The Grace of Kings

After reading the last few chapters, I was reminded of all the old anecdotes, stories we(the children of the 70's) had to brave (We had to study this again and again, from our primary schooling until our secondary, the product of two cultures, you had to study Filipino/English, and in the afternoon Chinese)through, This hero did that, this hero followed this greater hero, and was backstabbed, and so forth and so on, perhaps the best story to compare this to was The Three Kingdoms, Kuni Garu as Liu Bei, Mata Zyndu as Cao Cao, and Gin Mazoti as the genius strategist Sun Quan.

What made it different was the introduction of Gods which added some spice(only some, since there was no magic system), some ideas that could have made China into a powerful nation(I mean mechanical crubens or steel boats/submarines), kites and dirigibles.

Aside from that, this novel gave me the impression of a Westernized version of those old books we studied, the heroics, the double crossing, was it better, ummmm I would say not that much, I would have preferred more mystical abilities, this was man at his best and brutal at the same time. I am having second thoughts on finishing the series but as per my principle, once I start a series, I try to finish it, whether a trilogy, quadrology, quintology and so forth.

Executive Summary: I enjoyed parts of this book a lot, but overall found it a bit to uneven and slow in places. It's another one that suffers from lack of half star ratings. It's a solid 3.5 star book, that I initially gave 4 stars, but on collecting my thoughts for this review decided to round down to 3 stars instead.

Audio book: Finding out Michael Kramer did the audio from this made it go from wait for a library copy to buy it on audio. I was initially underwhelmed. It's probably not his best performance.

But even a so-so Michael Kramer reading is leaps and bounds above many narrators out there. This became even more obvious when I started my next book. I immediately missed his reading. You really can't go wrong with the audio though. I definitely wouldn't have finished this book so quickly if I was reading it.

Full Review
This book starts slow, but I enjoyed meeting some of the characters and the world building. Far too many fantasy worlds are based on medieval Europe. So it's nice to have one based on Asia instead.

I think the best aspect of this book for me was the gods as characters. This isn't the first fantasy series to do this, but it meshed in well and added an interesting element to the overall story.

Things built up slowly and then finally became interesting, but then seemed to slow way down again. Then it got interesting again before slowing down as things were sort of wrapped up in the final section. This made the pacing pretty uneven to me. The fight scenes and the actual rebellion didn't do much for me. And that's a large part of this book.

What I did enjoy was the actual plotting and administration of government. I appreciated the contrast between Kuni, Mata and the various Kings/Emperors. In some ways it was a bit too optimistic. Kuni is far from a perfect person, but seems incredibly proficient as a leader. Meanwhile Mata is entirely too stupid. Some of the characters actions just didn't make a lot of sense to me.

The other main issue I had was the female characters. This book had some really great ones. Jia, Soto and another I'll refrain from naming. However it felt like it took him far too long to include them as more than just minor characters in the book. I felt Jia was especially underused. I would have liked more time and involvement from them.

For much of the book it seems to be yet another fantasy world where women are relegated to the side lines/dismissed by most male characters. I get that's often how things have worked in our history, but does that mean it needs to be the case in EVERY fantasy series too? I'm hopeful that will be less of the case in future books though.

Overall there is enough here for me to want to check out the next book, but I found myself a bit underwhelmed after all the early buzz.

Lost the library hold for a bit but managed to get it again and finished. Such a fantastic book. All the characters are written so well I found myself so invested in their relationships and felt so much emotion for some of their betrayals and the world building is fantastic. I was really pulled in. While I usually listen to audiobooks on the go from place to place, this book had me laying in bed just listening for hours. Themes of power, ambition, and the stark reality of revolution tie so well with ideas of friendship, loyalty and hope. The book ended really well and is satisfying as a standalone book but once I realized it was a series I couldn't hold my excitement. Overall would definitely reccomend for fans of the genre.

I expected to enjoy this book more than I did. It started well, but somewhere in the middle I started to lose interest. I persevered with it and the ending picked up my interest again. It seemed a lot longer than 630 pages and it took me a lot longer to read than normal. Not sure if will bother with #2 when it is published.

This is a DNF for me at 30% for now. I'm not saying I will never try again, I might, but this is just not very fun.

