Review: The Grace of Kings

The Grace of Kings by Ken Liu
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

The genre of this book is defined as silkpunk, sort of like steampunk but differently looking. More words. The author himself defines silkpunk as science fiction or fantasy esthetically inspired by classical East Asian antiquity. There is a lot of silk there, yes (even though they invent some steam machinery along the way), and fiction/fantasy. The missing part is science. I have a lot of problems with the author's explanations of how things work in his world. Apparently, our puny physics laws don't work there. Or he didn't bother to do some self-education. Not explaining at all sometimes works better than trying to explain something you don't understand.

Unfortunately, it's not my only problem with the book. It's so long! It seems it was supposed to be an epic novel. I saw somewhere that any novel longer than 600+ (not sure about the exact number) is epic. However, there is another definition of epic and it says it's something out of the ordinary, momentous, and heroic. The Hobbit is epic not because it's long (it's not). But the fame of the Game of Thrones was too tempting, so this book is unnecessary long, only the characters rather drift with the flow, instead of plotting and intriguing.

The reading itself was often confusing, because the point of view keeps shifting without warnings. A paragraph can start through the eyes of one character and end through the eyes of another. There were even cases when it happened inside one sentence! I don't mind shifting points of view, they allow for a more complete picture, but can they be separated somewhat? Please? That's what that big key on the right of the key board is for.

Despite having a lot of pages, the author still somewhat rushed the ending. Timing and scale don't check out the whole book, but it became more and more obvious toward the end. What kind of spies see a five thousand strong army only a couple hours before its arrival? Or don't notice airships right until the moment they are overhead? Sizes of armies and other down-to-earth particulars make no sense at all, just like "scientific" details.

Did I enjoy he book? Somewhat. Will I read on? No.

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