The Grace of Kings, Wuxia Game of Thrones Book Club

[Flying Turtle]

So I was poking around my local library when I stumbled upon "The Grace of Kings". One of the book jacket quotes describes it as Wuxia Game of Thrones. So I give it a shot and boy howdy was that a strong first impression. Attempted assassination of an emperor via glider delivered fire bombs? My interest has been thoroughly piqued.

Seems like a pretty new series so I thought I'd pop in here and see if anyone else has read it, is reading it, or would be interested in reading it, and see if I could get a pseudo book club kind of discussion going.

So far I'm really wondering about the presence of magic in this setting. Is it high fantasy or low fantasy. Right away we're already got a POV character who is 7 foot 6, with two pupil in each eye who is destined for greatness. But is that just boiler plate 'sign from the god' stuff or does having twice as many pupil actually grant or signify specific magical abilities?

[Mechalich]

So far I'm really wondering about the presence of magic in this setting. Is it high fantasy or low fantasy. Right away we're already got a POV character who is 7 foot 6, with two pupil in each eye who is destined for greatness. But is that just boiler plate 'sign from the god' stuff or does having twice as many pupil actually grant or signify specific magical abilities?

There's relatively little magic in the setting. However, it is possible to describe Grace of Kings as 'wuxia steampunk' in some sense, as the utilization of technology takes on a greater role over time.

Also, while Grace of Kings is quite good, if not especially memorable, the second book, Wall of Storms, is massive step down.

[Honest Tiefling]

...it is possible to describe Grace of Kings as 'wuxia steampunk' in some sense...

Soooooooooooooooooooold--


Also, while Grace of Kings is quite good, if not especially memorable, the second book, Wall of Storms, is massive step down.

DAMMIT. Mind telling me how the series goes south? I am still intrigued by this setting.

[Mechalich]

DAMMIT. Mind telling me how the series goes south? I am still intrigued by this setting.

Well, far be it from me to turn down a request to indulge in a good rant:


Okay, so while The Grace of Kings gets compared to Game of Thrones here in the west because that's the big popular series about dynastic interplay at the moment, that's mostly convergent evolution. The work draws far more on the long tradition of Chinese literature in which it is based - particularly Three Kingdoms. It's set in a fictional setting, but it's mostly a lightly modified fantasy China with a slight tropical gloss. Grace of Kings is very classically themed - the Empire goes down and a bunch of larger than life characters fight over who gets to shape the new state. It's not especially memorable - I read Wall of Storms (which includes most of the same characters) about a year ago and can't remember anyone's name (also the nomenclature is kind of weak generally, which doesn't help) - but it's fine.

Wall of Storms picks up in a classic 'twenty years later' kind of setup, with it made clear from the beginning that this is a story about the new generation. It's also intended to be a story about how to insure a transfer of power while reforming an empire and warding off factionalism. Unfortunately, rather than just doing that, the author feels it necessary to up the ante by having the not-Mongols invade his not-China. This is where everything goes south in a hurry.

Problem one - the not-China is a series of island nations and the previous book established that they didn't have any neighbors. Island nations are generally pretty resistant to outside invasion, especially by their technological inferiors - which is absolutely the case here - so the situation necessary to allow this invasion to happen has to be extremely contrived. Problem two, because this not-China has advanced 'silkpunk' technology (airships, submarines, explosives), the not-Mongols aren't going to be a threat with just arrows and horses. So they get giant dragons. I'm not kidding, and these aren't little Pern-style flying lizards either, they're three hundred foot long monstrosities that can carry a platoon and are completely immune to conventional weaponry. They're incredibly out of place, super-ridiculous, and they reduce the entire military conflict to 'how do we kill the dragons?' with all other strategic and tactical considerations rendered completely irrelevant. Problem three, the not-Mongols are almost cartoonishly evil, come not to raid and plunder, but to conquer and enslave. This is a problem, because while the rest of the narrative is cribbing from history extremely hard - basically parroting early portions of Han-dynasty history - the Xiongnu (the steppe people of that time) were never the kind of threat to China that the invaders in the novel represent and the failure to change how characters act accordingly causes the entire narrative to fall apart (this is actually a similar problem to Game of Thrones - army of genocidal ice zombies is a completely different scenario from Pict raiders).

Ultimately the book degenerates into various prodigy characters (who are all women - I'm all for feminism, but the text verges on becoming cartoonish at points, even the not-Mongols have to have their bad male leader die and be replaced by a woman) running around seeking various high-tech 'silkpunk' solutions so they can murder enough dragons to achieve military parity. This mostly involves various technologies using massive amounts of static electricity. It reduces the war to fantasy technology fetishism while not being sufficiently over-the-top to have the fantastical elements be fun (if you want East Asian steampunk that's willing to go crazy and enjoy the ride I recommend the Lotus War trilogy instead, that one's got griffins and demons and spider-bots).

It's a miserable mess.

[Flying Turtle]

There's relatively little magic in the setting. However, it is possible to describe Grace of Kings as 'wuxia steampunk' in some sense, as the utilization of technology takes on a greater role over time.

Also, while Grace of Kings is quite good, if not especially memorable, the second book, Wall of Storms, is massive step down.

Rats, that's unfortunate. Still, I usually find it's good to temper my expectations, so I appreciate the heads up. I can kinda already see where that lack of memorability comes from as I'm not even 100 pages in and we've already had two time skips. The story there is definitely good, if a little predictable, but it really feels like we're rushing through it all. Jia and Kuni's courtship takes place over about one and half chapters and while I like them and their dynamic that's kinda the problem. I want to see them fall in love, not fast forward through it all. Crupo's whole scheme passes just as quickly when in most series that kind of thing could easily be climax worthy if fleshed out more.

Still I got to say I loved the emperor's dream with all the gods arguing with one another. I get the reasoning behind portraying gods as unknowable, it maintains their mystique, but I've always found it frustrating when a story decides to accomplish this by providing little to no information about the gods. The dream gave us a ton of info and I still feel like I don't understand the gods. It helps we don't know whether the dream was actually prophetic or if it was just a regular dream. Questionable info is far more entertaining to ponder than no info.