Under the Poppy

Kathe Koja

Completed 8/4/2019, Reviewed 8/5/2019

3 stars

This book was a chore to get through.  It had beautiful pose, lush and lyrical.  So much so that I continually lost the plot and started forgetting which character was which.  To be honest, I was able to get through the first hundred to hundred and fifty pages easily, but then it just become difficult to follow.  I often fall asleep while reading, but less than halfway through the it, it would knock me out in four or five pages.  Also, in my opinion, it barely qualifies as speculative fiction.  It won the Gaylactic Spectrum Award in 2011, and the author’s books continue to be nominated for the award, so it must be the publisher categorizing the books as fantasy.  I saw it labeled as slipstream on one site, which means, according to Wikipedia, a literary genre that pushes the boundary between traditional fiction and either science fiction or fantasy.  I guess I can see that. 

The plot is about a brother in Brussels called Under the Poppy.  It is owned by Decca and Rupert.  What sets this brothel apart is that they put on little shows for the customers, a sort of vaudeville scene.  Decca’s brother Istvan shows up with his puppets and incorporates them into the acts, to the acclaim of many.  In the meantime, Decca is in love with Rupert, but Rupert is in love with her brother.  Rupert and Istvan have had an on again off again relationship since they were young.  With Istvan’s return to the brothel, it is more or less on again.  But all is not well in Brussels.  War is raging just outside the city.  Before it’s invaded, Rupert and Istvan decide to leave, but Decca won’t go.  One of the women who has taken to the puppets leaves with our two men.  The rest of the women and employees go their ways as well.  The book then follows Rupert and Istvan to their next city, and that’s where I lost the plot. 

I did finish the book.  There are a lot of society parties and conspiracies, along with the development of Rupert and Istvan’s relationship.  A few more triangles form.  But a lot happened that I did not follow.  My problem was that there would be long, long sentences with lots of flowery details.  Then in the middle or near the end of the paragraph, there would be something to indicate someone was talking, although it wasn’t always the character’s name.  I would have to scroll back through the pages to figure out who was doing the thinking, or who was engaged in the dialogue.  Sometimes, the dialogue would be in quotes and sometimes in italics.  It just became a confusing mess.

Another thing that bothered me was that all the women workers of the brothel were called whores, not prostitutes or any other less offensive term, just whores.  The author used the word a lot.  And she likes to throw the C-word around too.  Granted, some of the clients of Under the Poppy were rough, particularly the soldiers, but still, I flinched whenever these words were thrown around.

The prose, however, was beautiful.  It wasn’t self-conscious prose, of the “look at me make new and exciting similes” variety.  It really was lavishly written, and I can see how people would fall in love with that.  But I thought it was to the detriment of the story.  Oh yeah, and the blurb on most book sites would have you believe that this was a sexy novel.  Romantic, yes; sexy, no. 

I give the book three stars out of five.  I would have given it two stars, but the prose is so good.  I recommend this book more to fans of historical romance rather than fantasy, unless slipstream is your thing.  There are a lot of fans of this book, but I’m really not one of them.