advantage.  She raises new shamans, only to have them die (or disappear from the story line) in the next battle.  That battle drives Nesha out of the country, but Rin, Kitay and Venka cannot manage the administration, and Rin starts to suspect Venka as a spy, but only for a few minutes before Venka takes a crossbow bolt for Rin.The country is in chaos, famine is everywhere, but Rin is looking for a final war, and refuses to negotiate with the Hesperians in return for grain.  Ever angry and filled with angst, she realizes during a parley on Speerly that she is bringing fire and ruin from the Phoenix that she cannot stop, and she finally uses Neshas' weight during the parley to end her own life with a knife thrust to her heart. Very dramatic, but the narrative and conceit pulls the reader along.  As an old guy, I would wish for a little less young people's angst in exchange for more strategy, world building and details.

[rivkat_2 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The end of a trilogy is always hard to pull off, especially one as brutal as this. Narratively, the end of Rin’s journey to control the Nikan Empire fell somewhat flat for me, though I didn’t see many alternatives either. This volume has a fair number of betrayals, though less rape (nonexplicit) than the previous volume, not to mention massive suffering to which Rin becomes even more numb as she tries to unite the country under her rule and fend off the Hesperians who despise Nikanese as subhuman. One is left with the fear that the Hesperians might win, depending in part on various loose ends.

[shrike58 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

So here we reach the denouement of the tale of Fang Runin, the doomed girl who would never surrender, and though I've been greatly looking forward to this, I'll also admit that Ms. Kuang's running Twitter commentary on what a bunch of idiots her characters really were, and wondering why she ever thought that writing an epic grim-dark trilogy was ever a good idea, did temper my expectations. This is not to mention that once one comes to appreciate that this work started as an attempted answer to a historical problem, and what history is being appropriated, it's a little harder to be surprised; even when you keep in mind that Runin is not the most reliable POV character you've ever met.All that said, I'll also admit that about the first third or so of this book felt like the middle of the series, as a little bit of the "are we there yet" feeling finally arrived for me; particularly after Runin makes her "heel" turn and we enter the "Long March" analog of the narrative. At that point one then learns the real nature of the "Trifecta," the great shamans who had previously saved the Nikarans from foreign conquest, and the dynamite really goes off. From there the plot of the novel becomes a gallop, as Runin achieves victory and revenge, only to find that she has really achieved nothing. The live question is whether anything can be salvaged, and I'm reminded of another Asian nation's twentieth-century disaster.Kuang is fond of reminding people that the truth will set you free, not make you happy, but there is no denying that she achieved her main goal, which is an examination of how a normal human, capable of empathy and understanding, goes off the rails and creates a social disaster. This trilogy is a great achievement and while the winning of awards is not a contest Ms. Kuang certainly has a dog in the fight.