Conservation of Shadows

by Yoon Ha Lee, Aliette de Bodard (Introduction)

There is no such thing as conservation of shadows. When light destroys shadows, darkness does not gain in density elsewhere. When shadows steal over earth and across the sky, darkness is not diluted. Featuring an Introduction by Aliette De Bodard, Conservation of Shadows features a selection of short stories from Yoon Ha Lee.

Content

"Ghostweight" (2011)
"The Shadow Postulates" (2007)
"The Bones of Giants" (2009)
"Between Two Dragons" (2010)
"Swanwatch" (2009)
"Effigy Nights" (2013)
"Flower, Mercy, Needle, Chain" (2010)
"Iseul's Lexicon" (2013)
"Counting the Shapes" (2001)
"Blue Ink" (2008)
"The Battle of Candle Arc" (2012)
"A Vector Alphabet of Interstellar Travel" (2011)
"The Unstrung Zither" (2009)
"The Black Abacus" (2002)
"The Book of Locked Doors" (2012)
"Conservation of Shadows" (2012)

Genres: Short Stories, Fantasy, Science Fiction, Fiction, Science Fiction Fantasy, Anthologies, Collections

332 pages, Paperback

First published April 7, 2013

About the author

Yoon Ha Lee is an American science fiction writer born on January 26, 1979 in Houston, Texas. His first published story, “The Hundredth Question,” appeared in Fantasy & Science Fiction in 1999; since then, over two dozen further stories have appeared. He lives in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

Reviews

[Acqua · Rating 5 out of 5]

Conservation of Shadows is my favorite short story collection.

On the surface, this is about beautiful sci-fantasy universes with complex magic systems - from spaceships tuned with music to quantum chess battles, from shadow magic to mythological characters coming to life from paper - and beautiful, terrifying technology, which includes shadow ink, killer stardrives, flying war-kites, guns that can erase a person's ancestry, books that grow teeth.

But Conservation of Shadows is so much more than that.
There are so many themes addressed in these stories - colonization, the cost of war, suicide, the role of art, choice and fate, the importance of language - and the endings never let me down. All of it in the settings I mentioned before, and the beauty, the way the writing was enchanting sometimes, made everything even more painful when things went wrong.
It's also a collection about the blurred line between science and fantasy, with science that looks like magic (magical scientists included) and magic that looks like science, and that's probably my favorite aspect of Lee's fiction.

Ghostweight (2011) – 5 stars
The best new story I’ve read this year so far and also the best new-to-me story in this collection.
It follows Lisse, a woman from a colonized city that was destroyed by mercenaries. She has lost her fathers, but she’s not alone: her people tie the ghosts of the dead to the living. The story starts when she and the ghost find an abandoned war-kite (if there was a competition for the best book spaceship, this would definitely win).
This is a story about memory and the way time changes it, but it’s also about war, cultural appropriation and… folding. I won’t explain why, but I can say that the art of folding paper is one of the main symbols in this story, and that the war-kite’s weapons unfold themselves from origami. It’s a beautiful, deeply sad story and I loved all of it.

The Shadow Postulates (2007) – 5 stars
Sword lesbian!! Sword lesbian!! Sword lesbian!!
This science-fantasy story isn’t set in space, but in Black College, and follows Kaela Navus, a shadow mathematician in a world in which shadows are magical and have been used both to write books and kill people.
This story is about casting your own shadow, and about learning to question things, learning to not take even postulates for granted. My favorite part was the ending, but that doesn’t mean I didn’t love the rest of it too. It’s short and atmospheric, full of pretty descriptions (sword dancing!) and I loved reading about shadow math and creepy shadow science even if I didn’t understand any of it. Also, it’s about an East Asian-coded lesbian mathematician. I need a sequel in which she finds a cute sword-dancing girlfriend.

The Bones of Giants (2009) – 5 stars
A fantasy story following Tamim, a suicidal soldier who was raised by ghouls, going on a quest with a mysterious necromancer. Tamim meets Sakera while she’s raising the bones of long-dead giants. This story is as much about death as it is about living, and I always like to see characters struggling with suicidal ideation who do not die by suicide.
Also, there's pretty necromancy and destruction! I love when the most terrible things get pretty descriptions without becoming any less terrible. Anyway, I loved Sakera, this setting, and I really didn’t see the ending coming.

Between Two Dragons (2010) – 4 stars
Imjin War retelling set in space. It was really interesting to see the parallels between this story, which is a close retelling, and The Battle of Candle Arc/Jedao's backstory, which are also loosely based on the same historical events.
The main reason this got a lower rating is that the narration was weaker than it should have been. I don’t understand why it was told in second person, it made everything feel distant, especially since I know almost nothing about the narrator.
The main strength of this story is the symbolism, and the ending is really powerful because of it.