I want to start out by saying this. I do not know about Chinese history. Some other reviews talk. either positively or negatively, about this basically being a retelling of Chinese history in a kind of fantastical way. They are probably right. But as that is not something I know about, I can't really offer an input on it, other than the fact that...
So far the fantasy elements don't seem to be worth it that much. Some gods show up, trying to subtly manipulate history through pushing their champions. They are messy, there are too many of them. It's just not that interesting in my opinion. It's just one more layer on top of my biggest issue with this.

My big issue, you ask? So much exposition!
I accept that the history of this world is rich. Hell yeah, it's obvious. But. Do we need to be told about all of that before we connect to anything at all? We don't know much about the main characters (more on that later), we don't know what the tone will be, what sort of a story we are reading. But we already got the names of the states, their capitals, their principal gods, a bunch of generals, heroes, people who even change their names once they become emperor. A bunch of conflicts, more new characters just mentioned.
Did we need that? Sure, add them when they become truly relevant, but we just bounce between literally everything, from the kind of funny, typical fold hero chapters of Kuni Garu, the revenge story flashbacks of Mata Zyndu's.... uncle, some minister, an accountant, some bandits, an old soldier, the gods, more and more and more. Every freaking chapter is a new tangent.
Again, all these could have been introduced, sure, go ahead. But be a bit more subtle than “OH, and this random side character tells you his story for no apparent reason” and much later, when we already get a feel for what is going on.

Now you might say, sure, history is an amalgamation of everyone's personal stories. Yes. But this is a novel. It needs to be at least somewhat of a consistent narrative that has a focus, or else it will be a jumble of parts that don't work together.
This one tries to do too many things and therefore it doesn't succeed at none of them.
Maybe Chinese historical storytelling works differently and tastes differ, but even considering that, this is a fantasy story with fantasy names and places, so you have to freaking learn them
regardless, which makes it cumbersome still.

Now... Kuni Garu is charming. If the book focused on him, it would be fun. But it doesn't and that kills it for me. Hearing about the 99th freaking person for one chapter doesn't add much context, more like it bogs it all down.
After some time I skimmed. I skimmed over names and the random useless information about whichever state has a mountain and whatever lake and then it all became even more boring.
Many minor characters seem to be added just to be added. Oh, they just show up, they have one scene where they do something, then they die/are gone. Why? Nothing seems to have that much of an emotional impact because, again, we are not allowed the time to get attached to anyone.
So it makes the story read more like a distant history than immediate events. Possibly the point, not very engaging as a book.

All in all, the book has a definitive character that really turned me off. All the choices made were ones that made it a harder, less pleasant read for me.

I really enjoyed this book, the main reason this isn't rated a perfect 5 is because the first 15-20% of the novel is an infodump and a half. I had to read the opening chapters twice just to get a grasp of all the different character threads and plotlines. Did I mention plotlines? This is a story with a lot of moving pieces; there is an entire world that needs establishing and a context that needs to be delivered in detail, thanks to this breadth the story trips up at its start.

Ken Liu catches his stride fairly quickly with our introduction to Kuni Garu, the central protagonist of the story. Kuni Garu is an incredibly likable and entertaining main character, and I found the entire cast of the story to be bright and alive on the page. This is all rendered in excellent prose, Ken Liu's voice and style has always been clear and descriptive, and he isn't afraid to reference and interpret Chinese literature. It is refreshing to experience a different set of tropes and reference, but I think at its heart this is a classic fantasy story about a hero and a wise king.

I had to take a break from Iain Banks after I finished Excession and this book was a wonderful palate cleanser. It was incredibly refreshing to see female characters who were well written and had agency. I absolutely loved the character of Princess Kikomi and her story arc was a big positive of the book: The female characters in this book are awesome despite the feudal setting. The women in this story are shackled by the time and setting but they are not robbed of their agency. Where another author might have exposited their tragic ends or romantic inclinations (alongside philosophic platitude and social commentary), Ken Liu breathes life into his women. The girls in this book make choices that impact the plot, and their perspective is represented in notable depth. The character of Lady Mira was very well done and I thought her story and monologue in chapter 45 were some of the best written passages in the novel.

I did have one small gripe and that was that the story felt limited by its genre and there were elements of the plot that seemed to bend in favor of trope and contrivance. This is a story that threatens the boundaries of a traditional fantasy story. Despite the rise and fall theme, it so wants to write the world in the image of its characters but can't because its world is the way it is (Because it's the dark ages bro, life sucks dude, the gods are vindictive friend, this is grounded my guy). I sensed an element of metanarrative in the way that the story rubs against the reins of its premise, and the way that the will and agency of the characters rub against the prophetic whims of the gods who oversee the plot from their perch.

