Title: The Grace of Kings
Author: Ken Liu
Published by: Simon & Schuster
My rating: 3 out of 5 stars
Where I got the book: Public Library
Content warning: Death (in battle), forced sexual encounter, murder
“Wily, charming Kuni Garu, a bandit, and stern, fearless Mata Zyndu, the son of a deposed duke, seem like polar opposites. Yet, in the uprising against the emperor, the two quickly become the best of friends after a series of adventures fighting against vast conscripted armies, silk-draped airships, and shapeshifting gods. Once the emperor has been overthrown, however, they each find themselves the leader of separate factions—two sides with very different ideas about how the world should be run and the meaning of justice.” (Source)
I wanted to love this book so much. The three star rating is ultimately for the world building and the fact that I know other people will really enjoy this book. But my own personal rating is closer to a two. I haven’t been this wrong about a book in quite a while and am really glad I didn’t wind up buying a copy because I was ultimately really disappointed.
The world building is fantastic. Let’s state that very clearly. Liu has done a fantastic job at creating the world of the Dandelion Dynasty. The technology is interesting, the history complex and sprawling.
But god, this book is a slog. In all 600+ pages, I didn’t connect with a single character and I find that problematic with a book of this length. At first I just assumed it was because I was getting into the story but all of a sudden, I was half way through, characters were dropping like flies and I had no emotional attachment to keep me interested. I literally only finished this book because I had to for a reading challenge, otherwise I would have sadly put it down.
The main flaw I find in Liu’s writing is that none of the characters grab you. My reaction to this is not like my reaction to Brandon Sanderson’s work, where everything feels watered down, but like how I feel about hard sci-fi. Though out the entire book, the characters merely feel like they’re there to explain the world’s history, much like how characters in hard sci-fi are to explain the technology. The Grace of Kings covers decades of years and by the end I felt nothing, and had no sense of growth in term of time. Kuni Garu and Mata Zyandu felt like they were frozen in time as young men when they first met, not old men who had fought wars for decades.
I hear the sequel, The Wall of Storm, does much better in character development and portrayal but I have no desire to pick it up. I’m currently reading some of Liu’s short fiction so we’ll see how I like his short stories. But otherwise, he just might not be the author for me.
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