Whether first or last name, the term "Liu" already seems closely linked to a Chinese version of science fiction that makes its way thanks, among others, to CixinLiu and for a few years less through Ken Liu. A Ken already much more Americanized since he immigrated to the United States as a child.
As for the young Liu, his dedication to the CiFi literature it's more of an all-encompassing compromise. Novels, short stories and translations that serve for that round trip between English and Chinese for the benefit of a fictional and fantasy narrative in general.
Ken Liu's fondness for the story seems more like one of those channels typical of the writer on duty who undertakes the task of telling small stories (just to the extent I mean) until he assaults the great stage of the novel in one way or another.
The point is that in any of its plots we can enjoy plots that slide through epic fantasy or that wander around more full science fiction scenarios with various speculations, time travel, uchronies or various dystopias.
Top 3 recommended books by Ken Liu
The hidden girl and other stories
The story also gains as the author matures. Because the brief has a virtue that the narrator always conquers, the synthesis made meta-literature. Because by leaving aside descriptive aspects and shortening the threads that weave an extensive narrative, all that remains is a kind of boxing match where the writer looks for our ko, that direct blow to understanding from the turn that can only beat us with the greatest forcefulness. This already happens in many of the stories included here.
This collection includes a selection of Liu's speculative fiction over the past five years: eighteen of his best stories and a fragment of The veiled throne, the third volume in the epic fantasy series The Dandelion Dynasty. From narratives about time-traveling murderers or cryptocurrencies to moving stories of parent-child relationships, the stories in this volume explore important issues for the present and cast a visionary look into the future of humanity.
The grace of kings
We come to the first novel by Ken Liu that also opens the The Dandelion Dynasty Trilogy. And we discover an author bent on assaulting at the first time that olympus of great storytellers from other worlds like Tolkien o Pratchett. The result, still pending closure, points out ways with a transgressive point regarding the usual stereotype of marked extremes between good and evil. The point is to build a new world where everything matters, besides the plot. The scenery that spreads out to us as we read, the relationships between the characters. Everything has another weight and another measure.
This is an epic tale of two friends who rebel against tyranny at the decline of a corrupt and oppressive empire. Two unlikely allies - a prison guard turned bandit and a disinherited nobleman - join forces to overthrow the tyrant. In "The Grace of Kings" Ken Liu rewrites epic fantasy from a different cultural perspective and abandons his conventional settings: it is a world of gods who lament what is done in their name, women who conspire and fight alongside men, war kites, bamboo and silk airships, and sea monsters.
The paper zoo and other stories
Haiku stories insofar as they seek to convey that final moral. And yes, also science fiction and the fantastic can precisely that, offer new readings and surprising visions about the metaphysical or the sociological.
That is precisely the nature of a volume that, on the other hand, combines a variety of scenarios in its fifteen stories. So, what binds everything together is that notion of literary transcendence, of substance, of an invitation to leisurely reading despite its brevity. Sensibility full of fantasy, links with Asian culture to delve into exotic scenarios but fully human at the end of the day.
First work to have won the three major awards of the genre in the same year. «Ken Liu's short work has won all prestigious international awards and, more importantly, has also forever captured the hearts of readers around the world. Through all these stories, Liu uses tropes of fantasy and science fiction to explore in a deep, intelligent and, in many cases, tremendously emotional way a great diversity of themes with the ultimate intention of shedding a little light on the great question what it means to be human...
