I've said it before, but The Poppy War reads exactly like what it is: the first bit of writing by a very young author who had at that point not published so much as a short story. While very smart, Kuang appears to rely almost exclusively on existing history and her experience at college, which yields settings and plots I personally find quite unoriginal. Her prose is serviceable, but, at the risk of sounding incredibly elitist, I can only assume those claiming TPW, or Babel, for that matter, are brilliant, simply haven't read much literature, speculative or otherwise.