The Grace of Kings

Ken Liu calls what he’s doing here silk punk, blending Eastern and Western storytelling traditions instead of picking one, and I think that’s the more useful way into this book than the marketing comparison to Martin. If you go in expecting ASOIAF with different names you’re going to be thrown for a loop, the tone and pacing are doing something genuinely different, closer to epic and legend than grim political thriller.

The book moves fast for something this dense, which surprised me. There’s a real mosaic quality to how the story’s told, a wide cast, lots of locations, and a willingness to kill characters off before you’ve fully attached to them, which I found frustrating early on and eventually respected. It’s a deliberate choice, I think, the way these people get frozen into capital-H Heroic status even as the narration is quietly showing you the cost of that mythmaking underneath. Kuni and Mata carry most of the emotional weight and they’re genuinely two of the more interesting figures I’ve read in this genre recently, especially watching how differently the story treats their ambitions even though they start out as something close to friends.

The one thing that kept me at arm’s length in places was the third person distance. I’ve read plenty of third person epics that pull me in just as close as first, but this one holds you back a little more than I wanted during the quieter character moments, even though the big battle sequences land hard regardless. I was legitimately breathless through the last big confrontation, then genuinely sad about how it resolved, which is more than I can say for most 600 page fantasy doorstops.

Took me longer to get through than I expected going in. Worth the time. Just don’t go in looking for Westeros with a new map.