My life in books

Ken Liu's sweeping fantasy, The Grace of Kings, is what the author calls "silkpunk" - a fantasy based on Asian history and culture, but with the same focus on the extension of real, historically-based experimental technology as in the European-based steampunk sub-genre. As Liu said in an interview:

The technology aesthetic that I’m going for is what I call Silkpunk, which is analogous to Steampunk. Steampunk is the idea of extending the Victorian era technology and aesthetics to an alternative path not taken, so Silkpunk is one where I take the technology inspirations of classical China, like kites used for military endeavors and signaling, very powerful mechanical vehicles of various sorts, all these inventions that are described or imagined, and blow them up, turn them down an evolutionary path I think they would have taken if they were allowed to develop. [1]

Liu's tapestry is vast, spanning nations and decades. It begins shortly after the kingdom of Xana, situated on one of several islands in an archipelago known as Dara, has conquered a number of neighbouring kingdoms found on a much larger island in the same grouping. The newly crowned Emperor Mapidéré is making an imperial progress through his new territories, the six kingdoms of Haan, Rima, Gan, Amu, Cocru and Faça. The unification of Dara under Xanan rule has yet to be solidified, and there are many who wish to see their own kingdoms freed of the new imperial overlord.

Among Emperor Mapidéré's new subjects are two young men: a mischievous and intelligent student, Kuni Garu, living in the Cocru city of Zudi; and in the islands of Tunoa off the coast of Cocru, Mata Zyndu, a giant child with rare double-pupilled eyes, the last of his family, most of whom died in the war that unified Dara.

Time passes; political machinations bring a young and easily manipulated successor to Mapidéré's throne; vast imperial building projects beggar the provinces, demand endless numbers of labourers, throe families into despair and poverty. Signs and prophecies abound, and even the gods begin to nudge the lands under their beniface toward change. The revolt begins in Cocru, when conscripted labourers with nothing else to lose and a prophesy to inspire them strike back. And each in his own place and time and fashion, Kuni Garu and Mata Zyndu are drawn into rebellion against the Xanan Empire.

But this is in some ways a very realistic fantasy. The rebellion does not proceed smoothly. Alliances are formed and broken, loyalty and betrayal bring change after change in the battle for control of Dara.

The complexity of Liu's secondary world and its history, involving as it does seven kingdoms, the empire that swallows them, and the people from all walks of life who rise to prominence in the rebellion against that empire, and the power struggles that follow, allows him to explore multiple approaches to leadership and government, on both sides of the conflict. Honour and expediency, tradition and innovation, are tested as values by which one wages war or governs in peace.

This brought to my mind echoes of classical Chinese philosophy and literature, in which the characteristics and actions of the good leader or ruler are often a significant theme. (As they are in Western texts as well, from Plato's The Republic to Machiavelli's The Prince.)

The novel ends where it began, with a pause for breath after struggle, and leaves one intensely curious about where the future of Dara is headed.


[1] http://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/nonfiction/interview-ken-liu/