Excited to see more of Kuni Garu, excited to see if the next book will shake up what has been a fairly predictable plot.

Solid epic fantasy with phenomenal world-building. The characters are somewhat lackluster; it's very much a “warring of ideas”-style book, where the characters are (in essence) representatives of ideals. Overall, it felt like a lot of other epic fantasy—thus, not special per se, but nonetheless very well done.

I was really excited for this fantasy epic, which instead of being based on medieval Europe like so many of them are, is based on the Warring States period of Chinese history. The plot takes a while to get going, and while I wouldn't have had an issue with that if the character-building was better, it's actually pretty weak (perhaps because there are just too many of them). It was reasonably engaging, but could have been so much better.

This book was fascinating. On the surface this doesn’t seem like a book I would like. The Grace of Kings has been described as a history book setting up the rest of the series. I have not read the rest of the series but this feels right. There are good characters but I felt a bit distanced from them, kind of like a history book. This lack of connection to the characters would normally move me away from a book, but I was prepared for this and felt compelled to read this book. I really enjoyed the plot and the ideas being examined. The characters arcs were also very interesting. If Ken Liu can keep me interested in a history of the world he has created, I’m excited to see what he can do with the next books in the series.

Okay, this was a re-read in anticipation for the third book being released next month, but I originally read this before I had ever reviewed anything and didn't have anywhere to unload my thoughts.

I found my first time through this book a bit difficult, because I was expecting something different. By the end, I found it one of the most thought-provoking and enjoyable things I'd ever read. And that's a big problem with this book, I think, because this low rating is ludicrous. It's marketed as an Asian Game of Thrones essentially, and it is absolutely not that. Comparing this to Martin is an insult to both Martin and Liu, both fantastic writers interested in telling stories very differently.

My first time, I was pretty new to adult fantasy-only having read A Song of Ice and Fire and American Gods before. And I may have DNF'd this book in the first 150 pages due to expecting it to be like them. Liu introduces a bunch of characters in a very clinical, matter-of-fact way near the beginning and many of them are killed after a chapter or two. I was a novice, and I was frustrated- who are the main characters!? What is this guy doing?! I kept going for one reason, and that was because as a teenager, I had read and loved Romance of the Three Kingdoms a lot. I had read it three times minimum by the time I graduated middle school. I lived and breathed ancient China. And while it is not best for easy marketing, the two books that The Grace of Kings most easily relate to are Romance of the Three Kingdoms and The Illiad. Liu's prose reads like a blend of the epic poetry associated with Homer's tales (and, in an obvious homage, the only bit of “fantasy” in this book is a pantheon of Gods overlooking the characters and intervening on behalf of their favorites) and with the clinical, birds-eye view sweeping history style of ROT3K.

This style won't be for everyone, but Liu's prose is wonderful, gorgeous and thought-provoking, and if you give it a chance to get you into the flow of the story, the payoff is well worth it. The second time through, the main characters were immediately obvious to me- I struggled to understand how I couldn't have known who the focus was on in my naive first time. Kuni Garu and Mata Zyndu are both introduced in the first two chapters and get large expository background setting scenes.

The Grace of Kings is a retelling of the fall of the Qin dynasty and of the Chu-Han contention. Kuni Garu is our Liu Bang, Mata Zyndu is our Xiang Yu, even down to his double pupils, and nearly every military, political, history, or background scene is essentially a recreation of something that happened in history (with some exceptions-I'll get to that in a minute). I could give you a summary of this book and a summary of the fall of Qin, blank out the names and they'd hit all the same major points. I've seen some reviews point this out as a gotcha moment: Liu is just writing out a history book! It's uncreative! Blah blah blah! This is dumb and I can't take you seriously if you think this way. A story is in its telling, and what Liu chooses to focus on, what to change, what to highlight, how to characterize these larger-than-life people (there's a reason it makes for good “fantasy”: These people are so legendary that they feel like fantasy characters), and how he chooses to blend philosophy, politics, idealism, poetry, invention, economics, sexism, and imperialism together into this story is promised to always give you something to think about.

