THE PAPER MENAGERIE by Ken Liu
This novel is so different than the other books that I ever read. The novel is a collection of stories that are an elaboration of various themes, like science fiction, fantasy, and some family drama. You will find some heartwarming stories, even in a cruel setting.
I’ll rate each of the stories in this book. Disclaimer, my rating is subjective, so if you have read it and have a different opinion, please say it in the comment box. My rating overall is: 4,5
1. The Bookmaking Habits of Select Species
The story is about some clans (if I am not wrong…) that they have different ways of reading books. However, the story not only focus on reading the books, but also gaining new knowledge, maintaining the acquired knowledge, and treating the knowledge into something else. What I like from this one is I found this story is rather imaginative than confusing, even though one of my friends felt the language is taken further understanding than usual. But, the story is shorter than I expected and it has descriptive styles rather than narrative.
Rating: 4
2. State Change
This story takes further understanding than before, hahaha. It’s full of metaphor and you hardly know what it is really about. I ask you to guess what the meaning of the story is. Believe me, you’ll be confused and surprised at the end of the story. I didn’t see the ending coming that way. This is not my favorite one, but the story is interesting because of the plot, and all of that, is an analogy of humans life.
Rating: 4
3. The Perfect Match
The story is about two people, who are surprisingly getting along together by time, and turn out there is something behind it. The background of this story is magnificent technology. If you remember or know the movie titled Her (played by Joaquin Phoenix), yep. The technology used in the story has some similarities with Siri (in our real world) but becomes a controlling freak. I find this story is a cliché story like I know in the other part of movies or tv shows (Hey, Black Mirror!). The characters and chemistry between them also couldn’t support my rating.
Rating: 3,5
4. Good Hunting
This is a story that I think some people know even without reading the book. If you watch Love, Death, and Robots in episode eight, the title is the same as the title of this story. It is no coincidence because both of them are the same stories. The plot is different than I guessed the first time I read it. I didn’t see that story will end that way… Also, this story delivers the issues that are still relatable to our life right bow, such as how an era changed. The story takes us to the time when the industrialization came. It’s sad, tragic, yet astonishing at the same time.
Rating: 4
5. The Literomancer
I don’t know that Chinese characters can be so magical! It’s exciting to see the detail of each character. The story lets you see the characters and words from a different perspective. And again, the background of the story is always related to the major event that happened in that era. The story itself is about a girl who met new person that has different races and cultures.
Rating: 4,5
6. Simulacrum
The simulacrum is a sad story about the effect of advance technology. Simulacrum tells about the relationship between a father and his daughter. Again, technology always hits humanity's side that we see from this bitter story. I like the idea of the story, but I think the character's decision and action made me disappointed. I hope I can see the character’s development, but uh no.
Rating: 3,5
7. The Regular
This story has different tone than all of the stories before, so I got a little surprised when I read it for the first time. This is action-packed, surprisingly. The plot itself is my favorite one, about a detective and her cases. Moreover, the story is special because of the technology affect the case and the detective. Please don’t be bored with the technology that I talked about many times until now. In this story, I like the idea of the technology that used by the main character. It’s like an holder and energy pump. Wow, if it’s real, I want to get that.
Rating: 4
8. The Paper Menagerie
I agree that the title of this story is used for the title of the book. The story is bitter….so bitter but heartwarming at the same time. It’s about a family that is the mother who is Chinese, but the father is American. It was not a problem until they have a child, who is not comfortable with having a Chinese mother. His mother has difficulties talking in English, but the child who is growing day by the day, become not understand his mother's weakness in talking English. Beware of this teary story.
Rating: 4,3
9. An Advanced Readers’ Picture Book of Comparative Cognition
It is actually a simple story, but the narrative is not straightforward to the plot. It is about the parents who are trying to persuade their child to follow their wishes. The wish is not an easy thing to do, even it is too risky for a child. So, imagine the world that becomes a new world with advanced technology, for example, space ship and galaxy explore. The child is persuaded by his parents to join the space ship, but it’s not for the short term, but a long-long time. Could you imagine? The story also combines with tales and the writer even gives a small portion of some unique or theory information.
