Ken Liu Books In Order
Book links take you to Amazon. As an Amazon Associate I earn money from qualifying purchases.Publication Order of The Dandelion Dynasty Books
The Grace of Kings | (2015) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
The Wall of Storms | (2016) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
The Veiled Throne | (2021) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
Speaking Bones | (2022) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
Publication Order of Faraway Books
The Prince and the Troll | (2020) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
Hazel and Gray | (2020) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
The Wickeds | (2020) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
The Cleaners | (2020) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
The Princess Game | (2020) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
Publication Order of Journey To Star Wars: The Last Jedi Books
Phasma | (2017) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
Star Wars Annual 2018 | (2017) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
Stormtroopers: Beyond the Armor | (2017) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
The Legends of Luke Skywalker | (2017) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
The Rebel Files: Collected Intelligence of the Alliance | (2017) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
Captain Phasma | (2017) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
Canto Bight | (2017) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
Publication Order of Oz Reimagined Books
Dorothy Dreams | (2013) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
Emeralds to Emeralds, Dust to Dust | (2013) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
The Boy Detective of Oz | (2013) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
A Meeting in Oz | (2013) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
Off to See the Emperor | (2013) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
The Cobbler of Oz | (2013) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
Lost Girls of Oz | (2013) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
Blown Away | (2013) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
A Tornado of Dorothys | (2013) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
The Veiled Shanghai | (2013) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
Dead Blue | (2013) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
The Great Zeppelin Heist of Oz | (2013) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
Beyond the Naked Eye | (2013) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
City So Bright | (2013) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
One Flew Over the Rainbow | (2013) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
Publication Order of Short Stories/Novellas
The Caretaker | (2011) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
Simulacrum | (2011) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
The Man Who Ended History: A Documentary | (2011) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
Staying Behind | (2011) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
Good Hunting | (2012) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
Mono no Aware | (2012) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
Knotting Grass, Holding Ring | (2014) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
Presence | (2014) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
An Advanced Reader's Picture Book of Comparative Cognition | (2016) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
The Paper Menagerie | (2016) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
The Passing of the Dragon | (2023) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
Publication Order of Short Story Collections
The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories | (2016) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
The Hidden Girl and Other Stories | (2020) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
Publication Order of Anthologies
Thoughtcrime Experiments | (2009) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
The Dragon and the Stars | (2010) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
Daily Science Fiction Stories of November 2011 | (2011) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
Clarkesworld Magazine, Issue 61, October 2011 | (2011) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
The Future is Japanese: Science Fiction Futures and Brand New Fantasies from and about Japan | (2012) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
The Memory Eater | (2012) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
Fantasy & Science Fiction, July/August 2012 | (2012) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
The Best of Electric Velocipede | (2012) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
Diverse Energies | (2012) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
The Year's Top Short SF Novels 2 | (2012) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
Lightspeed Magazine, December 2012 | (2012) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
Unidentified Funny Objects | (2012) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
Fish | (2013) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
The Year\'s Best Science Fiction & Fantasy, 2014 | (2013) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
The Other Half of the Sky | (2013) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
Oz Reimagined | (2013) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
Aliens: Recent Encounters | (2013) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
Year's Best Young Adult Speculative Fiction 2013 | (2013) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
Unidentified Funny Objects 2 | (2013) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
The Book of Apex: Volume 4 | (2013) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
Coffee | (2013) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
Long Hidden | (2014) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
Lightspeed Magazine, February 2014 | (2014) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
Clarkesworld: Year Six | (2014) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
The Year's Best Dark Fantasy & Horror, 2014 Edition | (2014) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year, Volume Nine | (2014) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
The Year's Best Science Fiction: Thirty-First Annual Collection | (2014) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
Futuredaze 2: Reprise | (2014) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
Solaris Rising 3 | (2014) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
The End is Now | (2014) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
