[REVIEW] Grace of Kings by Ken Liu

Ken Liu is one of those grandmaster level short story writers that simply boggles the mind with his deft characterization and hallmark tone. So, it was with great anticipation that I awaited his debut novel, Grace of Kings. Right off the bat you’ve got to give Liu kudos for the fact that a guy best known for his short stories decided not to just dip a toe into the kiddie pool of novel writing, but instead, to climb the high dive of expectation and cannonball in by writing a full on epic fantasy monsterpiece.

Ken Liu is best known for his science fiction and magic realism. (If you’ve never read one of his short stories you’re really doing
yourself a disservice. Might I recommend you begin with The Paper Menagerie, which, if you didn’t know is the only story to ever win the Hugo, Nebula, and World Fantasy Award in the same year. If that doesn’t give you some frame of reference for this guys Super-Saiyan level skills, nothing will.) Despite making his home more within the sci-fi genre, he decided to try something a bit different for his debut novel which is straight up, delicious epic fantasy in the vein of Historic Chinese Romance stories.

Grace of Kings is most interesting from a narrative perspective. In modern epic fantasy, the trend tends be toward stories that follow through the eyes of singular characters. There may be a large cast, but the action tends to be grounded at a very micro-level. We see this with George R.R. Martin’s Song of Ice and Fire. There’s a lot of macro world stuff happening that the reader doesn’t get to see unless one of the point-of-view characters happens to be there.

This is one of the stand-out features of Grace of Kings which frequently zooms out to macro-perspective to check in on wily gods doing wily god things. Then, in the next scene, the perspective zooms all the way in on a point-of-view character who we might only get to follow for a single short chapter. (This type of short-lived character arc can be trouble within the context of an epic fantasy where readers expect to develop excrutiatingly intimate relationships with the characters, but Ken Liu puts his short story chops to good use here by creating compelling, sympathetic characters with only a couple lead in paragraphs to set the tone. This is actually an astonishing achievement on Liu’s part.) This macro to micro perspective shift makes for two competing forms of tension as we are constantly worrying about both large, world-scale events and small, interpersonal relationships.

On the whole, this technique makes Grace of Kings what it is. It allows Liu to tell a really huge story that spans decades within only 600 pages. Unfortunately, this often comes at the expense of developing some of the really pivotal relationships that the entire story hinges. For though Grace of Kings follows through the eyes of nearly 30 POV characters, it ultimately boils down to the relationship between two men, Kuni Garu and Mata Zyndu. Two brothers in arms, trying to shape the world to fit their particular image, who are eventually turned against one another. The big problem I had with Grace of Kings is that Liu did a better job developing certain ancillary relationships than he did in setting the foundation for these two. The result of this underdevelopment is a climactic scene at the end of the book which is robbed of its full weight and gravitas by the lack of what I call the “who cares” factor.

The “who cares” factor is hard to measure. It’s like Shrodinger’s Cat, the results depend entirely on the observer. So what lacks the “who cares” factor for me, might not be the same for you. With that said, I think this is the greatest shortcoming of a story that is, in nearly every other respect, phenomenal.

Is it enough of a problem that it should deter you from reading Grace of Kings? No. Not at all. This is a great book affectionately dubbed Silkpunk, which plays off the idea of silk and Eastern Asian inspired organic technologies. There are flying ships, submarine fish, and battle kites. If you don’t think that’s awesome, then you need to get your awesome-gauge checked out

Every epic fantasy is judged to a large extent by the quality of its world-building. The type of reader who likes to lounge in the Epic Fantasy pool is looking for immersion. They want to feel as though this other world is real, tangible. This is part of the experience, and one that Ken Liu delivers in spades. He has created a robust world filled with a unique pantheon of capricious, unknowable gods; technologies similar to, and yet entirely unlike, anything we are currently familiar with; and complex political histories and interactions between neighboring cultures. The level of detail to which Liu flushes out all these categories is truly astonishing. By the end of the book, I was left with this sad, forlorn feeling upon realizing that this world wasn’t actually real. Which is pretty much the highest praise I can give to an Epic Fantasy.

In the end, if you’re looking for amazing world-building, a huge cast of intricate and compelling characters, war, and political intrigue set within a Silkpunk inspired universe, you should definitely grab a copy of Grace of Kings.

Also, Ken Liu translated the amazing The Three Body Problem which won this years Hugo for Best Novel, so you should probably check that out too. Just saying.

Have you read anything from Liu? What did you think? Get down to the comments and share your thoughts.