Swanwatch (2009) – 4.75 stars
This is a story about art and not glorifying suicide. In a space society in which suicide itself is a work of art - people throw themselves into black holes with "swanships" - a musician is sent into exile on a space station until she will compose "a masterpiece honoring the swanships". I loved the ending, and the side characters were really interesting, but this story was too short to reach its full potential. There were a lot of great ideas that were just hinted at.
Anyway, as I said before, stories that deal with suicide in which the characters involved do not die by suicide mean a lot to me and this wasn’t an exception. Also, I really liked reading about a character composing.

Effigy Nights (2013) – 5 stars
Haunting.
This is a sci-fantasy story about war and occupation, and what they do to art, even to a whole civilization's traditions, focusing mostly on mythology and stories. It's the darkest story in the collection yet. There are book characters who come to life, magical science and scary libraries. The descriptions of the art and the city before the war are breathtaking - and this makes the whole thing even more sad.
The beautiful-but-fallen city aesthetic reminds me of Winterstrike and now I want to start it again.

Flower, Mercy, Needle, Chain (2010) – 5 stars
As wild as it was short. This is about the coexistence of free will and inevitability, seen through... the opposite of the theory of parallel universes? Features magical guns that can erase your whole ancestry, creepy human-looking AIs and almost-freezing water. Also many kinds of death and pretty writing that flows perfectly.
The beginning felt like home, which is to say it reminded me of a physics problem.
This is also the first story I struggled to “get”, because it’s… really philosophical – also, that was a weird ending, it took me two rereads to understand it and I’m still not sure I completely did. I loved it anyway.

Iseul’s Lexicon (2013) – 5 stars
The longest story in the collection, and also the only one that isn't a reprint.
Iseul’s Lexicon is a fantasy story about a war on languages and "tactical linguistics". The magic system is... creepy, with charms that devour languages – destroying civilizations in the process –, magic that can rise storm-horses and books that grow teeth. It may be set in a made-up country, but it's loosely inspired by Japan’s occupation of Korea, and some of the parts about linguistic are inspired by the history of Hangeul.
What stood out the most to me about this story was the way it experimented with format, as parts of it are written like a dictionary.
Part of the ending was predictable, but I didn’t mind that.

Counting the Shapes (2001) – 3.5 stars
The oldest story in the collection, and also the one I feel less strongly about. It's set in a kingdom that seems loosely inspired by France, and that kingdom is being invaded by demons. The main character is a mathemagician (magical women in science!) who is trying to interpret a prophecy.
It’s not that there was anything wrong with this – it’s actually a solid story – it’s just not that interesting, and it doesn’t stand out here, not for the magic system or the plot or the prose. The worldbuilding had some aspects that intrigued me, mostly the many kinds of magic that exist, but that wasn’t enough.

Blue Ink (2008) – 4.5 stars
Another story that wasn't easy to get. It starts in a contemporary setting and follows Jenny Chang, who is recruited by another version of herself to fight a war at the end of time in a parallel universe.
This isn’t a story that explicitly deals with suicide, but it does so in small doses (blue is the color of uncut veins, it says, and the opposite of redshift, which becomes a sign of suicide in Swanwatch). The ending also says something really interesting about self-sacrifice in fiction, and goes in a direction I had never seen in post-apocalyptic fiction or in stories dealing with similar kinds of situations.

The Battle of Candle Arc (2012) – 5 stars
The only story in the collection that is tied to Ninefox Gambit, and also the short story that made me realize I wanted to read that book immediately.
This story follows General Jedao's most famous space battle, in which he defeated the enemy while outnumbered eight to one. I love Jedao's narration and everything about this story – the descriptions of the battle, yes, but also Jedao’s very mixed feelings on the whole thing, the magic system based on ritual torture timed through the high calendar, or exhausted, unsubtle Menowen. This is my fifth or sixth reread, and every time I notice new details. While this series is full of terrible, sad things, it’s never a heavy read for me, because it’s fun – in a way that does not detract from the fact that everything that is happening is terrible.
The Battle of Candle Arc was inspired by the Battle of Myeongnyang.

A Vector Alphabet of Interstellar Travel (2011) – 5 stars
Italo Calvino's Invisible Cities meets linear algebra! Probably the most unusual premise in the collection. I always love to see things inspired by Italian classics even if I don't like to read them myself - but Calvino was one of the authors we studied this year at school.
I'm not even sure it would be right to call this one a story. It reads almost like an encyclopedia of FTL stardrives, with meditations on war, economy, knowledge, suicide, religion, and fiction influencing reality through stereotypes. Beautiful.

The Unstrung Zither (2009) – 4.25 stars
Ling Yun is a musician in a space empire in which music is used to tune weapons and starships, and also closely tied to the elemental magic system. She has been tasked with composing music about five teenage assassins from the ashworlds, the places the empire has colonized.
It’s a story about numbers and games as much as it is about music and colonization. I liked the worldbuilding here, but almost everything in this story felt… underdeveloped? I mean, lovely writing, interesting characters even if we catch only a glimpse of them, but I wanted more.

