The design and UX isn't done, Rob and Abbie, okkurrrr! đ
10stormlight's review against another edition
challenging
dark
emotional
reflective
sad
medium-paced
3.75
Some really conceptually interesting and thought provoking stuff. A collection of very emotional (and sometimes heartrending) stories. Primarily sci fi and magical realism with a heavy historical influence.Â
As a warning, there is a ton of *extremely* graphic content in here. In fact, I think this may be the most explicitly graphic book I have ever read.Â
As a warning, there is a ton of *extremely* graphic content in here. In fact, I think this may be the most explicitly graphic book I have ever read.Â
Content Warnings
Graphic: Medical trauma, Torture, Violence, Gore, Rape, Suicide, Body horror, Death, Grief, Medical content, Xenophobia, and Injury/Injury detail
Moderate: Cursing, Racism, Child death, Sexual content, War, Death of parent, Confinement, Gun violence, and Murder
Minor: Terminal illness, Bullying, Misogyny, Pregnancy, Sexism, Fire/Fire injury, and Racial slurs
compassrosa's review
dark
emotional
funny
hopeful
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Medical trauma and Physical abuse
Moderate: Murder and Racism
Minor: Suicide and Rape
danielles_reads's review against another edition
dark
emotional
reflective
sad
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
4.5
Iâm honestly in awe of Ken Liuâs mind! This collection is full of stories bursting with imagination, discussing everything from language, culture, our responsibility to history, racism, imperialism and colonialism, personal trauma, and family relationships.
Iâve only read a handful of SFF short story collections because I really disliked the first one I read, and I wasnât sure if it was the author or the format. Turns out it is possible to write short, engaging speculative stories that make sense with minimal world building and make you attached to the characters! A lot of these stories were absolute tear jerkersâI cried my eyes out at the titular story, which was only 28 minutes long but so emotional. Liu discussed a lot of trauma, both personal and collective, which made this a really heavy but worthwhile read.
I loved so many of the stories and only found two of them to be meh. My favorites were: The Man Who Ended History, Mono no Aware, The Paper Menagerie, The Regular, and Good Hunting. My least favorites were The Perfect Match and Simulacrum (though the latter inspired a good book club discussion). I do kind of wish that Liu had spaced out the longer stories more evenly throughout the collectionâthe stories in the first half were all fairly short, but the longest stories were all in the second half. It made the pacing feel a bit uneven.
I definitely need to read more of Liuâs work! I highly recommend this collection to anyone looking to read more short speculative fiction.
Spoiler thoughts on each story:
Preface: made me tear up a lil bit tbh. I like how he talked about how different human consciousnesses are but how we can connect through books. âCommunication is a miracle of translation.â
The Bookmaking Habits of Select Species: wow, these species are all so different! I love the metal species with stone brains carving out a little for their descendants. And the species that has to physically touch the books to read and so they lock them away and only share interpretations. So creative, loving this already.
State Change: Gave Ling Ma vibes. A seemingly mundane story with slightly absurd speculative elements that has a greater meaning. But with actual closure lol. This one was fascinating and had me all in. I liked the excerpts with historical figuresâ souls too. Iâm already so impressed with Liuâs mind!
The Perfect Match: Disappointing. An obvious manifesto against tech companies that was super predictable. Hopefully this is a one-time issue.
Good Hunting: This one made me tear up 𼲠I loved the theming, characters, ending. Beautiful
The Literomancer: Ken Liu is really just gonna rip my heart out of my throat like that huh?? jesus. This one was too real. The ending did feel rushed and kind of forced with the dad explaining literally every detail about the torture to his wife, but ultimately I think it succeeded in delivering the message he wanted about imperialism, anti-communism, etc. I also loved the discussion around Chinese characters and languageâyou can really see Liuâs translation skills at work.
Simulacrum: Was that ending implying that Anna started the simulacrum of her mom? Interesting. Iâll always be team family members donât deserve reconciliation just because theyâre family, so it would make sense sheâd rather bond with a fake version of her mom than have that message be her last memory of her. And her dad was creeping me out.
The Regular: omg this was so scary and intense. How does Liu always get me to connect with these characters so quickly?? Ruth hanging from the windowsill waiting for the Watcher had me STRESSED. And then her getting the chance to make up for her daughterâs death by saving Carrie in the way she couldnât for her daughter⌠đ the feels
The Watcher was creepy af and his POV heightened the tension even more. And Liu really seems to understand womenâs experiences with sexism with the comments Ruth made about what she dealt with from men
The Paper Menagerie: freaking bawling at his momâs story, she didnât deserve that and neither did he đđ
An Advanced Readers' Picture Book of Comparative Cognition: Just the kind of philosophical sci-fi I like. Uranium-based life forms, who even comes up with that?!? Though I canât deny that traveling 550 AU from the sun to listen to messages around the universe for the rest of your life sounds depressing as fuck. I like to think that the parts about different aliens were things she learned while listening.
