Review: 4 stars

Discovering a new book is like discovering a new joint to eat, only better. Because in the worst case, suffering from bad writing is better than an upset stomach. So even though desi Chinese sometimes upsets my stomach, I was eager to try out this collection of short stories in ‘The Paper Menagerie and other stories’. I greedily gobbled up these oriental dishes skillfully prepared under the penmanship of Ken Liu. It is a welcome addition to my 2017 booklist.
Let me tell you from the onset, the stories in ‘The Paper Menagerie’ have quite conventional sci-fi setup. ‘The Waves’ look straight out of Arthur Clarke’s Space Odyssey. ‘The Perfect Match’ traverses the well-trodden path of evils of big data/analytics and invasion of privacy argument. ‘The Regular’ is a regular cyberpunk story where humans have mechanized body parts and well-regulated emotions. Some of the other stories could be easily forgotten.
Where ‘The Paper Menagerie’ shines, is when Chinese folklore/fantasy, history and elements of sci-fi are mingled to create something quite unique and refreshing.
The eponymous ‘The Paper Menagerie’ is the best story of the collection. As a kid, I wasn’t hot on origami, but I had a near-crying, almost-shed-a-tear kind of experience after reading this story about this kid who has a troubled relation with his mom, and his menagerie of paper animals. Simplest of ideas, rawest of emotions – this story is a tear-jerker through and through.
I guess, Ken Liu also excels in stories of ‘alternative histories’. My favorite is ‘Good Hunting’. In the context of the British conquest of China, where progress collides with tradition, magic with science – awesomeness awaits. Fantasy became science-fiction. Mind-blown! If I were the author, I would be extremely proud of this piece of gripping entertainment. He uses the similar theme to a less impressive effect in ‘A brief history of the Trans-Pacific Tunnel’.
Though, in the end – it gets bogged down by Chinese historical claims/narratives, as to how the world (America, Japan, Britain, Korea) has been extremely unjust towards it over the course of history. Though Chinese-American, Ken Liu sounds more like a mouth-piece of the Chinese government than anything else. While I would like to believe him, it sounds more like China using its soft power to influence its narrative over counter-narratives, and set right many perceived wrongs.
Though, this heavily-loaded sci-fi got me interested in one subject that I hadn’t explored before – Chinese history and folklore. Dear diary, do remind to read about that from a more impartial source.