You can tell what he's interested in by the way he writes the military scenes: despite most of this book being about a series of rebellions and wars, there are almost no “fight” scenes. The action is told in a clinical, by-the-books way: “X moved here, and attacked here, Y did so-so maneuver and won.” It is NOT the most interesting way to write war, but what Liu is focusing on are the characters, the ideals behind why these people are choosing which side, how each battle affects the world, political situation, and characters around it. Every line of this book seems riddled with subtext. Having read Liu's short stories, I know that the man thinks through every word and that no sentence is wasted. I particularly loved the two characters Dafiro and Ratho-brothers who occupy a type of Guildenstern and Rosencrantz relationship to the main plot.

I've seen Liu state that he wanted The Grace of Kings to feel like a history of a nation, and it really does, but in the most modern way imaginable. For one thing, the way he involves the female characters should really show historical fiction writers that their excuses run thin. So much historical fiction reduces any and all women as tangential to the male leads, citing that's how it was back then. It does take Liu more than half the novel to work the female characters in (besides Kuni's wife Jia, a standout character), but once he does, they are varied and integral. My favorite secondary character is Gin Mazoti-a gender-swapped Han Xin, one of the greatest Chinese strategists. Mazoti is introduced quite late in the book but has a large presence. This is reminiscent of ROT3k again- that book introduces characters the moment they are needed and never beforehand. Anyway, Liu states his intention was to have GoK feel like a history to a more modern-style in Wall of Storms. Having started WoS already, I can immediately see what he means-his style is very different. This reminds me of the Wheel of Time and how Robert Jordan first did a giant homage to his influences before branching off and doing the stuff he really wanted to get to.

All of my ranting aside, I feel like I barely scratched the surface of what I can talk about with this one. More of you should read it, so I can talk about it. If my giant novel can't convince you, what can?
I'll end with a quote that explains, somewhat, the title of the series, and is also one of my favorite moments:

“You'd compare yourself to a weed?” He asked.
“Not just any weed. A dandelion is a strong but misunderstood flower. It cannot be defeated: just when a gardener thinks he has won and eradicated it from his lawn, a rain would bring the yellow florets right back. Yet it's never arrogant: its color and fragrance never overwhelm those of another. Immensely practical, its leaves are delicious and medicinal, while its roots loosen hand soils, so that it acts as a pioneer for other more delicate flowers. Best of all, it's a flower that lives in the soil but dreams of the skies. When it seeds take to the wind, it will go farther and see more than any pampered rose, tulip, or marigold.”

I LOVED THIS BOOK. SO FREAKIN' MUCH. The Grace of Kings is, without a doubt, one of the most well-crafted books that I've ever read.

First of all, I really liked the mood and tone of the book! Reading it felt like watching an old wuxia historical drama. I could actually see the influence of ancient Chinese practices and historical values reflected in the beliefs and actions of the characters. This helped me appreciate the reading experience so much more; I loved how I was able to draw parallels between the events in the book and what I was taught in class. I also liked how it was slow-paced (very much an epic fantasy) but still managed to pack in all these fun & interesting twists!

Another thing I loved was the juxtaposition of Kuni Garu and Mata Zyndu. The author characterized them really well. Kevin Liu managed to strike the perfect balance between them being friends and them being rivals, which really intrigued me. The book also discussed the ways in which war and power affect / change our relationships with people in a very meaningful way. A lot of the interactions between Kuni and Mata (both past and future) were defined by choices they made in order to 1) survive, because that was the only thing they could do in the war, which then morphed into 2) what was the best way for them to pursue their own personal agenda, establish the mandate of power and ensure peace (or what they thought would bring peace). This really meshed well with the overall theme and I loved how they were both such morally grey characters. Even though Kuni is set-up to be the “better” half of this “duo”, you definitely end up sympathizing with Mata and his values by the end of the book!

However, I did feel as if the women could've been fleshed out more. While I loved the overarching use of women in the story (as fighter pilots, auxiliaries & power players), I felt as of there was something lacking in the individual characterization of the main female characters! While they were all fantastic and kick-ass (in theory), their appearances were few and far between + most of their scenes were based on their interactions with the male characters.

*AND ONE LAST NOTE ON THE ENDING: It was PERFECTION. I love how the author set everything up perfectly for a very politically charged & very interesting second book. It was brilliant and chilling and I can't wait to see how the author's going to develop the characters and the foundation of the world that he's built.