I think the point was to show how insignificant our thoughts and legacy are to the universe and the different ways love can be expressed.
The Waves: This one was wild. I feel like Liu took the typical âwhat makes us human?â sci-fi theme to its absolute limit in a way I havenât really seen before. I also felt the revulsion Maggie felt when Bobby turned into a machine đ but then when they essentially turned into light I started thinking, whatâs the point of living like that forever? So strange. I like how he incorporated creation stories too. For a second I thought Maggie was going to create humans from mud at the end there lol
Mono no Aware: A beautiful story about community and sacrifice and the inherent transience of life. Loved it.
All the Flavors: this was⌠fine. It was pretty much just straight historical fiction and it felt meh compared to the other brilliant stories in this collection. And it was so long! I also kept getting the names in the legend confused so I probably didnât fully understand it. And I know itâs historically accurate but hearing âChinamanâ constantly was grating.
A Brief History of the Trans-Pacific Tunnel: interesting alternate history that had a real dark but realistic turn. Damn, the prisoner trying to escape was Hokkien like the narrator and not a communist terrorist like he was told :(
The Man Who Ended History: wowowow, this one was incredible. A perfect example of a sci-fi with meaningful social commentary. I loved the rumination on how we interact with history, and the discussion of the needs of the individuals affected by past atrocities vs the needs of society as a whole vs the need to save and document these atrocities. I had never heard of unit 731 before. Pure evil, but Iâm glad that this story informed me.
Iâve only read a handful of SFF short story collections because I really disliked the first one I read, and I wasnât sure if it was the author or the format. Turns out it is possible to write short, engaging speculative stories that make sense with minimal world building and make you attached to the characters! A lot of these stories were absolute tear jerkersâI cried my eyes out at the titular story, which was only 28 minutes long but so emotional. Liu discussed a lot of trauma, both personal and collective, which made this a really heavy but worthwhile read.
I loved so many of the stories and only found two of them to be meh. My favorites were: The Man Who Ended History, Mono no Aware, The Paper Menagerie, The Regular, and Good Hunting. My least favorites were The Perfect Match and Simulacrum (though the latter inspired a good book club discussion). I do kind of wish that Liu had spaced out the longer stories more evenly throughout the collectionâthe stories in the first half were all fairly short, but the longest stories were all in the second half. It made the pacing feel a bit uneven.
I definitely need to read more of Liuâs work! I highly recommend this collection to anyone looking to read more short speculative fiction.
Spoiler thoughts on each story:
The Bookmaking Habits of Select Species: wow, these species are all so different! I love the metal species with stone brains carving out a little for their descendants. And the species that has to physically touch the books to read and so they lock them away and only share interpretations. So creative, loving this already.
State Change: Gave Ling Ma vibes. A seemingly mundane story with slightly absurd speculative elements that has a greater meaning. But with actual closure lol. This one was fascinating and had me all in. I liked the excerpts with historical figuresâ souls too. Iâm already so impressed with Liuâs mind!
The Perfect Match: Disappointing. An obvious manifesto against tech companies that was super predictable. Hopefully this is a one-time issue.
Good Hunting: This one made me tear up 𼲠I loved the theming, characters, ending. Beautiful
The Literomancer: Ken Liu is really just gonna rip my heart out of my throat like that huh?? jesus. This one was too real. The ending did feel rushed and kind of forced with the dad explaining literally every detail about the torture to his wife, but ultimately I think it succeeded in delivering the message he wanted about imperialism, anti-communism, etc. I also loved the discussion around Chinese characters and languageâyou can really see Liuâs translation skills at work.
Simulacrum: Was that ending implying that Anna started the simulacrum of her mom? Interesting. Iâll always be team family members donât deserve reconciliation just because theyâre family, so it would make sense sheâd rather bond with a fake version of her mom than have that message be her last memory of her. And her dad was creeping me out.