Clarkesworld Magazine, Issue 96 | (2014) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
Upgraded | (2014) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
The Mammoth Book of Steampunk Adventures | (2014) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
Time Travel: Recent Trips | (2014) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
The Best of Galaxy's Edge Magazine 2013-2014 | (2014) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
Clarkesworld Magazine, Issue 100, January 2015 | (2015) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
Some of the Best from Tor.com, 2014 edition | (2015) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
The End Has Come | (2015) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
Press Start to Play | (2015) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
Funny Science Fiction | (2015) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
Loosed Upon the World | (2015) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
Dragons, Droids & Doom | (2015) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
The Long List Anthology | (2015) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
Warrior Women | (2015) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
After The Fall | (2016) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
Clarkesworld: Year Eight | (2016) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
The Best Science Fiction of the Year: Volume One | (2016) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
Genius Loci: Tales of the Spirit of Place | (2016) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
The Museum of All Things Awesome and that Go Boom | (2016) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
Mithila Review Issue 5+6 | (2016) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
Humanity 2.0 | (2016) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
Bridging Infinity | (2016) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
Invisible Planets | (2016) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
Asian Monsters | (2016) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
The Book of Swords: Part 1 | (2017) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
GlitterShip Year One | (2017) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
Digital Science Fiction Series One Anthology Bundle | (2017) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
The Best Science Fiction of the Year: Volume Two | (2017) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
The Year's Best Science Fiction: Thirty-Fourth Annual Collection | (2017) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
Ex Libris: Stories of Librarians, Libraries, and Lore | (2017) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
Steampunk Universe | (2017) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
Everyone: Worlds Without Walls | (2017) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
The Year's Top Hard Science Fiction Stories | (2017) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
Oceans | (2017) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
The Reincarnated Giant | (2017) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
Unidentified Funny Objects 6 | (2017) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
The Best of Uncanny | (2018) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
Robots vs. Fairies | (2018) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
Clarkesworld Year Nine: Volume One | (2018) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
The Final Frontier | (2018) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
Twelve Tomorrows | (2018) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
Timeshift: Tales of Time | (2018) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
Worlds Seen in Passing: Ten Years of Tor.com Short Fiction | (2018) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
Sins and Other Worlds | (2018) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
Broken Stars | (2019) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
Mythic Journeys: Retold Myths and Legends | (2019) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
The Year's Top Robot and AI Stories | (2019) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
The Year's Top Hard Science Fiction Stories 3 | (2019) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
The Other Animals | (2019) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
Future Science Fiction Digest Issue 6 | (2020) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
Arterial Bloom | (2020) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
Escape Pod | (2020) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
Relics, Wrecks and Ruins | (2021) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
Sword Stone Table: Old Legends, New Voices | (2021) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
Make Shift | (2021) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
Love, Death and Robots: The Official Anthology: Volume One | (2021) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
Kobold Guide to Worldbuilding, Volume 2 | (2022) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
Isolation | (2022) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
Uncanny Magazine Issue 50: January-February 2023 | (2023) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
This Side of the Divide | (2023) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
Multiverses: An anthology of alternate realities | (2023) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
The Digital Aesthete: Human Musings on the Intersection of Art and AI | (2023) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
Ken Liu is a bestselling speculative fiction author who has won a range of prestigious awards including a World Fantasy, Hugo and Nebula award as well as several other awards in France, Spain, and Japan. Liu’s debut novel was “The Grace of Kings,” which is the first of “The Dandelion Dynasty” series that he loves to refer to as the silkpunk epic fantasy series. Before he became a bestselling author, he was writing short fiction and made his name with “The Paper Menageries and Other Stories” which was so huge that it was published in more than twelve languages. He is also the author of “The Hidden Girl and Other Stories” and “The Legends of Luke Skywalker” of the “Star Wars” series. With his works so popular, Ken has been approached to adapt his novels into different media. He has been involved in adapting his works into series such as “Loe, Death + Robots” that was an adult animated series on Netflix. He also adapted several of his short stories into “Pantheon,” a TV series that is executive produced by Craig Silverstein and airs on AMC. “The Grace of Kings” and “Hidden Girl” have also been optioned and are set to be adapted into TV series.