The Black Abacus (2002) – 4.75 stars
One of the oldest stories in the collection.
This was... something. What happens when your magic system is basically quantum chess in space? All space battles play out in quantum space, exploring every possible outcome. A fascinating story about a test, ethics, and two lovers who want each other dead because of ethics. I always love this trope and this was no exception – I wanted more, maybe a longer story told in a more linear way, but I know that wasn’t in any way the purpose. The story is itself a part of a game and a test.
I loved it, but I agree with the author's note – the ending could have been better with a small tweak.

The Book of Locked Doors (2012) – 5 stars
Futuristic sci-fantasy inspired by Japan's occupation of Korea. The parallels with the longest Iseul's Lexicon are there, but this story, while also mentioning the way colonization affects language, is more about how colonization affects a culture and the cost of war.
This story features a book that holds inside the dead's abilities, which the main character could unlock if she wanted. The almost apocalyptic scenario that ensues because of her actions was as beautiful as it was terrible, and kept me glued to the pages. I almost felt like I could fall in one of the keyholes myself.
This is also a story about sisters, as the book was compiled by the main character’s sister; this adds even more weight to the ending.

Conservation of Shadows (2011) – 4 stars
A retelling of The Descent of Inanna (Mesopotamian mythology) written like the narration in a videogame, second person included. It was very weird, but the shadow symbolism was lovely. I’ve never really been into videogames, and the ending wasn’t as powerful as in many other stories in this collection, but I liked almost every other thing about this story.
Also, it's only appropriate that a story about shadows starts with one of the best examples of foreshadowing I've ever seen in short fiction.

Average rating: 4,67

[Stefan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Conservation of Shadows by Yoon Ha Lee is a terrifying collection of short stories to review. The stories themselves are rarely scary in the traditional sense, but their individual complexity and astonishing level of variety make this an impossible book to encompass in just a few paragraphs.

It’s not that there aren’t any hooks or approaches; it’s more that there is such a bewildering number of them that, as a reader or reviewer, you feel somewhat like you’ve wandered onto a hitherto undiscovered island full of skittery, unfamiliar species that keep turning out to be something else than what you initially expected. More than a review, Conservation of Shadows needs its own monograph. Towards a Taxonomy of Yoon Ha Lee’s Short Fiction, maybe.

Read the entire review on my site Far Beyond Reality!

[Rob · Rating 5 out of 5]

...As usual, I've had a lot of trouble writing this review. It took me well over a week, where I usually do a draft in one day and clean it up the second. Short story collections are a pain to review but Conservation of Shadows was even more difficult than usual. Lee writes very complex stories. He packs a lot into a few pages and often steps outside the western cultural framework. He makes me work pretty hard and I'm sure I missed quite a bit. In fact, without the story notes I might very well have been lost completely.

I'm somewhat frustrated by my own inability to properly express why I enjoyed this collection so much. I guess it is a combination of things. I liked Lee's prose a lot for instance. I'm not one for audio books but from reading these stories I get the impression that it would sound beautiful if narrated skilfully. Then there are the themes Lee addresses that, despite the nagging feeling that I'm missing some of the context, still strike a chord with me. I guess you are just going to have to take my word for it, if you enjoy reading short fiction, Lee is an author you'll not want to miss.

Full Random Comments review.

[Sienna · Rating 3 out of 5]

Yoon Ha Lee sets the bar pretty high with her opening lines:

It is not true that the dead cannot be folded. Square becomes kite becomes swan; history becomes rumor becomes song. Even the act of remembrance creases the truth.

But "Ghostweight," the story this paragraph begins, left me cold. So did about half of the tales in Conservation of Shadows. Don't get me wrong; they're all beautifully written, well-paced stories full of unpredictable imagery, careful to linger no longer than necessary. But it turns out I'm not at all interested in tactical warfare or strategy, even in the dark endless hollow of space, even when explained by someone passionate about the subject and competent with both words and ideas. They just kind of bore me.

The other stories, though — mathy, musical and imaginative; simple, rich and dangerous — light up in the act of reading. The second piece, "The Shadow Postulates," finds academic inspiration in sword-dancing, love in differences. "Iseul's Lexicon" makes the gods long-armed meddlers; it gives life definition and strips words of their potency. "If she dared to look away from the books' pages and at the suffocating sky, she imagined that she would see words forming amid the clouds, sky-words and wind-words and water-words, words of torrential despair and words of drowning terror, words that had existed in some form since the first people learned to speak." In "The Unstrung Zither," the path to a person's heart can be traversed only by music. By contrast, "A Vector Alphabet of Interstellar Travel" offers strange snippets of believable worlds I want to know better, as in Codices:

The Iothal are a people who treasure chronicles of all kinds. From early on in their history, they bound forest chronicles by pressing leaves together and listening to their secrets of turning worm and wheeling sun; they read hymns to the transient things of the world in chronicles of footprints upon rocky soil, of foam upon restive sea. They wrote their alphabets forwards and backwards and upside down into reflected cloudlight, and divined the poetry of time receding in the earth's cracked strata.

