It was a real pleasure reviewing Ken Liu’s amazing The Grace of Kings at SF Signal. As some of my friends know, I’ve been struggling a bit with writing book reviews. GoK helped me to quickly break through as there was so much awesomeness in the book and in fact, I ended up writing too long a book review, which I condensed to try to keep with the usual 1K maximum I’ve imposed for all my reviews.
“The botanical gardens of Ken Liu’s imagination in The Grace of Kings are vast and epic, a hybrid mix that includes an herbarium of political intrigue, a glasshouse of philosophical quandaries, and bridges connecting them through the ambitions of their characters. The canvas for their machinations and conspiracies are the islands of Dara, split into the six states, their unity sundered with the death of the emperor. The horticulture of the saga is in part the Chinese epics of the Warring States period and the decline of the Qin Dynasty. But that’s only the launching point for a riveting taxonomy that dissects historical dialectics and mottles Hegelian theory with causes that are as practical as they are authentic.”
Big thanks to the SF Signal editors for giving me a chance to wander the gardens of Ken Liu’s imagination at the fantastic SF Signal. Grace of Kings releases soon so keep this on your radar!
http://www.sfsignal.com/archives/2015/04/guest-review-peter-tieryas-grace-kings-ken-liu/
The Whimsy of Creation: The Blog of Tieryas 