I’ve never read anything quite like Ken Liu’s debut novel The Grace of Kings.I’ve been trying to figure out how to explain it for a week now and the closest I can come to is this: Chinese history meets The Iliad meets Game of Thrones. Sometimes it reads like a history book…and then our heroes wage their wars on the backs of whales or from steampunk-inspired hot air balloons. Sprawling and ambitious, I couldn’t help but cheer for this book, even when I didn’t love […]
A love letter to the lovers of letters
One of the characters in The Thirteenth Tale has a strict rule: start at the beginning. Tell the story in order. Well, all due respect to that awesome character, but I’m going to start at the end. My end, at least. When I had about 60 pages left in the book, I decided to stay in my car after work and finish it there, rather than read the end at home. I knew I would drive myself insane in traffic, knowing this book was just […]
Who Lives, Who Dies, Who Tells Your Story?
This is a really hard review to write, because every time I try to start, I think about another genius aspect of The Moor’s Account. So let me start with this-this book is absolutely brilliant. It’s stayed with me since I finished it about a week ago, and I just want to kidnap someone so I can ramble on about how this book tackles issues like racism, slavery, and the difference between history and truth. I already know my review can’t do this book justice. […]
A jewel of a book
“This is America, we would say to ourselves, there is no need to worry. And we would be wrong.” The Buddha in the Attic is a small book, but man does it pack a punch. Part narration, part long-form poem, we follow a group of Japanese women as they make navigate through their new lives in America. There’s no singular character; Author Julie Otsuka writes in the first person plural, referring only to “we.” In the opening chapter, the women are on a boat heading to America and […]