Despite my complaints above, backdrops of battle needn't be seen as bad. "The Bones of Giants" recognizes the power in empty spaces, and "The Book of Locked Doors" sees dreams in them, invoking the dead on brittle pages and death in falling feathers.

And then there's my favorite. "Effigy Nights." This one sustains the magic of the book's opening lines for an entire story made of a city of stories within stories come to life to fight oppression, Imulai Mokarengen, the inkblot of the gods. This one enchanted me:

The city lies at the galaxy's dust-stranded edge, enfolding a moon that used to be a world, or a world that used to be a moon; no one is certain anymore. In the mornings its skies are radiant with clouds like the plumage of a bird ever-rising, and in the evenings the stars scatter light across skies stitched and unstitched by the comings and goings of fire-winged starships. Its walls are made of metal the color of undyed silk, and its streets bloom with aleatory lights, small solemn symphonies, the occasional duel.

[...]

Imulai Mokarangen has four great archives, one for each compass point. The greatest of them is the South Archive, with its windows the color of regret and walls where vines trace out spirals like those of particles in cloud chambers. In the South Archive the historians of the city store their chronicles. Each book is written with nightbird quills and ink-of-dedication, and bound with a peculiar thread spun from spent artillery shells. Before it is shelved, one of the city's wardens seals each book shut with a kiss. The books are not for reading. It is widely held that the historians' objectivity will be compromised if they concern themselves with an audience.

(Tickled.)

Extended quotes aside, I won't spill any secrets, but know that these burning nights alone deserve a full hand of glimmering stars cut from the fabric of the sky by sibilant, utterly ordinary weapons. And words. Although I can't recommend this entire collection, I can recommend the stories I've mentioned here wholeheartedly.

[Peter Tillman · Rating 3 out of 5]

"Ghostweight" was the standout for me, 4.5 stars, excellent. You can (and should) read it here: http://clarkesworldmagazine.com/lee_0... You will also find links to 8 other Lee shorts there, including "The Battle of Candle Arc", General Jedao's great victory against overwhelming odds, referred to often in his first 2 novels. I should reread it.

The rest of the collection had its up and downs for me, and my 2013 notes found Lee a promising writer, but the collection a bit disappointing. But you can judge for yourself, as all but one of the stories in the collection are linked here, http://www.yoonhalee.com/?p=336

As a historic note, this was back when Yoon Ha Lee was a she.

[Andrew · Rating 4 out of 5]

(Interest: I've known Yoon on the Internet for years, through interactive fiction forums and such.)

Despite the above, I have not read most of her stories, because I don't read many short stories. (Just not in the habit.) Thus I have suddenly been smacked with a decade's worth all at once! Which turns out to be a good thing.

This book is full of... it's easy to say "Asian-flavored". The introduction (by Aliette de Bodard) says "Asian-inspired". Both are thready generalizations. The science fiction is full of elements of Korean mythology, Japanese culture, Chinese history; (permute! permute! Okay, and add in all the bits I am insufficiently educated to recognize). Ninefox is a clan emblem; origami is the techne of starships and mass destruction; more than once, a peninsula is divided and at war. Stellar nations are autocratic, varying degrees of totalitarian, and not very much like 20th-century America at all. These are specifics. It is a distinction well beyond chopsticks, tea, and Asian-sounding names. (Though all of those do appear.)

What else? The author is cheerfully fond of physics and math, and the storylines are frequently wrapped around those bones. I was often and startlingly reminded of early Greg Egan. These stories aren't as militantly philosophical as Egan, and they don't have his incessant edge of horror, but they have that... love of system, let's say. Occasionally it's too nakedly presented for my taste (Euclid's fifth postulate isn't enough to hang a story on) but in most of the stories it's structure and confidently-handled terminology, which is exactly what I want in SF.

A wider criticism: several of the stories show a character arc without much emphasis on the changing angles. (Do I have math on the brain now?) So we see a character betray her nation; the decision is inevitable, and I even have a sense why. But I don't have a sense of *making* the decision, the rupture seen in approach and falling away. Certainly that already-there-realization is a mode of decision-making, but it's not the only one, and after a while I started to want a little self-reflection already.

(Which is unfair; this collection has a good variety of tones and storytelling modes. It's not all the same thing.)

I appreciated the story notes at the end, which dig deeper into sources and inspirations and goals than most authors are willing to 'fess up to.

Anyhow, this is good stuff and I recommend it. If the author gets through a novel, I will jump on it; otherwise, I'll probably drift until another collection of stories hits me. Look, they call them "habits" for a reason.

[Alan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Conservation of Shadows begins and ends with contradiction. The first sentence of its first story, "Ghostweight," tells us that "It is not true that the dead cannot be folded." Already the reader is thrown a little off-balance—whoever said the dead couldn't be folded in the first place? And as the collection's final, titular story reminds us, "There is no conservation of shadows." As light pours in, shadows are banished—but darkness elsewhere does not become more intense as a result.

By the time you've arrived at that final story, though, such enigmatic yet mathematically precise observations have come to be expected. Yoon Ha Lee's vision and vocabulary, bleak and antic by turns, are unlike those of any other author I can think of, except perhaps Ekaterina Sedia.

