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clarehiyama's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
5.0
Graphic: Medical trauma, Slavery, Rape, Torture, Sexual violence, and War
fluffballpanda's review against another edition
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
5.0
Graphic: Physical abuse, Medical trauma, Slavery, Genocide, Rape, War, and Violence
Moderate: Xenophobia, Suicide, Torture, Genocide, Sexual violence, and Slavery
Minor: Kidnapping and Death of parent
dufremde's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? N/A
- Strong character development? N/A
- Loveable characters? N/A
- Diverse cast of characters? N/A
- Flaws of characters a main focus? N/A
3.5
- the stuff that worked REALLY worked, but a few stories left me absolutely cold and/or sent me into a depression spiral. let's just talk about the bad experiences first: the cruelty of "literomancer" felt pointless and jarring, "the regular" was faux-edgy in a way that felt slimy to read sometimes, and to be perfectly honest, the title story—yes, the one that won all the awards—was so mid in its themes and execution that I was just baffled after reading it. like that was some Amy Tan shit. overall, I think Liu has an issue writing women that feel real, and that makes me sad. and to me, an East Asian, some of the extremely East Asian tropes felt trite and tired, even in the stories that I liked.
- onto better times... I loved the intensity of both "bookmaking habits" and "comparative cognition," the imagination that went into both was astounding and I felt like I could have devoured an extended compendium of both concepts.
- I quite enjoyed the loosely connected trio of "comparative cognition" + "waves" + "mono no aware." it had the makings of a longer series, and I liked the combination of slice-of-life/character study with the overarching speculative sci-fi plotline.
- "all the flavors" and "litigation master" had that magical realism thing going for them, weaving in well-known Chinese literary figures, but I'm not sure they'll stick with me. (I was scared "all the flavors" was going to go the way of "literomancer" so I'm glad it stayed optimistic/open-ended. still, I wonder about including both when they kind of had a similar structure.)
- "trans-pacific tunnel" + "man who ended history" had Things To Say, and I'm lowkey mad he put the latter story at the very end, although I do think it is the showstopper of the entire collection. however, I have mixed feelings; I loved the concept of the documentary (which Liu says was inspired by Ted Chiang) and the intersection between time travel and transnational historical trauma really landed, but unfortunately for me he chose to center the story around Unit 731, which is one of my personal triggers, so I had to unfocus my eyes for a lot of the actual discussion over what happened. it's one of the most brutal episodes of WWII and still has reverberating effects, and I appreciate what Liu was trying to do with the sociopolitical commentary but I also felt physically ill while reading it. the entire collection needed massive content warnings, but especially this last story!
anyway I had to start another book at 2 a.m. to act as a palate cleanser lmao thanks bud
Graphic: Torture, Rape, Violence, and Sexual violence
10stormlight's review against another edition
3.75
As a warning, there is a ton of *extremely* graphic content in here. In fact, I think this may be the most explicitly graphic book I have ever read.
Graphic: Medical trauma, Torture, Violence, Gore, Rape, Suicide, Body horror, Death, Grief, Medical content, Xenophobia, and Injury/Injury detail
Moderate: Cursing, Racism, Child death, Sexual content, War, Death of parent, Confinement, Gun violence, and Murder
Minor: Terminal illness, Bullying, Misogyny, Pregnancy, Sexism, Fire/Fire injury, and Racial slurs
compassrosa's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
Graphic: Medical trauma and Physical abuse
Moderate: Murder and Racism
Minor: Suicide and Rape
josiah17's review against another edition
4.5
I highly recommend this collection of short fiction to everyone.
Graphic: Gore and Torture
Moderate: Body horror
Minor: Rape and Sexual content
danielles_reads's review
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
4.5
I’ve only read a handful of SFF short story collections because I really disliked the first one I read, and I wasn’t sure if it was the author or the format. Turns out it is possible to write short, engaging speculative stories that make sense with minimal world building and make you attached to the characters! A lot of these stories were absolute tear jerkers—I cried my eyes out at the titular story, which was only 28 minutes long but so emotional. Liu discussed a lot of trauma, both personal and collective, which made this a really heavy but worthwhile read.
I loved so many of the stories and only found two of them to be meh. My favorites were: The Man Who Ended History, Mono no Aware, The Paper Menagerie, The Regular, and Good Hunting. My least favorites were The Perfect Match and Simulacrum (though the latter inspired a good book club discussion). I do kind of wish that Liu had spaced out the longer stories more evenly throughout the collection—the stories in the first half were all fairly short, but the longest stories were all in the second half. It made the pacing feel a bit uneven.
I definitely need to read more of Liu’s work! I highly recommend this collection to anyone looking to read more short speculative fiction.
