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A review by midheavens
The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories by Ken Liu
3.0
It's admittedly difficult to rate short story collections: long-form fiction is much easier for me to connect with, but I've been trying to give more short fiction a go and this came highly recommended. At his best, Liu's work is thought-provoking, imaginative, haunting, charming; the stand-outs of this collection were "State Change," "Good Hunting," "The Literomancer," and "The Paper Menagerie"--stories of souls stored in inanimate objects outside the body, magical creatures forced to adapt with the changing tides of history, a man who can read the future in a word, a woman who breathes literal life into origami animals for her son. (I'm definitely more inclined toward the fantasy/magical realism end of spec fiction than sci-fi.)
Unfortunately, a lot of the other stories failed to hit for me. Women are defined in relation to the men of each story, more often than not--daughters and mothers and wives and manic pixie dream girl-esque love interests who never fully take shape on their own. As another reviewer noted, it often felt as if Liu wedged the characters into an idea he found interesting rather than allowing them to grow organically. There's also a clinical quality to a lot of Liu's prose that makes it difficult to emotionally engage, and I should note that there are themes of violence (sexual and otherwise) in many of the stories that may be triggering to some.
An interesting read with a handful of gems, though I'm not sure I'd recommend the whole collection.
Unfortunately, a lot of the other stories failed to hit for me. Women are defined in relation to the men of each story, more often than not--daughters and mothers and wives and manic pixie dream girl-esque love interests who never fully take shape on their own. As another reviewer noted, it often felt as if Liu wedged the characters into an idea he found interesting rather than allowing them to grow organically. There's also a clinical quality to a lot of Liu's prose that makes it difficult to emotionally engage, and I should note that there are themes of violence (sexual and otherwise) in many of the stories that may be triggering to some.
An interesting read with a handful of gems, though I'm not sure I'd recommend the whole collection.