Ken Liu's The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories is a book from which I staggered away, dazed, unable to speak. I have wrestled with how to review it, circled my metaphors like a wary cat, and finally abandoned the enterprise of trying to live up to its accomplishment. I will be honest, and blunt, because this is a book that has scoured me of language and insight and left itself rattling around inside the shell of me. I have never been so moved by a collection of short fiction.
To call [Liu's] book one of the best collections of speculative fiction I've ever read is simply to begin my praise. Liu's book compiles brilliant stories written in several different, overlapping modes, a technically dazzling collection of compulsively readable narratives, presenting characters with agonizing moral dilemmas and never forgetting the heart.
Like childhood, these stories are simple — but far from simplistic. Besides making compelling points about subjects such as domination and empowerment, responsibility and freedom, they leave lingering impressions of smooth-gaited water buffalo; sky-filling solar sails; proto-sapient, lemurlike aliens; and camera implants disguised as prostitutes’ eyes. Long after the book has been read, these telling details continue to lend their subtle heft to stories that pierce to the core of what’s right.