Spoiler thoughts on each story:
The Bookmaking Habits of Select Species: wow, these species are all so different! I love the metal species with stone brains carving out a little for their descendants. And the species that has to physically touch the books to read and so they lock them away and only share interpretations. So creative, loving this already.
State Change: Gave Ling Ma vibes. A seemingly mundane story with slightly absurd speculative elements that has a greater meaning. But with actual closure lol. This one was fascinating and had me all in. I liked the excerpts with historical figures’ souls too. I’m already so impressed with Liu’s mind!
The Perfect Match: Disappointing. An obvious manifesto against tech companies that was super predictable. Hopefully this is a one-time issue.
Good Hunting: This one made me tear up 🥲 I loved the theming, characters, ending. Beautiful
The Literomancer: Ken Liu is really just gonna rip my heart out of my throat like that huh?? jesus. This one was too real. The ending did feel rushed and kind of forced with the dad explaining literally every detail about the torture to his wife, but ultimately I think it succeeded in delivering the message he wanted about imperialism, anti-communism, etc. I also loved the discussion around Chinese characters and language—you can really see Liu’s translation skills at work.
Simulacrum: Was that ending implying that Anna started the simulacrum of her mom? Interesting. I’ll always be team family members don’t deserve reconciliation just because they’re family, so it would make sense she’d rather bond with a fake version of her mom than have that message be her last memory of her. And her dad was creeping me out.
The Regular: omg this was so scary and intense. How does Liu always get me to connect with these characters so quickly?? Ruth hanging from the windowsill waiting for the Watcher had me STRESSED. And then her getting the chance to make up for her daughter’s death by saving Carrie in the way she couldn’t for her daughter… 😭 the feels
The Watcher was creepy af and his POV heightened the tension even more. And Liu really seems to understand women’s experiences with sexism with the comments Ruth made about what she dealt with from men
The Paper Menagerie: freaking bawling at his mom’s story, she didn’t deserve that and neither did he 😭😭
An Advanced Readers' Picture Book of Comparative Cognition: Just the kind of philosophical sci-fi I like. Uranium-based life forms, who even comes up with that?!? Though I can’t deny that traveling 550 AU from the sun to listen to messages around the universe for the rest of your life sounds depressing as fuck. I like to think that the parts about different aliens were things she learned while listening.
I think the point was to show how insignificant our thoughts and legacy are to the universe and the different ways love can be expressed.
The Waves: This one was wild. I feel like Liu took the typical “what makes us human?” sci-fi theme to its absolute limit in a way I haven’t really seen before. I also felt the revulsion Maggie felt when Bobby turned into a machine 😅 but then when they essentially turned into light I started thinking, what’s the point of living like that forever? So strange. I like how he incorporated creation stories too. For a second I thought Maggie was going to create humans from mud at the end there lol
Mono no Aware: A beautiful story about community and sacrifice and the inherent transience of life. Loved it.
All the Flavors: this was… fine. It was pretty much just straight historical fiction and it felt meh compared to the other brilliant stories in this collection. And it was so long! I also kept getting the names in the legend confused so I probably didn’t fully understand it. And I know it’s historically accurate but hearing “Chinaman” constantly was grating.
A Brief History of the Trans-Pacific Tunnel: interesting alternate history that had a real dark but realistic turn. Damn, the prisoner trying to escape was Hokkien like the narrator and not a communist terrorist like he was told :(
The Man Who Ended History: wowowow, this one was incredible. A perfect example of a sci-fi with meaningful social commentary. I loved the rumination on how we interact with history, and the discussion of the needs of the individuals affected by past atrocities vs the needs of society as a whole vs the need to save and document these atrocities. I had never heard of unit 731 before. Pure evil, but I’m glad that this story informed me.
Graphic: Rape, Death, Murder, and Torture
Moderate: Racism
Minor: Suicide
madijwhat's review against another edition
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
5.0
Graphic: Torture and Rape
Warning—The last story is particularly graphic.blenchbooks's review against another edition
4.75
Graphic: Body horror, Genocide, Gore, Suicide, Torture, Medical trauma, Murder, Child death, Hate crime, Medical content, Racism, Rape, Forced institutionalization, and War
ruthhelizabeth's review against another edition
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
5.0
Graphic: Violence, Racism, Racial slurs, Murder, Misogyny, Medical trauma, Gun violence, Gore, Confinement, Sexual violence, Sexual assault, Rape, Pregnancy, Genocide, Kidnapping, Hate crime, Xenophobia, Injury/Injury detail, Grief, Death, Blood, War, Torture, and Physical abuse
Moderate: Suicide