I had previously only encountered his* work in scattered fragments. "Flower, Mercy, Needle, Chain," with its unforgettable gun that kills the entire lineage of its target, and "The Battle of Candle Arc," its battling fleets of spacefaring moths evoking the work of Cordwainer Smith—these I'd read before, in year's best anthologies and elsewhere. Conservation of Shadows is in contrast a concentrated dose of Lee's work—and a most pleasurable one.

Consider for example the multiple scales of "Blue Ink," which range from the ultimate end of the universe to a quiet suburban street. Or the adamant refusal of "The Black Abacus" to answer any of the questions it raises, and still to satisfy.

Every story in Conservation of Shadows—and there are ten more I haven't even mentioned—is a beautiful puzzle; each one takes awhile to unravel. And forsake not the Story Notes at the end, in which Lee assists (with charming self-deprecation) in the unraveling.

"There is no conservation of shadows." Perhaps that's true. There is, however, this book—and for that, I am grateful.

* Updated 6/6/2017 to correct my pronoun use for Lee, who identifies as male.

[Book Riot Community]

Lee writes the kind of speculative fiction that incorporates abstraction and math, resulting in prose that is as contemplative and challenging as poetry. But what makes the stories work is the astounding imagery that accompanies his meditations on revenge, fate, colonialism, and other weighty themes. He writes evocatively about intergalactic war-kites, fatal music, paper doll warriors. One story takes on Star Trek’s famous Kobayashi Maru scenario and turns it on its head. The writing evokes barely restrained heartache, as if each beautiful bead of a story is on the brink of shattering. I’ve read several of the stories collected in this volume over the years (thanks to online SF magazines), but the cumulative effect of reading and rereading everything hit me hard. — Kristel Autencio

from The Best Books We Read In June: http://bookriot.com/2015/06/30/riot-r...

[Amanda · Rating 2 out of 5]

DNF at 80 pages. I gave the first three stories a try then decided they didn't tickle my fancy enough to continue. The first story I liked, but at the end felt I had missed something to make the ending matter. The second story almost said something important. The third story felt like something better suited to novel-length. I'd try this author again, but won't finish this collection.

[Manuel · Rating 4 out of 5]

4,5/5 más bien. Impecable fusión de ciencia-ficción hard y poesía; delicada, oscura, original, fascinante... maravillosa.

[Wealhtheow · Rating 4 out of 5]

A collection of sf and fantasy stories., many inspired by physics concepts, Asian history, and questions about ethics in warfare.

"Ghostweight." Lisse was only a child when her planet was scoured by the Imperium's mercenaries. She devoted herself to rising through the ranks of the Imperium until she was in position to steal one of the mercenaries' war-kites, and embarks on a mission of revenge. After many successful scourings of Imperial martial targets, she makes a horrifying discovery as to why the mercenaries stopped in their service to the Imperium--the war-kites feed on the deaths they deal. And at the very moment of this discovery, the Imperium comes to her and offers her a job. I loved the way this was written and the gorgeous world-building. This felt a bit like if The Traitor Baru Cormorant were a short story, sf, and didn't have a sociopath for a main character.

"The Shadow Postulates." Physically shy and studious, Kaela must finish a draft of her thesis to progress at the Black College, but like those who came before her she finds no way to derive Brien's third postulate. Practicing blade-dancing with her roommate is her only distraction, but it is this that brings her closer than anyone before her to figuring out what Berin was trying to convey with his postulates. The setting feels a bit like Swordspoint, that same lived-in Renaissance-y kind of feel.

"The Bones of Giants." Tamim was raised by ghouls his mother raised before she made her fatal attempt to assassinate their sorcerer-king. She failed, as had all the others before her. Years later, Tamim is on the brink of suicide to avoid becoming a ghoul himself when a young woman surprises him. Sakera offers to teach him what she knows of necromancy if he'll aid her in killing the sorcerer. He warily agrees. This is a gorgeous piece. If you're a fan of Le Guin or McKinley, I think you'd like this one.

"Between Two Dragons." A talented admiral asks a programmer to wipe much of his mind so that rather than being put to death, at least his martial abilities will live on in the new person he will become. The story and universe here is so cool, but I think this story is a little too short to be really told.

"Swanwatch." A young officer offends a captain and is exiled to the swanwatch, where she's supposed to bear witness to starships suiciding into a black hole. She finds unexpected solace in music and her fellow exiles.