2.75 stars? 3 stars?

probably the book i've felt the most mixed feelings for... i went in with such high expectations, wanting to love it, and found it mostly alright. too many characters and too many places – definitely a book to be savored slowly. overly filled with sometimes inconsequential details but had a handful of endearing characters. hated the portrayal of women for most parts in the story...

DNF page 385. I don't know how this book is so highly regarded. One of the most boring books I've ever read yet somehow it kept me locked in for so long. After 200 pages I asked myself why I'm still reading this? It wasn't bad but nothing great was happening at all. I had faith since it's a Hugo winning story butttt no thanks.

I loved The Paper Menagerie—one of my favorite books in recent years. It was full of life and really fascinating ideas and characters. I didn't feel the same about The Grace of Kings, which felt, for large swaths, like a summary. I only really settled into an understanding of the main characters and the thrust of the novel in probably the second half of the book, and even then many new chapters started by introducing characters, spending a while telling their back story, and then having them pop into the “present” timeline just to vanish for one reason or another. By the end of the book, it had established a rhythm and had focused more on the lives and stories of a few primary characters, and I enjoyed that. But I'm giving it a 3 because much of the book was spent summarizing great historical events and jumping around a bit confusingly in time, and not focusing on the human elements of the story.

I really wanted to like this book, but as another reviewer pointed out, it's basically a recounting of the Qin's decline and ensuing Chu-Han contention with some minor cosmetic changes. It's like the author took a period of Chinese history, made up random names, borrowed some choice scenes from Three Kingdoms (the inventions remind me of Zhuge Liang), sprinkled in some political philosophy from the era, and called it an original work of fiction. The whole book feels uninspired and derivative, almost like a mish mash of all the cool Han-era stories he'd heard as a kid.

Honestly I was very disappointed. Ken is a smart guy and a good writer, and I really enjoyed his translation of Liu Cixin's Three Body Problem.

tl;dr: Don't buy this book. Get Three Kingdoms instead.

This is the first book of an epic fantasy quartet that has a little something for everyone. We meet our cast living in an empire where the gods meddle. This is not a world where its humans widely wield magic nor does the book explore the characters or the maneuvers of war ad nauseam. If you don't need all that in your epics I strongly suggest this one. I loved the writing style (it was both lyrical and concise) and the balance of a quick moving plot with a fair amount of character development. My absolute favorite books are ones that show the nuance of character motivation, power and choice - this is a book that shows the world as more than black or white and you will not find mustache twirling villains here. If you like historical fantasy, battles or political machinations this would be worth checking out. I liked all the characters, even the ones I didn't actually like. And, wow I did not expect the ending.

I try very hard not to fall for the hype when it comes to novels. I???ve fallen for it quite times, expecting something wonderful only to find something that???s really just mediocre or is out-and-out disappointing. A good example of this was when I picked up Mark Alder???s Son of the Morning, which had positive ratings almost everywhere I looked, and had a blurb that stoked my interest enough to make me want to read it. Unfortunately, the novel turned out to be very deeply flawed???practically broken, as far as I???m concerned, and as I was reading it I wondered how something so poorly written could escape into the world at large. I also wondered how other people could be so blind to the flaws I saw in it, which I felt were obvious to anyone who liked to read.

Sometimes, though, there are books that are hyped left, right, and centre, and truly deserve that hype. There was plenty of hype, for instance, around J.K. Rowling???s The Casual Vacancy from the moment she announced it, but I decided to stay away from it until I???d received confirmation that it was worth spending my time on. As it turned out, it was a book worth reading???nothing like the Harry Potter books, certainly, but it did prove Rowling had range, and was capable of writing eminently readable books that had nothing to do with the series that made her famous in the first place. That???s a lot more than I can say for some other writers.

But sometimes???very rare times???I buy into the hype of a novel almost from the very beginning, and it actually manages to live up to that hype. A good example would be Ann Leckie???s Ancillary Justice, which swept most of the major sci-fi/fantasy awards it was nominated for, and for good reason: it combines the best aspects of sweeping space opera with complex themes and excellent characterisation.

