Iβm Ken Liu, author of "The Paper Menagerie" and The Grace of Kings, AMA
I've spent the last ten years of my life mostly working on one thing: the silkpunk epic fantasy series, The Dandelion Dynasty (published in the US by Saga Press of Simon οΌ Schuster and in the UK by Head of Zeus). The next book, The Veiled Throne, is scheduled to be out at the beginning of 2021. By this point I feel I know my fantasy land better than the real world. (Not necessarily a bad thing, considering the real world right now... We can all use a fantasy land for our refuge.)
I have a new book out, The Hidden Girl and Other Stories, which collects some of my favorite stories in the last few years. AMC has greenlit a new animated series for adults based on a set of interconnected stories in the collection, with the amazing Craig Silverstein as showrunner.
Iβll be here to answer questions all day, starting at 11:00 AM EDT.
My web site, Twitter, and Instagram.
Proof: https://i.redd.it/durs2o0euvn41.jpg
The round of 16 and 8 happened on 25th Apr 2021.
Ke Jie, Yang Dingxin, Mi Yuting, and Tang Weixing are in the semi-final.
Next Round Match up
| Player1 | P1 Win% | Player2 |
|---|---|---|
| Mi Yuting | 32% | Ke Jie |
| Tang Weixing | 37% | Yang Dingxin |
Eventual Winner Probabilities
| Player | Rating | % of Winning |
|---|---|---|
| Ke Jie | 3697 | 45% |
| Yang Dingxin | 3611 | 28% |
| Mi Yuting | 3567 | 16% |
| Tang Weixing | 3516 | 12% |
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... keep reading on reddit β‘Liu Biao is my favorite campaign to play in Three Kingdoms, because it runs completely unlike most other TW campaigns. For most of the game, you have a fairly tight cap on maximum provinces; go over it, and you get significant penalties. Instead, you're supposed to turn most of your conquests over to your vassals to run for you, as you're technically a Han governor trying to stabilize that government rather than a warlord setting up your own.
This leads to a very fun campaign where you're trying to divvy up the map among your vassals, keeping them balanced in power against you and each other, while also trying to keep the peace in general. You don't wind up occupying a lot of territory, instead only keeping the highest value strategic or economic regions.
That style of campaign, where you're playing kingmaker and putting other factions back where you think they belong as opposed to just painting the map, would actually fit both Tomb Kings and Lizardmen pretty well. The latter have the Great Plan, of course, which doesn't always require genocide so much as putting certain factions back in certain places (if only by eradicating the other factions in the way). The Tomb Kings, of course, usually have minimal interest in expansion, largely because they're kind of dead and like it that way. But they have their enemies (vampires and chaos) and are more than happy to fight them.
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There is no secret to my readers that I am an epic fantasy junky but I also have an appreciation for classical cultures, particularly those of ancient China. I always wondered to myself, I wish an author could encapsulate the histories, traditions, religions, and family values of China and bring this to the fantasy genre. I have discovered the answer in Ken Liu as he has truly written a beautiful piece of literature in his epic fantasy debut The Grace of Kings. Written in 2015, Ken Liu has given epic fantasy a much-needed breath of fresh air and a novel that will expand the genre for years to come!
This novel follows several POV characters but primarily the story lines of Kuni Garu and Mata Zyndu. The story takes place on the islands of Dara which were once divided into seven kingdoms. Each kingdom contains their own shifting alliances as well as diverse dialects and cultures. When the kingdoms are untied under a relentless king, people though the empire would be brought to peace and prosperity. Instead, the empire brought stagnation and suffering, the anger of the gods and a rebellion.
Kuni Garu is a wily bandit who is more concerned with how he is perceived by others than his affairs in the empire. This is all before he meets is wife Jia. Jia is a free-spirited daughter of a well respected family and she sees great things on the horizon for Kuni. Driven by Jia, Kuni sets out on a unlikely path to heroism and his goals may cause quiet a stir among the gods. Mata Zyndu, the last child of a family of generals, is favored by the gods in all respects. Standing over seven feet tall and with the family trait of being double-pupiled, Mata looks to be a hero out of ancient legends. Mata is determined to reclaim his stolen heritage and when he hears of a revolution, his journey begins to become Daraβs greatest warrior. Kuni and Mata meet up to become friends and plan to wage separate wars against the empire to win the rebellion.
