I haven’t read Ken Liu’s books before reading this collection, so I was going in blind. There are some parallels with another author I have read: Ted Chiang.
Both writers are Asian American, both explore themes related to fantasy (although Liu’s book is more technology and race focused) using short stories as a medium.
The stories in this book were sort of hit or miss for me. I couldn’t help but feel like the writer started with an interesting idea, shoe-horned in some shallow characters to illustrate the idea, and then checked the idea off the list and went on to the next one. Some stories were really well-written, including “State Change” about a quiet woman living in a world where people’s souls are contained in ordinary objects, “The Paper Menagerie” about bridging the cultural differences between generations, “All the Flavors” telling the legend of the Chinese god of war through a telling of Chinese immigrants to the early American West, and “The Litigation Master and the Monkey King” which tells a fable-like story of a clever man who pays a heavy price to preserve history.
Those were the good ones, but the rest of the stories felt too contrived to me. I’m sure the writer’s full length novels have the opportunity to flesh out the characters – writing short stories gives less chance to really develop things – so I may check out his novels in the future.
Next is Piranesi by Susanna Clarke.