When I found out last year, via my friend Hope, that Ken Liu???s first novel was due to arrive in 2015, I was thoroughly excited. I???m familiar with Liu???s work as a short story writer (there are quite a few examples published in magazines like Clarkesworld and the like); his prose is elegant and poetic, telling stories that mix East Asian mythology and history with very contemporary themes. I was looking forward to seeing if that style would carry over into his longer work, as well as finding out what he could do when given plenty of room to develop a story.

As it turns out, Liu???s style doesn???t exactly carry over, but he does still tell a very good story.

The Grace of Kings begins with a parade. Emperor Mapid??r?? of the Xana Empire is touring his realm, and this parade through the conquered nation of Cocru is a way of strengthening Xana???s position as the nation that unified all others under one rule. Watching the parade are two teenagers: Kuni Garu and Rin Coda. They???ve decided (or rather, Kuni???s decided) to cut class in order to see the parade, and so far, it???s turning out to be worth it: the parade is a display of all the best that Mapidere???s newly-built empire has to offer, and there???s plenty to see that two small-town boys would not get to see unless they left home. But when an assassin tries to kill the Emperor in the middle of the parade, Kuni learns something about the world that will shape the course of the rest of his life.

Not too long afterwards, on the island of Tunoa, the Imperial Procession wends its way past the town of Farun, and is also witnessed by a teenager, but accompanied by an older man: Mata Zyndu, and his uncle, Phin. They are scions of the once-prominent Zyndu Clan, who were the Marshals of Cocru until they, and their country, fell to Mapid??r?????s forces. Mata???marked for greatness (or so Phin believes) by his extraordinary double-pupiled eyes???is determined to restore the glory of his clan, his country, and the old ways of life that Mapid??r?????s conquest eliminated. He believes it is his destiny, and he will stop at nothing until he accomplishes it.

As the years go by and the discontent in the empire grows into outright rebellion, Kuni and Mata???s paths cross. That crossing leads them onwards to accomplishing deeds both great and dark, to people both good and wicked, as they both do what they think they must???even when it means they must turn against each other.

One of the most interesting and most enjoyable things about this novel is how so much of it feels familiar and unfamiliar at the same time. I attribute this to the fact that Liu draws heavily from Eastern and Western literature, and combines elements from both in a manner that reads seamlessly, but tugs at the reader???s strings in unfamiliar ways.

A clear and immediate example of this are the two main characters, Kuni Garu and Mata Zyndu. Mata is destined for greatness???indeed, is physically marked for it:

Among the ancient Ano, it was said that those with double pupils had the special attention of the gods. Most such children were blind from birth. ???Phin moved his hand in front of the baby, uncertain if he was blind. Mata???s eyes did not move, but then the baby turned and focused his eyes on Phin???s.Among the double-pupiled, a rare few had the sight of an eagle, and it was said that they were destined for greatness.

There are plenty such heroes in both Eastern and Western classic literature, but the one that stands out the most (in my mind, anyway) is Achilles from Homer???s Iliad. Like Achilles, Mata is aware that he is destined for great things, and while he???s not quite sure how or when that destiny will come to him, he knows he must be ready for it. Thankfully, his uncle Phin (who raised Mata to believe that he had a great destiny ahead of him) has done all he can to make sure his nephew is ready; it???s just a matter of waiting and watching for the right moment.

If Mata is Achilles, then Kuni is definitely Odysseus, even if he doesn???t look like it, at first:

[Kuni] was a good drinker, talker, and brawler, and soon he became close to all sorts of disreputable characters in Zudi: thieves, gangsters, tax collectors, Xana soldiers from the garrison, girls from the indigo houses, wealthy young men who had nothing better to do than stand around all day on street corners looking for trouble???as long as you breathed, had money to buy him a drink, and enjoyed dirty jokes and gossip, Kuni Garu was your friend.

Initially, it might seem that Kuni is just a good-for-nothing jokester: a side-character, perhaps, to stand witness to the greatness that Mata Zyndu appears destined for. But that???s not Kuni???s destiny: he???s on the path towards something greater, but that path will be very different from Mata???s. Unlike Mata, who is a hero from the very beginning, Kuni grows into his role, in a manner that???s not immediately obvious to the reader.

This is where Liu shows that he???s not drawing his influences solely from Western literature. One can easily compare Mata to Achilles right from the get-go, but it takes time for the reader to start seeing Odysseus in Kuni, mostly because the story arc he undergoes has more similarities to Chinese classics like The Romance of the Three Kingdoms and Outlaws of the Marsh than to anything Homer wrote.

