The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories

By: Ken Liu

Narrated by: Corey Brill, Joy Osmanski

A publishing event: Best-selling author Ken Liu selects his award-winning science fiction and fantasy tales for a groundbreaking collection - including a brand-new piece exclusive to this volume.

With his debut novel, The Grace of Kings, taking the literary world by storm, Ken Liu now shares his finest short fiction in The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories. This mesmerizing collection features all of Ken's award-winning and award-finalist stories, including: "The Man Who Ended History: A Documentary" (finalist for the Hugo, Nebula, and Theodore Sturgeon Awards); "Mono No Aware" (Hugo Award winner); "The Waves" (Nebula Award finalist); "The Bookmaking Habits of Select Species" (Nebula and Sturgeon Award finalist); "All the Flavors" (Nebula award finalist); "The Litigation Master and the Monkey King" (Nebula Award finalist); and the most awarded story in the genre's history, "The Paper Menagerie" (the only story to win the Hugo, Nebula, and World Fantasy Awards).

A must-have for every science fiction and fantasy fan, this beautiful book is an anthology to savor.

©2016 Ken Liu. All rights reserved. (P)2016 Simon & Schuster, Inc. All rights reserved.

Ken Liu has a great imagination!

I love the way Ken Liu writes and takes you into his world in all the short stories. Very descriptive and sometime gruesome, but beautifully written overall.

Great group of stories

I picked this up because I saw the love death and robots sticker. Each story was great unto itself and together made for a happy listening exp

Fantastic collection

this was incredibly beautiful collection of short stories. The author really had a very diverse way of putting these stories together. he managed to put together many different themes including steampunk, cyberpunk, futuristic, Supernatural, all kinds of different things that wouldn't normally be put together in such a way. He also managed to put himself in every single one of the stories when it comes to his Chinese Heritage his East Coast education and Western upbringing. Nicole collection was very engaging and intriguing. no two stories where exactly like and yet they all seem to come from the same place. I highly recommend this for anyone looking for something different.

Telling

Beautifully written. Good choice of readers. The title story was by far my favorite. Writing this review, however, is annoying on my phone as the screen keeps dropping

How do Chinese see the world?

This book is great because it helps you learn how a Chinese mind thinks. The history, foods, legends, poems, and personal relations in families and society are explored. The science fiction of the future are explored. Loved it. Narration was great. Keeps you involved and get the book.

Awesome Read

Highly recommended. Virtually every story makes you look at things you thought you knew in a new light.

Listen!

This collection of stories is fascinating, affecting, and thought provoking. Some is light. Some is absolutely brutal, but it is always brutal with a reason, pulling us into understanding of one another in all our strengths and horrific frailty of spirit.

Pretty good!

There were several stories I really loved and some that were just Ok. Two Thumbs up

Imaginative, thought provoking, cheesy

I'm impressed. Fifteen stories, each set in its own richly developed world, unique and yet just like ours in the most important ways. Thought-provoking questions.

And yet many stories suffer from the same flaw: just when the world is developed, the story seems to be told, and things are winding down a new details pops in, unbelievable and disjointed. This "there's one more thing" is always too unexpected and just a little too cheesy to fit with the rest of the story. The grandfather reveal in The Man Who Ended History is one example, but several stories contain this. I feel like this devalues the otherwise very well written stories and wish the author spent a bit more time integrating these plot points into the stories.

Still, the stories made me think and it was interesting to explore each new world. I am still recommending this book to friends.

Hauntingly beautiful

His writing wraps you in this quilt which at first feels light and comfortable but as his story continues you feel more and more suffocated by thoughts and truths that you have either always denied or never really knew.

Each story was a rollercoaster of emotions. There are elements that you can relate to as a human. There's usually some kind of historical element that leaves such a haunting and bitter taste. But then there's usually an element of mythical and/or future possibilities that makes you feel like humankind can find it's way out of the messes we've created...individually and as a whole.