The Regular: omg this was so scary and intense. How does Liu always get me to connect with these characters so quickly?? Ruth hanging from the windowsill waiting for the Watcher had me STRESSED. And then her getting the chance to make up for her daughterâs death by saving Carrie in the way she couldnât for her daughter⌠đ the feels
The Watcher was creepy af and his POV heightened the tension even more. And Liu really seems to understand womenâs experiences with sexism with the comments Ruth made about what she dealt with from men
The Paper Menagerie: freaking bawling at his momâs story, she didnât deserve that and neither did he đđ
An Advanced Readers' Picture Book of Comparative Cognition: Just the kind of philosophical sci-fi I like. Uranium-based life forms, who even comes up with that?!? Though I canât deny that traveling 550 AU from the sun to listen to messages around the universe for the rest of your life sounds depressing as fuck. I like to think that the parts about different aliens were things she learned while listening.
I think the point was to show how insignificant our thoughts and legacy are to the universe and the different ways love can be expressed.
The Waves: This one was wild. I feel like Liu took the typical âwhat makes us human?â sci-fi theme to its absolute limit in a way I havenât really seen before. I also felt the revulsion Maggie felt when Bobby turned into a machine đ but then when they essentially turned into light I started thinking, whatâs the point of living like that forever? So strange. I like how he incorporated creation stories too. For a second I thought Maggie was going to create humans from mud at the end there lol
Mono no Aware: A beautiful story about community and sacrifice and the inherent transience of life. Loved it.
All the Flavors: this was⌠fine. It was pretty much just straight historical fiction and it felt meh compared to the other brilliant stories in this collection. And it was so long! I also kept getting the names in the legend confused so I probably didnât fully understand it. And I know itâs historically accurate but hearing âChinamanâ constantly was grating.
A Brief History of the Trans-Pacific Tunnel: interesting alternate history that had a real dark but realistic turn. Damn, the prisoner trying to escape was Hokkien like the narrator and not a communist terrorist like he was told :(
The Man Who Ended History: wowowow, this one was incredible. A perfect example of a sci-fi with meaningful social commentary. I loved the rumination on how we interact with history, and the discussion of the needs of the individuals affected by past atrocities vs the needs of society as a whole vs the need to save and document these atrocities. I had never heard of unit 731 before. Pure evil, but Iâm glad that this story informed me.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Rape, Death, Murder, and Torture
Moderate: Racism
Minor: Suicide
blenchbooks's review against another edition
challenging
dark
emotional
informative
reflective
sad
4.75
Content Warnings
Graphic: Body horror, Genocide, Gore, Suicide, Torture, Medical trauma, Murder, Child death, Hate crime, Medical content, Racism, Rape, Forced institutionalization, and War
kthudson15's review against another edition
This book was very good, would recommend. The only reason I DNFed is because Iâm in a fragile mental state & some of the stories were sad (in a good way; I just canât handle them currently). The last story has some content that was not helping my mental health so I decided it was better to just stop than push through.Â
Content Warnings
Graphic: Torture and Grief
Moderate: War, Child death, Death of parent, Racism, Genocide, and Violence
Minor: Racial slurs and Murder
ruthhelizabeth's review
challenging
dark
informative
medium-paced
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
5.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Violence, Racism, Racial slurs, Murder, Misogyny, Medical trauma, Gun violence, Gore, Confinement, Sexual violence, Sexual assault, Rape, Pregnancy, Genocide, Kidnapping, Hate crime, Xenophobia, Injury/Injury detail, Grief, Death, Blood, War, Torture, and Physical abuse
Moderate: Suicide
samdalefox's review
adventurous
dark
emotional
informative
mysterious
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? N/A
- Strong character development? N/A
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
4.75
I had first read 'The paper menagerie' as a stand alone story and loved it, so bought Liu's full short story collection. As you can see from the individual ratings below, I also loved the rest of the stories. The only one to drop below 4/5 was 'All the flavours', mostly because I don't think the structure and length entirely paid off. Outstanding pieces include 'State change', Simulacrum', 'The paper menagerie', and 'The man who ended history: a documentary'. Although the collection averaged 4.5, I'm bumping it up to 4.75 because the work is greater than the sum of its parts.Â
Â
It's hard to describe Ken Liu's writing style and subject matter. It's an easy to read, sci-fi, magical realism, literary, historical fiction, kind of genre. There were several times I looked up specific events referenced and learnt about Chinese and pan-Asian history. I found this incredibly enjoyable, the way history and culture are presented is informative, but in an appeasing way because it's told almost like a fairy tale. I also greatly appeciated the author's notes at the end of the stories with historical features explaining the references and pointing to further reading.Â
The stories cover difficult themes such as imperialism, industrialisation, migration and immigrant experience, ethical use/misuse and philosophical development of technology, revolution and nationalism, militarianism, philosophy of communication and memory, and censorship, all with respect to Chinese people.
