Monday, January 17, 2022

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: The Veiled Throne by Ken Liu

 



The Veiled Throne is the third book in Ken Liu's Dandelion Dynasty trilogy, a series which started with 2015's "The Grace of Kings", and continued with 2016's "The Wall of Storms".  The Grace of Kings was in fact one of the first books I read once I got back into reading in 2015, and it was one of the first books I tried to review on twitter (sadly the tweets are seemingly lost), and it was one of my favorite books of that year, as an epic fantasy with a sprawling narrative that often defied Western ideas of clear protagonists and antagonists, or straightforward story-arcs at all.  The follow up book, The Wall of Storms, was a bit more conventional, but still really good with its new generation of characters, including two who I fell in love with (and who fell in love with each other).  The Wall of Storms ended in a clear cliffhanger, unlike its predecessor, which I didn't give much thought to at the time given that the first two books came out a year apart.  

Naturally it took four years before any word would come of the next book in the series - and that word came with an announcement that said book was being split into two - this book, The Veiled Throne, and a fourth and final book, The Speaking Bones.  And well...though I remembered the general ideas of the series, I needed to do a reread of at least book 2 before I felt comfortable tackling this one, which was not a minor undertaking as each of these books are like 700 pages long.  

So was The Veiled Throne worth the wait and the reread?  Mostly.  The book is, despite being ~900 pages depending on the format, clearly incomplete, as many plot threads don't even get cliffhangers but just aren't followed up on and left for the next book to go anywhere.  At the same time, the book is, like The Grace of Kings, a story that jumps around constantly between characters and arcs old and new, large and small, hitting on many themes such as the means of power, the wants and desires of people small and great, and most significantly the power of storytelling and the question of what is truth and what are lies.  It's a fascinating work that just makes me want the conclusion of this series all the more, to see where Liu is going with everything.  

Note: Spoilers for Books 1-2 are inevitable below:  


-----------------------------------------------------Plot Summary-----------------------------------------------------
The invasion by the Lyucu of Dara ended in a stalemate, with the Lyucu secure on the island they renamed Ukyu-Taasa, and the two sides bound by a peace treaty for seeming fear of renewed conflict.  The last attempt by the former Empress Üna (formerly Princess Thera) to launch a counter-invasion of Ukyu-Gondé, the land the Lyucu came from, failed when the Princess's fleet ran into the Wall of Storms and was destroyed.  

Unknown to nearly everyone however, Princess Thera's invasion did not fail, but used ingenuity to take her, her Agon husband, and a small force underneath the Wall of Storms to aid the Agon people against the Lyucu in Ukyu-Gondé.  But Thera soon realizes that just getting past the Wall of Storms may have been the easiest part of her quest, as the people of this foreign land are very different than she imagined, and her own inventiveness will only go so far.  

Back in Dara, years pass and Empress Jia insists upon maintaining the peace between the two peoples, and on not yielding the regency to Prince Phyro (now known as Emperor Monadétu), who would instead go to war for the people left behind.  But as Jia schemes and Phyro struggles to fight, the people of Dara are changing in their own ways, with new inventions, cultures, and interpretations of the past emerging in unexpected ways.  

And on Ukyu-Taasa, the Lyucu there struggle to control the native Dara populace while retaining their identity as the superior Lyucu, with some factions urging conciliatory measures to keep the locals in line....while others urge outright brutal repression, even if it results in their own people's deaths.....
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The Veiled Throne shares a lot of similarities with the prior works in this series.  Large portions are devoted to new technological developments, and to linguistic development or scholarly developments, with much of this based upon the real world inventions, languages, cultures, and experiences of peoples in our world (most particularly from China).  Liu writes these in ways that are always fascinating and never dry, as the Agon, Lyucu and people of Dara change going forward in their new circumstances.  And of course the greek chorus of gods of Dara return, which I'll admit has never been an element that really made much impact on me (even with one god becoming Mortal at the end of the last book and becoming a real character).  

At the same time, The Veiled Throne is not anywhere near as linear or as straight forward a plot as book 2 in this series, The Wall of Storms (book 1 The Grace of Kings I believe was more similar to this, but I did not reread it before this book).  The narrative has to eventually follow events in three different countries (Dara, Ukyu-Taasa, Ukyu-Gondé), each of which has multiple major plots going on at once, not all of which have anything to do with each other.  It does this through jumps back and forth in time, and by spending long stretches in various parts with events on smaller or different scales that don't have clear connections to the main overarching plot of the series - the futures of the people of Dara and Ukyu-Gondé.  So for example, the first Part (out of 4 Parts) of this book is a 100 page flashback to events that occur mainly to a brand new character, and the second part features events immediately after Book 2 with one character, before the final two parts (Most of the book) jump forward in time.  This is very much a narrative of a different kind than the typical Western one (similar to that I've seen in other Eastern inspired works, even if not based on China).  So if you're expecting an overarching plot here with overarching payoffs, you will be largely disappointed, even as things generally happen in nearly every plot that comes up.  

The story that is told here deals again with some real interesting themes, such as the conflict between two peoples living alongside each other, between conquering and conquered peoples, refugees and others, etc.  There are themes of inequality amidst education of the sort seen in The Wall of Storms and otherwise, as well as the desires of the people to live in ways that aren't simply for the glory of the State. 

But what really stands out, from the very first part to the very last pages, are the themes of truths and stories.  Time and time again character run up against histories told in different ways to create different stories and interpretations - at first from a character changing his storytelling to better fit the people he's found himself upon, and then with a tutor from a native people trying to teach the son of a conqueror his people's ways without being accused of treason, and so on and so on, with this really coming to a head with a gang of inventors/con artists fighting for justice in the last act.  What is truth, when stories can be told in different ways about different events?  How can one really convey the learning of one's experiences, which are the only real way to see truth, to others?  And what does one do when the story of one's childhood is controverted by later experiences, tearing one apart betewen peoples?  The power of stories, and the ways they are told, whether that be by writing or orally - both of which can transform and change people's understandings of themselves, of their senses, and the world is a major theme here done in so many fascinating ways that really ties together this novel.  

Which is good because well, as I mentioned above, this is very much half a novel, even at 900 pages long.  There are some plotlines that wind up in cliffhangers, like you'd expect from the penultimate book in a series, and there are plenty of story arcs that get resolution, but there are also a lot of plot arcs that are set up repeatedly throughout this novel and then never actually get any payoff whatsoever - most notably the plotting of Jia, the Empress who last book turned towards a "ends justify the means" approach to reshaping Dara into a world not as dependent upon military and heroes, and who is willing to do horrible things for those ends....and here spends the entire book plotting and thinking about how she will be hated for what she's doing....which doesn't ever happen here (we get strong hints as to what she's going to do, but the plan never gets put into action here).  This is not the only such thing and of course some of this is merely because the book has to turn away from various characters for large stretches, inevitably leaving some behind.  

Still, this is a tremendous book of ideas and characters - who I haven't mentioned really much before, but are tremendous here both old and new, whether that be Thera in a new land, Jia in the old, Phyro trying to get support to wage war, or new characters (mostly) Fara and Kinri.  The character arcs we do see in total, such as that of Kinri, are tremendous and pull incredibly well on the reader's heartstrings, and make me desperate to see how they will end up.  So yeah, if you liked books 1 and 2, this will definitely be up your alley, and this series is very much still worth your time if you haven't picked it up yet.  I can't wait for the finale.

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