Ken Liu, Writer

Author of The Grace of Kings and The Paper Menagerie

fantasy

There’s a Draft of the Conclusion of the Dandelion Dynasty

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You ready for this?

Remember how for the last three-plus years I’ve been working on the same book, and every time you asked me about it the answer has always been, “I’m still working on it”?

Well, now we have a new answer.

The Dandelion Dynasty is complete! Ahahahahahaha!!!

I started working on The Dandelion Dynasty ten years ago, and a decade later, I finished it exactly the way I wanted to. The very last scene of the book had been in my mind before I even set down the first word, and the thrill of finally completing that arc is … indescribable.

Not to worry, as I did not, in fact, drop a cargo truck on my editor’s desk. The poor man has suffered enough as I toiled away on the conclusion of the saga all this time.

But it would be nice to give you a glimpse of the manuscript, wouldn’t it? Here it is:

printed version of the end of The Dandelion Dynasty

That’s right, I needed two binders to fit the conclusion in there. Hehe.

I am so excited about this, y’all! Honestly, I think the best person to introduce the end of the saga to you would be Stefon from SNL because “Dara’s hottest chronicle has … EVERYTHING.”

Stefon

There are epic battles in the most unlikely of locations; new weapons pushing the limits of my fantasy engineering skills; a general whose most ardent desire is a silkmotic-heated bath; a restaurant critic channeling the spirit of Gordon Ramsay; a sovereign whose greatest accomplishment can never be recorded on their epitaph; new creatures, new lands, new philosophies, new ways to write books … 

I hate to dangle the end of the adventure before you like this … but yeah, I’m bouncing off the walls with joy and exhaustion and trepidation and anticipation and every shade in between.

Now, this is just a draft, so publication information is still unsettled. But I promise you more updates soonest!

The Book of Swords Release Day

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Just for today: there’s a Reddit AMA with Gardner Dozois and the authors in the anthology from 10/12-10/13. Go and ask everything!

My story, “The Hidden Girl,” is part of Gardner Dozois’s epic fantasy anthology, The Book of Swords, published yesterday. This book contains stories from George R. R. Martin, Robin Hobb, Kate Elliott, Garth Nix, Elizabeth Bear, and many other awesome authors.

The Book of Swords

“The Hidden Girl” is about a young woman taken away from her home to be trained to become an assassin who can move between worlds. It is, like much of my fiction, an assassin of the guards posted on the borders between genres.

LeVar Burton Reads “The Paper Menagerie”

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LeVar Burton (Roots, Star Trek: The Next Generation, Reading Rainbow) is a hero of mine. TNG is my favorite Trek, and Geordi was the greatest engineer in the galaxy. (Remember, my silkpunk epic fantasy series is all about engineers as magicians and poets.)

LeVar Burton Reads podcast

He has a new podcast, “LeVar Burton Reads” (alternate iTunes link), in which he narrates pieces of short fiction.

He’s already performed works by Neil Gaiman, Haruki Murakami, Daisy Johnson, among others. And this week’s selection is “The Paper Menagerie”. Go ahead and give it a listen. It’s an amazing performance.

Sometimes my life is unbelievable.

The Wall of Storms Launch

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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!

wall of storms cover

Essays and Interviews

Excerpts

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!

CYY fan art