Rating: 4
10. The Wave
The Wave continued the last story. It tells about life in the spaceship and also how their lives change after they find the new life in the new planet (or galaxy). This has several similarities with Good Hunting; when the human has to sacrifice what they have to be the new person (or thing) to adapt to the condition. It’s all about how flexibility, or adjustment, or anything with the same meaning with those, works. This story is sad, but it shows "joyful" tone, especially when their characters faced their “changing”.
The truth, I feel mixed about this story
Rating: 4,5
11. Mono No Aware
Mono no Aware. I admitted it has a beautiful meaning.
“It’s a sense of the transience of all things in life.”
“We are all ephemeral patterns destined to eventually fade, whether in second or an eon”
The story itself is about a sacrifice. Although I find the story is not new, it is still touching my heart, at least. Also, this story might be correlated with two stories before. The galaxy journey and the struggles to maintain humanity, besides, maintain some people from certain ethnic when humans become scarce.
Rating: 4
12. All The Flavors
It covered many pages in the books and it also tells many stories (too many stories). It tells about the journey of Chinamen in the United States. The chinamen found new friends, a girl named Lily, and they become story-buddy afterward. The Chinamen told many stories, including Chinese tales about Guan Yu, the Chinese God of War. The story is interesting, but I admitted I more like the story about Chinamen’s past when they came to the US for the first time. I find it heart-warming and it’s enlightening. The side down is the ending. It can't feel satisfied with the ending.
Rating: 4
13. A Brief History of The Trans-Pacific Tunnel
Again, the sad story and humanity. I love it, though. This story is about the caveman and his past when he was a “slave” back then. He wants to has new life but he felt guilty about his past. I like this kind of story and I find new things that I never know before. However, the ending, again, I find it is not concluded all of the problems, especially the guilty feeling that men had.
Rating: 4
14. The Litigation Master and The Monkey King
The background is different than many stories in this book collection. It is put in the fiction setting or you can say it, in the world which “tales” story happens. The story is about Tian who is titled as Litigation Master in the title of this story, and the monkey king, who is not like the other monkey. Tian helped a woman and her cases, not like any other cases, because it is dangerous. I love the ending, it makes sense and not like the tales who the hero always wins.
Rating: 4,5
15. The Man Who Ended History: A Documentary
I reached the final story! I am astonished! The story is mixed fiction and non-fiction about the most horrible event that I never read before. It is about unit 731 that is a gruesome event that happened when Japan was colonized China. I just knew that when I read this book, I felt so bad for the victims. May they rest in peace. Besides that, the story is so good! I even don’t know what other words to appreciate this story. The dilemmatic about the man (and her wife) who found an amazing technology but it gave a bad side to history. The machine can help you explore the history to feel it like a reality, but it can erase the history. Everyone, all of the parties such as scientist, citizen, historians, even politician have mixed feelings about that. This story concludes many things but in a perfect way; how history can be perceived and how people give meaning to history, especially the gruesome events like unit 731 and colonization.
Rating: 5
Overall, I enjoy this book very much. I admit that I haven’t read the kind of book like this before. Although some of the stories can be predicted, I like the messages beyond them, and it somehow can relate to our life. Several of the stories get me thinking further about humanity and technology and the dilemma behind that. In general, i feel enlighten reading this book.
I want to show you some lovely
words from this book.
“In an extraordinary time, he faced extraordinary choices, and maybe
some would say this means that we cannot judge him. But, how can we really
judge anyone except in the most extraordinary of circumstances. It's easy to be
civilized and display patina of orderliness in calm times, but your true
character only emerges in darkness and under great pressure: is it a diamond or
merely a lump of the blackest coal? ”
“Labelling someone a monster implies that he is from another world, one
which has nothing to do with us.”
-Chapter 15: The Man Who Ended
History: A Documentary
“All life is an experiment. But at the end of our lives we’d know that
no man could do with our lives as he pleased except ourselves, and our triumphs
and mistakes alike were our own.”
-Chapter 12: All The Flavors
“But long before the, the thoughts of any intelligent species worthy of
the name will become as grand as the universe itself”
-Chapter 9: An Advanced Readers’
Picture Book of Comparative Cognition
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