Before he became a professional author, Liu was a litigation consultant, corporation lawyer and software engineer. He still speaks in universities and conferences on a range of topics including the mathematics of origami, futurism, bookmaking, cryptocurrency, and the history of technology among other topics he has an expertise in. He is also a translator and famously translated “The Three-Body Problem” by Liu Cixin, “Folding Beijing” and “Vagabonds” by Hao Jingfang and “Waste Tide” by Chen Qiufan. He also edited an anthology of contemporary Chinese science fiction titled “Invisible Planets and Broken Stars.” He currently lives with his family on the outskirts of Boston Massachusetts.
Ken Liu first got interested in science fiction and fantasy when he read the Chinese version of Philip K. Dick’s “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?” He though it a fascinating tale and soon after he started thinking of becoming an author. He was in college when he began writing manuscripts and submitting to science fiction magazines such as “Analog,” “F&SF,” and “Asimov’s.” Liu never had much success until he submitted his work into a Phobos fiction contest, where he was among the first to win their inaugural contest and get his debut story published. He asserts that he never set out to write some magical story about his ancestral home in China. He believes that it is impossible to write a story about China that will sell given that there are a lot of stereotypes about China in the West, which makes publishing anything fresh difficult. In his “Dandelion Dynasty” series, he writes stories inspired by East Asia in general and about China in particular though there is no direct analogy. His stories are set in the fantasy world of Dara, which is a place of technology and magic floating on an archipelago. Trying to write something analogous to Steampunk, he calls his new series Silkpunk. Just like steampunk extends Victorian-era aesthetics and technology, silkpunk is inspired by the technology and aesthetics of classical China. As such, it includes technologies such as powerful mechanical vehicles, military kites for signaling alongside the magical such as books that can read minds, giant sea beasts and the use of smoke to read what is in people’s hearts. There is also the use of technologies such as giant airships propelled by air oars, underwater boats and battle kites.
“The Grace of Kings,” the first novel of “The Dandelion Dynasty” series by Ken Liu introduces the silkpunk genre. The story is an epic fantasy tale that follows several characters though the leads are Mata Zyndu and Kuni Garu. The two characters lead a rebellion against the dictatorial Emperor Mapiere who had proclaimed himself Emperor and ruled with an iron fist from the start of the story. At the beginning of the story, Kuni and Mata are young boys living in a harsh landscape that has been ravaged by war. The emperor just got into power and he has yet to consolidate his power though he has shown a ruthless streak by severely crushing any signs of rebellion. Kuni is a young man that is the hope of his family though he insists on joking, playing around and drinking instead of making something of himself. The orphan Mata had a less fortunate upbringing as he was born to a family that once ruled a large domain but had been dispossessed in the new dispensation. The new emperor had killed all of his family and taken their lands and he had been forced to live with his only remaining uncle who did not have the money to provide him with an elite education let alone the lavish lifestyle. Over the course of the novel, Mata and Kuni grow into young men and overcome a range of challenges to prove their strength of character and will, which makes them leaders of men. While they have had vastly different experiences, they soon become fast friends and are united in their quest to bring down the tyrannical emperor.
Ken Liu’s “The Wall of Storms” is a novel that tells a story of adaptation and transformation. The kingdom of Dara still faces conflicts and challenges that come in a range of guises. The fight has expanded to include conflicts not only of flesh and blood foes but also between concepts and philosophies. The war is still on and while Kuni Garu and his friend had managed to overthrow the emperor and rule in his stead, things are not so rosy. The first part of the novel is an analysis of how the conflicts persist even though more focus is now on the scholarly methodologies rather than on the arts of war. At the start of the novel, Fara, Timu, Thera and Phyro who are Emperor Kuni’s children have snuck out of the palace to go to the local tavern where they can enjoy life as ordinary people. The storyteller at the tavern tells stories about the tumultuous relationship between Mara Zyndu a respected and deceased warlord that had always been at loggerheads with Kuni Garu. But then things go awry when one man in the crowd accuses the narrator of sedition for glorifying the emperor’s one-time bitter rival Zyndu. Thankfully, a new character who will play a significant role in the novel steps forward to defend the storyteller and prevent a dangerous escalation.
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