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A review by i_ronnie
The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories by Ken Liu
4.75
A few years back I tried to read Ken Liu’s Dandelion series and just couldn’t get into it. On reading the intro to this book and hearing that Liu started out writing short stories, I understood why.
This collection is truly excellent. The stories are well-crafted and written, with very few of the ambiguous endings that so often plague short stories. The breadth of stories is highly enjoyable, as is the theme of Chinese history and heritage running through the collection.
Some of the stories were a hard work (graphic depictions of violence and sexual assault), but while I didn’t enjoy reading those scenes, I didn’t find them gratuitous.
This is definitely a collection I’ll be coming back to again and again.
This collection is truly excellent. The stories are well-crafted and written, with very few of the ambiguous endings that so often plague short stories. The breadth of stories is highly enjoyable, as is the theme of Chinese history and heritage running through the collection.
Some of the stories were a hard work (graphic depictions of violence and sexual assault), but while I didn’t enjoy reading those scenes, I didn’t find them gratuitous.
This is definitely a collection I’ll be coming back to again and again.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Rape, Sexual assault, Torture, Violence, Murder, Colonisation, War