The Paper Menagerie

Introduced to Ken Liu through his translation of the Three Body Problem

Some great stories, some less so. Thematically centered on writing and passing on of thought.

I really enjoyed State Change where your soul is a physical object - imagine His Dark Materials but inanimate objects not animals.

The man who ended history was interesting, but was just too long and repetitive. Not to take anything away from the brutality of history where unit 731 is concerned of course.

I don't think this really worked as an audiobook, I wish I'd picked up a paper copy.

This is truly an immaculate collection of short stories. I read that those who like Ted Chiang should read Ken Liu next, and I'm so glad I did. The best stories tend to be stacked closer to the end of the book, but don't skip the earlier ones! My favorites were - "The Literomancer" - "The Paper Menagerie" - "Mono no Aware" - "All the Flavors" - "A Brief History of the Trans-Pacific Tunnel"

There are some great reflections here on identity, whether East Asian or North American, interweaved with the normal themes about ethics, technology, and social relations that Sci-Fi tends to cover. I can't wait to read his other books in the future.

4 (Read over a very long period as I only read it when I wanted a break from reading novels. It may've received a different score if I'd read it in a shorter period since I'd remember the earlier stories.)

A really stunning collections of stories that range from a heartbreaking but beautiful tale, suffused with magical realism, of a son's coming to terms with his mothers experience as a immigrant, to a rumination on the nature of memory told through the recollections of an alien to the adventures of Chinese prospectors in gold rush Idaho. Liu's fiction uses the fantastical and speculative to explore the human condition in tender provocative ways that left me wanting more, which luckily, exist in his other books!

Also some stories are good, the majority I found to be quite unimaginative. I did not finish the book.

I learned of this book when the title story appeared on an episode of LeVar Burton Reads. That did not prepare me for the variety of stories in this collection! The mix of science fiction, fantasy and historical fiction is very well done. There are some seriously dark stories in here; I found that the sharp thematic turns from one story to the next helped to manage that heaviness.

This may just be the best short story collection I've ever read.

But be careful -- dust kept getting in my eyes!

http://fedpeaches.blogspot.com/2016/03/go-read-this-book.html