Ken Liu’s
first published story appeared in 2002, and over the next eight years only five
additional stories appeared. A fire lit
beneath him after, however, since 2010 Liu has been a machine. An astonishing eighty pieces of fiction
published in the five intervening years, the only thing more amazing is that
none of these works was a novel. But
finally in 2015 Liu has emerged in long form.
A major switch in terms of style, The
Grace of Kings, book one in the Dandelion Dynasty series (trilogy?), is
perhaps the least and most expected story that could have emerged.
A sense of
humanism grounding the storm of short fiction Liu has produced to date, The Grace of Kings is likewise rooted in
history, society, culture, and the interaction among them. Looking at cycles of power, the effects of
war on a large, multi-ethnic archipelago, and the choices the people at the top
face as time moves forever forward, the novel is, however, a significantly more
in depth examination of these ideas than anything Liu has produced to date—a
650 page examination, in fact.
