The Veiled Throne
Ratings13
Average rating4.2
15
Ratings13
Average rating4.2
With the invasion of Dara complete, and the Wall of Storms breached, the world has opened to new possibilities for the gods and peoples of both empires as the sweeping saga of the award-winning Dandelion Dynasty continues in this third book of the “magnificent fantasy epic” (NPR). Princess Théra, once known as Empress Üna of Dara, entrusted the throne to her younger brother in order to journey to Ukyu-Gondé to war with the Lyucu. She has crossed the fabled Wall of Storms with a fleet of advanced warships and ten thousand people. Beset by adversity, Théra and her most trusted companions attempt to overcome every challenge by doing the most interesting thing. But is not letting the past dictate the present always possible or even desirable? In Dara, the Lyucu leadership as well as the surviving Dandelion Court bristle with rivalries as currents of power surge and ebb and perspectives spin and shift. Here, parents and children, teachers and students, Empress and Pékyu, all nurture the seeds of plans that will take years to bloom. Will tradition yield to new justifications for power? Everywhere, the spirit of innovation dances like dandelion seeds on the wind, and the commoners, the forgotten, the ignored begin to engineer new solutions for a new age. Ken Liu returns to the series that draws from a tradition of the great epics of our history from the Aeneid to the Romance on the Three Kingdoms and builds a new tale unsurpassed in its scope and ambition.
Reviews with the most likes.
Amazing...simply amazing.
The characters, the plot, the prose.....the cooking (if ya know, ya know).
Ken Liu has created a masterpiece--3 epic volumes, with one last volume to go.
I have no idea how this is going to end, only that it is going to be epic.
Do yourself a favor and read this series--you will not regret it.
“Stories are as alive as we are, and surely they change with each retelling. All my stories grow and learn, just as I grow and learn.”
“Everyone is a storyteller. That's how we make sense of this life we live. Misfortune and affliction test us... We have to tell ourselves a story about why to make all the random manipulations of fate and fortune bearable.”
I have the phrase “The stories we tell ourselves” tattooed on my wrist. One of the reasons is because we construct narratives about everything around us to make sense of the world. We truly are the storytelling animal. I think Liu and I agree on this, as the theme of this book is how central stories are to the human experience.
It's tough to talk about books deeper into a series if it's a series with lots of deaths and plots, because even mentioning a character's name can be a spoiler. I am in love with the world Liu has crafted and it feels very lived in. The character work is superb and economical. Characters can disappear for 300 pages, show up again for 5 and I am awed at how complex they manage to be. Two of these characters are so well drawn that I wish more people knew about them so I could gush. Liu does so many bold things with the prose that leaves me constantly wowed- two of my favorite passages are from the perspective of a whale (whales call humans “half-octopuses”) and from a character who is new to human life and learning how to breathe, see, smell, experience for the first time. There are so many fantastic quotes that I eventually just stopped writing them down out of exhaustion.
That said, this was my least favorite of the series, which is a bit unfair. The final book was split in two, and this is the first half. I knew that going in, but the pacing really suffers in the second half as you know the book is reaching the conclusion without any sort of resolution. There's a competition section that went on a long time that I felt could have been trimmed for extra time with different characters. This book is Dune part 1, but it paved the way for an epic ending.
8/10
Series
4 primary booksThe Dandelion Dynasty is a 6-book series with 6 primary works first released in 2015 with contributions by Ken Liu and Francisco Muñoz de Bustillo.