"Effigy Nights." Jaian of the Burning Orb and her soldiers descend upon the decadent artists' city of Imulai Mokarengen. The city has little in the way of martial defenses and falls quickly to Jaian's occupation. One warden of a secret library manages to escape Jaian and commissions a surgeon-priest to help her defend the city using its tales and legends. But it becomes a pyrrhic victory, because although it defeats Jaian's forces, it also destroys the city and all its art: "She must have learned how to call forth effigies on her own, ripping them out of Imulai Mokarengen's histories and sagas and legends, animating the scissors to make her work easier. But when the scissors ran out of paper, they turned on the warden. Having denuded the city of its past, of its weight of stories, they began cutting effigies from the living stories of its people. And now Jaian was one of those stories, too. Seran left jaian and her soldiers to their fate and began up the stairs. But some of the scissors had already escaped, and they had left the doors to the library open. They were undoubtedly in the streets right now. Soon the city would be full of holes, and people made of paper slowly burning up, and the hungry sound of scissors." Beautiful, wrenching.

"Flower, Mercy, Needle, Chain." A woman wields a gun that destroys its target's entire ancestral line, altering the past but leaving its wielder untouched. Every time it is used, the person holding it finds themselves in a new reality. It is a terrible weapon, which has made entire races extinct. But there are other weapons by the same inventor, and the wielder of the ancestral gun is tasked with finding and destroying them. This was a very cool sf short story.

"Conservation of Shadows." Iseul is a spy trying to free her country from the Yegedin occupation. Then a mission against a Yegedin magician she discovers something unspeakably awful: the Genial Ones, that fey alien people that ruled the entire world until just a few centuries ago, are still alive and lurk throughout their society. The Genial Ones turned people into statues, horses into lightning storms, and erased entire cultures at whim--and now they are prepared to end humanity once and for all. A stirring tale, with beautiful world building and magic that is as elegant as it is terrifying. I love that Iseul has to decide whether to use her magic-destroying charm to defeat the Yegedin as well as the Genial Ones, and that the story ends by revisiting an old doctor who it turns out was a Genial One himself--not all were evil, and Iseul's defense of humanity was not without cost to innocents.

"Counting the Shapes." Years ago Biantha fled the court of the Demon Emperor and found refuge at Vathre's court. Now the Emperor marches upon them, and their only defense is to find a solution to a Prophecy. Rich classic feeling fantasy.

"Blue Ink." Jenny is in the midst of homework when her blue-tinged doppleganger recruits her to fight armageddon. This is the first story I wasn't impressed by. I'm not sure what was happening; everything at the battlefield is too poetic, and everything afterward is too elliptical. Fans of New Weird stuff like Kelly Link might enjoy this more than I do.

"The Battle of Candle Arc." A short story set long before Ninefox Gambit, featuring General Shuos Jedao in his very own body, issuing orders for a battle that would become legend. I love the character and it's a pleasure to revisit this universe.

"A Vector Alphabet of Interstellar Travel." A few encyclopedia-style entries about various interplanetary civilizations. My favorites were the Kiatti, who hope someday to barter between universes and are quietly saving up for whenever that's possible, and the Dancers. The Dancers engaged in an interstellar war with other aliens, who became fascinated with the Dancers' ships movements in war. Their writers speculated that the Dancers' society was constricted by strict rules of engagement and extrapolated to fabulous dinner parties, gorgeous glass artwork, etc. Eventually they realized that the stylized maneuvers of the Dancers' ships had nothing to do with courtesy, just a function of their stardrives' ordinary functioning, but by that point they were so enchanted with their self-dreamed vision of the Dancers that they nevertheless came to a truce. "These days, the dancers themselves often speak admiringly of the tales that the aliens wrote about them. Among the younger generation in particular, there are those who emulate the elegant and mannered society depicted in the aliens' fables. As times goes on, it is likely that this fantasy will displace the dancers' native culture."

"The Unstrung Zither." A musician is brought in to help understand five captured assassins. I spent the entire short story in a state of confusion and ended it still not understanding how any of the tech (or is it magic?) worked, nor why Ling Yun assassinates her own general and then escapes with the ashworlder assassins.

"The Black Abacus." Two brilliant soldiers in the Network fight a seemingly endless stream of battles while in q-space. Once they exit q-space reality will crystallize; while they're in it all things are possible. I wish I could've told whether Rachel was aware that Edgar killed her in most timelines; seemingly not, which made the conceit of their time together as a chess game not feel quite right to me.

"The Book of Locked Doors." An assassin fights to free her homeland from an occupation, and fears that her compatriots' methods are turning them into the very thing they're fighting against. I love the concept behind this story--the book with the skills of the newly dead is cool and well executed--but by this point in the short story collection I'm kinda tired of these narrative tropes.

"Conservation of Shadows." Someone's travels deep into the underworld, narrated by a malevolent voice that sees nearly all she does.

This collection ends with a few paragraphs per story about what Lee was thinking in crafting each. I loved these passages; I wish more collections had them.

[charlotte, · Rating 4 out of 5]

Rep: achillean & sapphic characters

[Anomaly · Rating 5 out of 5]

This collection of short stories hit a niche that I can't quite articulate in my reading interests. They're dark, but not too dark - fascinating and intimate and full of creative lore that toys with souls and magic harnessed by characters who utilize various forms of art.

I had to struggle with my instinct to binge these stories, knowing that if I consumed them in one quick burst I'd be left with one of those awful book hangovers where nothing else is good enough afterward. Plus, the kind of thoughts I had left over after each story made it clear I needed to give them time to linger.