Another similarity that The Grace of Kings shares with classic Chinese novels is its structure. The story hops from the point-of-view of one character to another, focusing primarily on Kuni and Mata, though other characters do get to hold the reins of the story from time to time. Every other chapter or so, the story jumps away from any of the main characters, and focuses instead on another part of the world, and on other characters and events. These chapters read almost like self-contained short stories within the novel???s larger framework: they detail certain events happening in a given area of the world, focusing on their own set of protagonists and antagonists and having their own central conflict. What ties these chapters back into the main story, though, is that these characters and events have an impact on everything else that???s going on around them: either the characters (if they survive the events of the chapter that introduced them) become supporting characters in the main story arc, or the events that occurred in that chapter are mentioned as influences on the ongoing events of the main story arc.

This tendency to play a little fast and loose with the plot???s linearity is one of the things that makes The Grace of Kings so very interesting to read???but it???s also one of the things that can turn some readers off. Because the novel doesn???t appear to have a tight central focus, especially in the first third, it can be easy for readers to get lost. It also doesn???t help that many of the names aren???t very memorable at first, and the fact that there are quite a lot of those names thrown at the reader from the very beginning makes things even more confusing. It???s especially difficult to keep place-names straight: it???s easier with characters, because a reader can associate names with certain personalities (if not certain faces, if the reader is good at making up faces to go with names), but places are another thing entirely. Like many fantasy novels The Grace of Kings has a map, but it???s irritating to have to flip back and forth between the map and the story, just to remind oneself about where the action is happening at any given moment.

Despite its problems, though, this is a wonderful, exquisite read. There are a lot of characters (which some readers might find irritating because it can be hard to keep them all straight), but none of them feels like a cardboard cutout. It???s easy to unequivocally love a character, or unequivocally hate them, but I find it more interesting when a character makes me feel more ambivalent about them than I thought. For example, I really like Kuni, but he makes some questionable decisions in the novel that make me look askance at him. The same can be said for Mata: I don???t really like him, but there are moments when I really, really like him because of something he???s said, done, or even not said or done.

I???m also exceedingly fond of the female characters in this novel. There???s not a lot of them, especially in the first third of the book, but once they start arriving they are a very fun and interesting bunch. Unfortunately, most of them don???t really get to grow very much in this novel, which is disappointing because I would have loved to see these fantastic women grow under such challenging circumstances as the ones presented in this novel. However, there are hints at the end of the novel that indicate these women will be able to spread their wings even further in the second novel, so I???m hoping Liu devotes time to developing the amazing women he???s introduced in The Grace of Kings, because it would be an utter waste if he doesn???t.

The novel???s true saving grace, though, is how immersive it is. Once (or if) the reader overcomes issues with Liu???s writing style, it???s easy to get lost in the world he???s created. Part of it is the characters themselves: they feel human enough that it???s easy to sympathise with their concerns and troubles, and those troubles and concerns are ones that at least some readers will be able to relate to. The other part is the themes: they touch upon a whole host of ideas, but the central theme???of revolution, and what comes after???is a very contemporary one for most readers. All revolutions begin with the need to topple an old, oppressive regime, but what happens after that? Once the old regime is gone, who or what takes its place? Those are the questions both the characters and the reader must confront throughout the novel, and just like in real life, there are no easy answers.

Overall, The Grace of Kings is a beautiful, immersive, heartwrenching read, but it???s not the easiest read to get into. Liu???s style might be elegant and poetic in his short stories, but it feels a little clunky in this novel: there???s a lack of focus in the first third of the novel that might turn readers off from the very beginning, though things do tighten up a bit by the middle portion of the novel. This lack of focus isn???t helped by the fact that there are plenty of names being tossed around; it???s fairly easy to keep track of the characters, but keeping track of places is another story entirely, and it???s irritating for a reader to have to keep flipping back and forth between the novel itself and the included map just to confirm where things are happening.

However, if readers are able to look past that initial clunkiness, they will be rewarded with a deep, immersive story, populated by characters who beautifully, fatally human; and deeper themes and ideas that echo issues currently troubling us today. The ending is equally satisfying: no homicide-inducing cliffhangers here, but there is the promise for more. It???s a good thing Liu???s writing a sequel, because there???s lots more story left in the world he???s built, and I???m eager to see what???s in store for it, and for everyone in it.