The Wall of Storms by Ken LiuMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
I admit this isn’t as good as The Grace of King but I still have to give it 5 stars when I don’t want to stop reading at the end of the book. The book stalls a bit during the peaceful years but it ends with another climatic war with another round of technology, science, and strategy outwitting sheer brute power. Complex relationships, ambitions, and nail-biting action have me watching impatiently for the next installment.
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History is the long shadow cast by the past upon the future. Shadows, by nature, lack details.
Never underestimate the power of the need to appear better than their peers to motivate people, a tendency that I’m happy to indulge.
The cycle starts with the Year of the Plum, which is followed by the Cruben, the Orchid, the Whale, the Bamboo, the Carp, the Chrysanthemum, the Deer, the Pine, the Toad, the Coconut, and finally, the Wolf, before starting with the Plum again.
“True courage is to insist on seeing when all around you is darkness.”
What courage it took for the starving and the poor to continue the mere act of existence, of survival, of endurance. Such quiet acts of heroism were not celebrated, and yet they made up the foundation of civilization, far more than all the honorable sentiments of the Ano sages and the pretty words of the nobles.
