Posts Tagged: The Grace of Kings

Review

The grace of kings has many forms

By Kate Elliott April 16th, 2015

The Grace of Kings by Ken Liu

Publisher: Saga Press - Pages: 640 - Buy: Book/eBook
The Grace of Kings by Ken Liu

[Editor’s Note: What follows is a critical essay in the traditional sense: an in-depth and spoiler-filled analysis of Ken Liu’s The Grace of Kings—focused particularly on the women in the novel. It’s thoughtful, beautiful, and important—but if you’re sensitive to spoilers, you might enjoy reading it more after you’ve completed Liu’s epic novel. If you’re looking for an (almost) spoiler-free review to help you determine whether to buy it, let me suggest Justin Landon’s review on Tor.com.]

Many months ago Joe Monti, editor of Saga Press, Simon & Schuster’s SFF imprint, sent me a copy out of the blue of Ken Liu’s The Grace of Kings for a possible quote. More precisely, and using the proper polite etiquette, he contacted my editor at Orbit who forwarded his email to me.

I knew Ken’s name, of course. He’s a multiple award winner (Hugo, Nebula, World Fantasy) for his short fiction. He has also done an important service to the sff field by translating short fiction and novels from Chinese into English, works that readers in the English-speaking market would not otherwise be able to enjoy. The Grace of Kings is Liu’s debut novel. Read More »

News

Cover Art and Details for The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories by Ken Liu

By Aidan Moher March 27th, 2015
Paper-Menagerie-his-rez

Saga Press revealed the gorgeous cover for Ken Liu’s upcoming short fiction collection, The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories, today. Liu, who’s best known for his award winning short fiction, is publishing his first novel this year, an epic fantasy called The Grace of Kings, which has been receiving some great praise from early readers.

The full Table of Contents:

  • Preface
  • The Bookmaking Habits of Select Species
  • State Change
  • The Perfect Match
  • Good Hunting
  • The Literomancer
  • Simulacrum
  • The Regular
  • The Paper Menagerie
  • An Advanced Readers Picture Book of Comparative Cognition
  • The Waves
  • Mono no aware
  • All the Flavors
  • A Brief History of the Trans-Pacific Tunnel
  • The Litigation Master and the Monkey King
  • The Man Who Ended History: A Documentary

In an interview with Andrew Liptak of the Barnes & Noble Science Fiction and Fantasy Blog, Liu and Saga Press Editorial Director Joe Monti reflected on the collection’s award winning short fiction. “It’s great to be able to offer readers who are new to my fiction, or who have read only a few stories, a convenient selection of the best non-novel work I’ve done in a well-designed package,” Liu told Liptak. “[I] was surprised by how much I remembered of what I was thinking about at the time of writing them—memories that often are not obviously connected to the stories themselves, yet resonant in some way. It was like looking through an album of old snapshots of my mind.”

The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories includes many familiar stories, including the title story, “The Paper Menagerie”, which won several awards, including the Hugo, Nebula, and World Fantasy Award – and “An Advanced Reader’s Picture Book of Comparative Cognition,” a previously unpublished short story.

“This is not a ‘Best of Ken Liu,'” Monti told Liptak. “[It’s] more a representation of the themes and voices that his work has explored.” Liu’s back catalog of short fiction is impressive, all the more so when you consider that he has only been publishing regularly since 2010.

“I think it ranks up there with the greatest collections of the field, alongside Le Guin, Butler, and Sturgeon,” Monti said. “If you enjoy George Saunders, read Ken Liu.”

The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories will be released by Saga Press on November 3, 2015. It is available now for preorder.