The Farthest Thing from Young Adult - A Review of The Poppy War

The Poppy War by R.F. Kuang

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Trigger warnings for this book can be found at the very bottom of this review. Additionally, some of the excerpts included in this review might be triggering for some readers. Such excerpts are labeled before and after, so that the reader may skip them if he or she desires while still being able to read the review.

Recently there has been an interesting accusation hurled against young adult fiction: that it is being used as a tool to marginalise women writers and to denigrate their work as “just” YA. I know I have already complained about the quality of YA in several of my previous reviews, but I would like to again clarify that my stand on YA is not against the genre as a whole: just on the fact that the selections dominating the shelves of my local bookstore seem to be nothing more than clones of each other, more “Special-But-Not-Special White Girl Saves the World While Juggling a Love Triangle at the End of the World” stories that are clearly attempts to cash in on the popularity of The Hunger Games movies.

But that really doesn’t have as much to do with the authors as it does with the publishers. After all, they are the ones who decide which books get published, as well as determine how those books are subsequently marketed - including which category or categories they are marketed under. This article certainly seem to bear out that accusation, as do the many authors who find their books marketed as YA even if they firmly believe their books absolutely do not belong in that category - not because they think it denigrates their work (though many are aware that the category can and has been used in that manner) but because they did not write their book with YA in mind at all.

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