Â
It's hard to describe Ken Liu's writing style and subject matter. It's an easy to read, sci-fi, magical realism, literary, historical fiction, kind of genre. There were several times I looked up specific events referenced and learnt about Chinese and pan-Asian history. I found this incredibly enjoyable, the way history and culture are presented is informative, but in an appeasing way because it's told almost like a fairy tale. I also greatly appeciated the author's notes at the end of the stories with historical features explaining the references and pointing to further reading.Â
The stories cover difficult themes such as imperialism, industrialisation, migration and immigrant experience, ethical use/misuse and philosophical development of technology, revolution and nationalism, militarianism, philosophy of communication and memory, and censorship, all with respect to Chinese people.
"Every act of communication is a miracle of translation"
The book making habits of select species 4.25â
State change 4.75âÂ
The perfect match 4.25â
Good hunting 4â
The literomancer 4.5â
Simulacrum 5â
The regular 4â
The paper menagerie 5â
An advanced reader's picture book of comparative cognition 4.25â
The waves 4.5â
Mono no aware 4.5â
All the flavours 3.5â
A brief history of the trans Pacific tunnel 4.25â
The litigation master and the monkey king 4.75â
The man who ended history: a documentary 5â
Average = 4.43Â
Content Warnings
Moderate: Colonisation and Classism
Minor: Murder, Racism, Violence, Xenophobia, Death, Genocide, Confinement, Hate crime, Bullying, Death of parent, Injury/Injury detail, Mental illness, Misogyny, Racial slurs, and Rape
The stories cover difficult themes such as imperialism, industrialisation, migration and immigrant experience, ethical use/misuse and philosophical development of technology, revolution and nationalism, militarianism, philosophy of communication and memory, and censorship all with respect to Chinese people.kalira's review against another edition
challenging
dark
emotional
informative
inspiring
reflective
sad
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
Ken Lie has a brilliant approach to weaving together history and realism with fantastical/speculative fiction elements, drawing it all into poignant and deeply emotional relief.
It took me a long time to read this anthology, largely because the stories are very good . . . and sometimes, so painful and heavy and immediate that upon finishing I needed to set the book aside and take some time. Both to process the story and to give myself a little emotional space to breathe.
It took me a long time to read this anthology, largely because the stories are very good . . . and sometimes, so painful and heavy and immediate that upon finishing I needed to set the book aside and take some time. Both to process the story and to give myself a little emotional space to breathe.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Medical content, Medical trauma, Murder, Sexual violence, Xenophobia, Blood, Genocide, Gun violence, Injury/Injury detail, Rape, Child death, Religious bigotry, Slavery, Classism, Cultural appropriation, Gore, Trafficking, Vomit, Hate crime, Fire/Fire injury, Body horror, Death, War, Alcohol, Colonisation, Police brutality, Racial slurs, Racism, Torture, Violence, Chronic illness, and Grief
konfx's review
challenging
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.75
Content Warnings
Graphic: Rape, Sexual assault, Sexual violence, Slavery, Stalking, Violence, War, Xenophobia, Torture, Gore, Mass/school shootings, Medical trauma, Genocide, Grief, Murder, and Racism
onamoonbeam's review
adventurous
challenging
emotional
mysterious
reflective
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
4.25
sometimes, ken liu, you are SO deep in the sauce
my favorite stories in this collection were paper menagerie, bookkeeping habits, and the waves. monkey king was so fun but also i was listening to my audiobook on my morning commute and i was not expecting so many stories to have graphic depictions of torture! an important topic esp in the context of historical erasure! not what i was expecting!
oh i am so tired when writing this i nearly forgot about good hunting (first saw it in love death and robots! i actually like the og better even if the animation is gorgeous) and state change
sometimes the sauce is good sometimes the sauce gets lost in so much extensions of history and context
my favorite stories in this collection were paper menagerie, bookkeeping habits, and the waves. monkey king was so fun but also i was listening to my audiobook on my morning commute and i was not expecting so many stories to have graphic depictions of torture! an important topic esp in the context of historical erasure! not what i was expecting!
oh i am so tired when writing this i nearly forgot about good hunting (first saw it in love death and robots! i actually like the og better even if the animation is gorgeous) and state change
sometimes the sauce is good sometimes the sauce gets lost in so much extensions of history and context
Content Warnings
Graphic: Torture, Colonisation, Alcohol, Injury/Injury detail, Medical content, Medical trauma, Rape, Murder, Sexual violence, and Suicide