Needless to say: I think this is a quality compilation of stories by an author who may very well have just earned a place as one of my favourites. (Possibly the fave, if I'm being honest here.) They aren't all five-star tales, as you'll see in my brief thoughts for each shared below, but there's nothing under three stars - a perfectly respectable 'I liked it, and just thought it needed more substance' - and I loved most of them enough to deem worthy of 4 or 5 stars. Thus, I didn't bother doing an average; to me, this is a book worthy of all the stars.

By a small margin, my fave story is Conservation of Shadows, though if you ask me again later I might change my mind and say it's The Unstrung Zither, Iseul's Lexicon, Blue Ink, or The Battle of Candle Arc. There were just so many stories which captured my imagination and wouldn't let go; I can't really pick a singular favourite. For me, this compilation is an absolute win and it's set an incredibly high bar for any future anthologies I attempt to read.

Ghostweight - 5/5

I want more of this world and the characters within it. While I can't pretend I fully followed the bits about battle formations and strategies, the writing flowed so well and the lore was so unique that it didn't bother me to not be able to properly picture the battle scenes. (This is very much a me-problem, not a story problem. I suck at imagining battles.)

In Ghostweight, we have 'war kites,' attacks laid out with potentially sentient origami, warfare waged with souls and voidstuff, and a young (I presume) woman who has a ghost attached to her soul. There's so much to enjoy, and I felt connected to the main character - Lisse - from the start. Her emotions came through so easily, at one point I almost cried when she was devastated.

I can't say much else without spoiling this, and that would be a crime against an engaging and thought-provoking short story. But I can say that I absolutely loved it and I enjoyed the creative lore.

The Shadow Postulates - 4/5

I learned a few new words in this one, mostly because 'postulates' itself was new to me and I have very little experience with academic research and the terms related to performing it. I enjoyed the worldbuilding and the concept of shadows and reflections being intimations of people's souls, but I was left feeling like the ending was a bit too rushed. I could kind of see where the story was going, so it wouldn't have necessarily benefitted from being much longer; I just wish that the progression didn't feel like it was a slow burn that turned into a blazing inferno.

The Bones of Giants - 3/5

This one was good, but also somewhat lacking - and I still don't fully understand the overall lore of the world it built or what, exactly, the choice made in the end meant. The ending felt too rushed, like perhaps it had been written with a word count limit and the author got a bit too into the lead-up, leaving very little time for the rest. I wish it had been a bit longer, to offer a more satisfying end, but I was deeply engrossed in the rest of it. Overall, I think this might be one of those short stories that doesn't quite fit the format and would have been better off as a full-length novel.

Between Two Dragons - 4/5

The writing in this one has a beautiful, engrossing flow - enthralling enough, in fact, to hold my attention even though the story itself is more about the politics and strategies of a war than actual dragons. I loved the little glimpses of lore, but honestly didn't feel as engaged as I did with the first two stories. Even so, I found myself eating up the words on the page like they were the good candy at Halloween. My favourite line: When photons march soldier-fashion at an admiral's bidding, people die.

Swanwatch - 4/5

"Orchestrate a battle; orchestrate a piece of music. This isn't the only language that uses the same verb for both." It took me a while to connect to this story, but once I did it hit me straight in the emotions. The very idea of a swanwatch - those artists set out to observe and record the final flights (swan songs, if you will) of starships into what they believe to be the afterlife - is itself both morbid and fascinating, but the path this story took was stunning and it held a message that resonated with me.

Effigy Nights - 5/5

A horrifying and glorious tale of a world with sentient effigies and disturbing magic, caught in a war which drives people to extreme measures. This one went a direction I never could have seen coming and left me wondering about the nature of the people within it. I'd love to see more stories in similar - if not the same - lore.

Flower, Mercy, Needle, Chain - 3/5

I see the intention and I like the concept, but this one left me more befuddled than entertained and didn't spend enough time on the aspects I enjoyed. It wasn't long enough to grow its legs, and as such felt mostly incomplete. Even so, I deeply enjoyed the concept even if I wasn't enthralled by the execution.

Iseul's Lexicon - 5/5

I feel like this one was under-edited, and that's why technically my rating is rounded up. There were a few typographical errors and my copy of the book had "Conservation of Shadows" printed atop each page of this story, where normally its title should be displayed. But other than those issues? I absolutely loved this one.

The worldbuilding is interesting and imaginative, including the concept of magic tied into written language and the impact communication has on entire societies and the wars waged between them. I got rather strong hints of real life parallels, particularly to the bits and pieces I know of the history of Asian countries, and it made me wish I knew far more than just pieces (a written language adapted for a different spoken language; a war where occupying forces ban the use of the country's original langauge; a writing system developed to match to the position of one's tongue when speaking the sounds). But knowing there were undoubtedly real life parallels made this flight of fanciful magic feel more heavy and grounded - brought it to life in ways which made me feel the weight of its ending strongly enough to cry.