Ken Liu takes you on a magical ride that you will not want to end. The world-building is very vast and epic that it will take the reader some time to understand, but it just adds layer upon layer to the legend of Dara. As you can probably tell the gods play a big role in this world, bickering amongst themselves on who to support, when, and how. Its very interesting how Ken Liu uses signs from the gods or
... keep reading on reddit β‘
From Goodreads:
>Emperor MapidΓ©rΓ© was the first to unite the island kingdoms of Dara under a single banner. But now the emperor is on his deathbed, his people are exhausted by his vast, conscriptive engineering projects and his counsellors conspire only for their own gain.
>
>Even the gods themselves are restless.
>
>A wily, charismatic bandit and the vengeance-sworn son of a deposed duke cross paths as they each lead their own rebellion against the emperor's brutal regime. Together, they will journey to the heart of the empire; witnessing the clash of armies, fleets of silk-draped airships, magical books and shapeshifting gods. Their unlikely friendship will drastically change the balance of power in Dara... but at what price?
This month we will be reading The Grace of Kings by Ken Liu, which has been described as a silkpunk epic fantasy. Ken will be joining us on Tuesday, March 31st for an AMA.
As always, the dates of and links to the discussion threads can be found in the sticky comment on this post. You are welcome to read at your own pace. Don't worry about joining later on in the month. Usually it is pretty easy to catch up, but you are always welcome to join the discussions a little later.
For those of you that are viewing reddit on the redesigned desktop version you will see an option on this post to 'follow'. If you 'follow' the book club post you will receive a notification when a new post, a discussion thread for book club, is added to the collection. It is still being tested, so it may not be perfect, but perhaps it will make it easier to join the discussions when they go up.
p.s. If you are interested in our previous selections you can find an overview here.
>A lord who knows how to wield men is ten times more fearsome than one who knows only how to wield a sword.
I guess I owe my friend Navin my gratitude for selling me on this book and series, because itβs one of the best fantasy read I had in a long while. After finishing it, I can certainly understand why this book isnβt for everyone. For one, it has an intimidatingly large cast of characters and one can very easily lose track of who is who (which I did, and I am someone who managed to keep track of almost everyone in A Song of Ice and Fire), but that is why Ken Liu made an interesting choice: he preserved the overarching arcs of 2 main characters, while most side character come in and out of the story in sections (some even introduced and eliminated in a single chapter). As a result, The Grace of Kings read like an anthology or a series of short stories. And every time a new character enters the ring, we are fed the backstory so we can understand how that character fits into the narrative. The downside is that we are rarely given time to sympathise with most of them, because of how under-developed and how broadly they are written. In many way, The Grace of Kings resemble The Silmarillion or The Romance of the Three Kingdom, both in how it is written and its scope (it spans decades) though I must say Grace is more accessible and readable than either.
It all starts with an assassination attempt on Emperor Mapidere (basically Qin Shi Huang), ruler of a recently unified empire forged out of petty warring states.If one is to be uncharitable to Ken Liu, one can describe Grace of Kings as a barely fictionalised retelling of the historical Chu-Han Contention, which is the chaotic intervening period between the fall of the Qin Dynasty and the founding of the Han. In fact, one is almost tempted to consider what Liu did to be plagiarism as he (overly) faithfully reproduced many historical events in his novelβdown to the number of horsemen that accompanied a certain characterβs last stand against insurmountable odds (28); how one character is exiled to a remote region (famous for spicy food) where he destroyed his passage back to the mainland to deceive an enemy into thinking he has no intention of returning; and how a surprise attack on a characterβs stronghold forced that character to escape, while his family was captured. And many, many, many more.
He basically took all these real life events and added a pantheon of
... keep reading on reddit β‘