The Wall of Storms Launch

It’s launch day for The Wall of Storms, and I’ll be gathering some reviews and other publicity material here.

If you’ve read the book, please leave a review on Amazon, Goodreads, B&N, or wherever else you like to review books. Reviews help readers discover books they want to read and are the lifeblood of authors. Thank you!

Essays and Interviews

• “Fusion Fantasy”: Sophia Nguyen profiles me for Harvard Magazine.
• “Social Engineering and Politics as Technology: Writing The Wall of Storms“: My essay for Tor.com one of the central themes in the novel.
• Amy Brady interviewed me for The Chicago Review of Books
• “The Dandelion Dynasty and Sagrada Família”: My essay for Black Gate on the ways in which my silkpunk epic fantasy is similar to Gaudí’s architectural experiment.
• I explain my favorite scene in TWOS for the Voyager Online blog.

Excerpts

• Exclusive excerpt with Unbound Worlds.
• Exclusive excerpt with Tenacious Reader.
• Excerpt with Black Gate.

Reviews

• Amal El-Mohtar reviews TWOS for NPR: “It surpasses The Grace of Kings in every way, by every conceivable metric, and is — astonishingly — perfectly readable as a standalone. I loved it so much that I’d go so far as to say if you were intimidated by the size and scope of The Grace of Kings, you needn’t wait on reading it to dive into this one.”
• Publishers Weekly starred review: “This tale of divided loyalties, deadly ambition, and ‘silkpunk’ technology delivers enough excitement and sense of wonder to enchant any fan of epic fantasy.”
• Megan M. McArdle writing for Library Journal starred review: “This absorbing fantasy, influenced by Chinese history yet utterly fresh, gets better as it marches along. Despite its length, fans of epic fantasy will devour this story and be clamoring for the next entry.”
• Peter Tieryas reviewing for Entropy: “…one of the greatest novels I’ve read.”
• Alec Austin: “I heartily recommend The Wall of Storms to all serious readers of epic fantasy.”
• Charles Tan: “Whereas its predecessor held back in characterizing one half of the human population in the first book, women take center stage in this novel.”
• Elaine Aldred at Strange Alliances: “If you were stranded on a desert island with only one book to keep you company, then The Wall of Storms, dense with characters, heroic action sequences and philosophical imaginings, has the type of longevity to keep a reader going for years as they return to the book time after time.”
• Becky Carr: ” With a book like this it would be so easy to overdo the intellectual aspects and bore the reader or not put enough of the intellectual aspects in and confuse the reader. Liu found a perfect balance.”
• Bookworm Blues: “So far this is probably the best book I’ve read this year, hands down. Liu is a dominating force in speculative fiction. He’s rewriting the genre, and redefining the rules, and it’s a delight to witness.”
• Achala Upendran: “I cannot stress it enough: read The Wall of Storms.”
• Bob Milne for Speculative Herald: “A book to be savored and enjoyed, The Wall of Storms is one of those rare sequels that manage to improve upon an already near-perfect debut.”
• Drew at “The Tattooed Book Geek”: “…simply put it’s not just a book that you read, it’s a journey that you take and is highly recommended.” (Readers who gave up on The Grace of Kings may especially find this review interesting.)
• Tochi Onyebuchi for Sometimes I Read: “‘The Wall of Storms’ is a bigger, better novel than ‘The Grace of Kings’ and may be the best fantasy novel I’ve read in the past five years.”
• Kelly Anderson for The B&N SFF Blog: “How honest we are with ourselves about how those stories influence our ideas and decisions—whether we’re willing to really look in the mirror and face facts—that’s everything. That’s the ballgame.”
• Mogsy for The BiblioSanctum: “[T]his sequel only served to cement this series in my mind as a true work of art.”
• Achala Upendran & Mihir Wanchoo for Fantasy Book Critic: “There are fun capers, incredibly detailed worldbuilding, surfacing crubens and swooping garinafins, supernatural encounters and ‘silkpunk’ science fiction devices that (sometimes) save the day. There’s an ending that makes you realise that sometimes, the old world has no choice but to be swept away completely to make way for a new, exciting one. Sometimes, change is a risk worth taking.”
• Betty Bong reviews for Asia Pacific Arts: “This contemplative and action-packed sequel still offers the pleasurably smooth prose and semi-omniscient narrative style that evokes a seasoned storyteller spinning off another iteration of a much-loved and oft requested tale.”
• Brannigan Cheney reviews for The Qwillery: “The Wall of Storms brought everything I wanted in a sequel.”
• Gary K. Wolfe reviews for Locus: “[I]ntellect is one of the defining features of Liu’s approach to fantasy.”

Fan Art

And finally something special: Carmen Yiling Yan made me some fan art for The Wall of Storms!