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chloecatz888 's review for:
Speaking Bones
by Ken Liu
4.75/5 stars
As someone who absolutely loved the previous books in the Dandelion Dynasty series (truly some of the best fantasy I have ever read), I had very high expectations for this book, and on most fronts these were more than met by the Speaking Bones.
The world that Ken Liu paints is incredibly detailed and captivating as always (personally I particularly enjoy the allusions to traditional Chinese-inspired elements such as the logograms and different schools of philosophy, along with the 成语 or different idioms and sayings scattered through the story that truly enrich it) and is certainly one of the key attractions of this book.
The plot is complex and unpredictable, making the story engaging whilst managing to make court politics (often something that would bore me in a book) intriguing for readers.
My sole reservations come due to the characters. Unlike the first 3 novels (of which the 2 first books were my favourites), I didn’t feel quite the same pull to the characters, despite them being beautifully developed and profound. It might have been due to the frequent switches between different viewpoints, or perhaps the fact that many of my favourite characters died either during this last instalment or in the previous ones, but I didn’t feel as entranced by their stories as in the previous books. Most of the book saw my favourites separated, and whilst remedied by the ending (which was very satisfying), I do wish that we could have seen more interactions between the amazing characters, with this being the reason why I couldn’t give the book a full 5/5 like I would for books 1-3 without hesitation.
Overall however, thank you Ken Liu for such an incredible series; now I’ve got to go back and reread the first three books….
As someone who absolutely loved the previous books in the Dandelion Dynasty series (truly some of the best fantasy I have ever read), I had very high expectations for this book, and on most fronts these were more than met by the Speaking Bones.
The world that Ken Liu paints is incredibly detailed and captivating as always (personally I particularly enjoy the allusions to traditional Chinese-inspired elements such as the logograms and different schools of philosophy, along with the 成语 or different idioms and sayings scattered through the story that truly enrich it) and is certainly one of the key attractions of this book.
The plot is complex and unpredictable, making the story engaging whilst managing to make court politics (often something that would bore me in a book) intriguing for readers.
My sole reservations come due to the characters. Unlike the first 3 novels (of which the 2 first books were my favourites), I didn’t feel quite the same pull to the characters, despite them being beautifully developed and profound. It might have been due to the frequent switches between different viewpoints, or perhaps the fact that many of my favourite characters died either during this last instalment or in the previous ones, but I didn’t feel as entranced by their stories as in the previous books. Most of the book saw my favourites separated, and whilst remedied by the ending (which was very satisfying), I do wish that we could have seen more interactions between the amazing characters, with this being the reason why I couldn’t give the book a full 5/5 like I would for books 1-3 without hesitation.
Overall however, thank you Ken Liu for such an incredible series; now I’ve got to go back and reread the first three books….