The Grace of Kings

The Grace of Kings by Ken Liu is another literary awards winner that to me doesn't seem worthy of such recognition. A quick google search for reviews gave me a Reddit post that described the novel as cliff notes of itself, which I found a humorous yet accurate depiction.

The author's name was familiar to me beforehand: Liu did the -- also award-winning -- English translation of Liu Cixin's Three-Body Problem. The Grace of Kings has nothing to do with that, though.

The novel is epic fantasy whose setting is very Chinese -- in the sense that it's much alike the world in something like Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon or Zhang Yimou's wuxia films. (And that's pretty much where my familiarity ends in that regard.) I suppose that goes for the characters as well. It doesn't extend to the (often four-letter length) names, I'd say. At least, they don't seem all that Chinese to me

Unlike the mentioned movies, the novel lacks the superhuman martial arts (and the colorful cinematography of Zhang's). There is, however, a daring assassination attempt during a huge victory parade in the prologue. That scene is what immediately brought to mind the imagery of films such as Hero. 

Emperor Mapidéré, former king of Xana, has just managed to conquer the whole world, the Seven Islands of Dara. His reign seems supreme yet there is opposition like the assassination attempt shows. The world's gods are choosing favorites and placing bets. The two people to rise up to the challenge are Kuni Garu, a street gang leader, and Mata Zyndu, the last son of his clan. (Did I mention the four-letter names?)

It's hard to empathize with the characters when the novel keeps going forward in place and time, stopping at key events and encounters, to then quickly move on. Time and distances don't appear to mean much: people are always where things are happening; there is no travel time.

Liu used few common English expressions that I felt were out of place like 'connecting the dots' or 'for all intents and purposes'. It enhances the cliff notes impression when your third person omniscient narrator talks like that.

The Grace of Kings is only the first book of the (currently) four-part Dandelion Dynasty. I don't think I'm in any hurry to read more.