I will always love a good story that creates genuine emotion within me. This is no exception. I also loved how much time there was to learn about the main characters and experience the universe where this takes place. It felt a bit more like a novella than a short story, in a very good way.

Counting the Shapes - 4/5

I'll admit I got a bit lost in the worldbuilding of this one, which is strange because it seems very similar to other stories in the anthology as far as that's concerned. I suspect, if I weren't terribly inept when it comes to math, I would have been able to better grasp the nuances of a story wherein math drives the magic system. However, I did quite enjoy it all the same and I found it strangely easy to connect with the characters despite having some rather strong opinions on the morality of the main - for reasons I can't discuss without spoiling everything.

At it's heart, this is a story about family and the complexities of love more than it's a story about a fantasy world where demons and humans are at war, but it weaves both together quite well. This is a compelling story, and one which works well with its length to provide a satisfying, if slightly abrupt, ending.

Blue Ink - 5/5

There's a battle at the end of time, a woman who has seen it all, and a teenage girl who may perhaps have the power to stop it. But all is not how it seems, both literally and figuratively. There is danger, and there are uncertainties... And there's interdimensional time travel as well as a poignant and well-executed inclusion of second-person narrative in two scenes.

While I feel I would benefit from mathematical knowledge, as there are some terms and references which go over my head, I still understood the bulk of the story and enjoyed the way it played out with beautiful prose and an inventive spin on common tropes. Or, to put it simply: I loved this one!

The Battle of Candle Arc - 5/5

My favourite line comes early in the story: There were worse ways to die than by having your lungs slowly filled with caustic fluid. That still didn't make it a good way to die.

This one might be related far more directly than any potential others to the universe of Ninefox Gambit - which I still have yet to read, though I'll be getting to it soon - as the main character here is apparently one of the mains there. Unlike many short stories related to novels, I didn't feel lost or like I was missing information, only like perhaps there were elements I couldn't discern which may have made me pick up on the related lore faster if only I noticed the references.

Even without foreknowledge, this works. Perhaps that's because I've grown to expect of Yoon Ha Lee that I'll get the lore in doses, and if I keep taking what I'm handed I'll eventually understand enough to make sense of the worldbuilding. It's almost like being thrust into a new world and left to figure out the inner workings for myself through immersion; few authors can appease me with this, but Mr. Lee's in particular has a beautiful flow and a captivating nature which make it feel worthwhile to endure the moments of confusion before the pieces tie together.

Beyond that, I loved this glimpse of Jedao and look forward to learning more about him when I jump into Ninefox Gambit. I liked his personality and am so deeply curious what he's up to and whether he'll succeed.

A Vector Alphabet of Interstellar Travel - 3/5

There were times where I felt very, very lost and couldn't absorb the story even though I found myself tumbling effortlessly and willingly down the spiral woven of words. This one is written as a bit of a codex of various interstellar people and the lore surrounding their stardrives in particular. I enjoyed it overall, despite feeling very lost a few times, and especially enjoyed the tale of the Dancers. I'm a bit torn on the individual rating, but I don't feel there was really enough substance there; as soon as I started to really understand what the glimpses into this lore were about, it was over.

The Unstrung Zither - 5/5

I don't know much about the nuances of music - the terminology and such - but I didn't need to understand all the terms to feel the impact of this tale. In it, we get a world where music is a form of magic and war is fought with birdlike gliders and dragons made of metal brought to life with musical composition. But that world, that wonder, while thoroughly explored is almost secondary to the exploration of the main character's heart and the purpose of the captives she's been sent to study. She questions the purpose of her work and finds something deeper, which sees the story through to a conclusion which both seemed unexpected and like the only possible outcome by time I reached it.

This is another one of those short stories that makes me wish to see more of the characters and explore more of the universe created for it - and, perhaps, learn the origin story of Periet and Perias, which while hinted at and explained to some degree, kept me guessing through most of the tale. I expect I'll come back and read this one again in the future, and though that doesn't make it unique among this collection - I feel most of the tales have re-reading potential - it is the first one that compelled me to say as much in the review. Make of that what you will.

The Black Abacus - 4/5

You are not required to answer this question.
However, the response (should you attempt one) will be evaluated. If you decide otherwise, key in "I DECLINE." The amount of time you spend will be evaluated. You cannot proceed to the next item without deciding, and there will be no later opportunity.
Your time remaining is: –:–:–

This is the story of the woman who chooses to answer, taking only 5.47 minutes and three sentences to do so, and the man who finished not far behind her. The world they live in contains a war waged in quantum spaces, outside the "realspace," running through countless iterations and many lifetimes in a desperate bid to avoid bringing destruction through to reality. But lives are still lost, battles still fought, countless incarnations burned through in the cosmos... and in many of these, the man - perhaps friend, perhaps lover, depending on the lifetime - faces the question of what to do when the woman he cares about becomes too ruthless.

There were times when the science fiction went a bit too far over my head and I struggled to make sense of what was being said, but for the most part I enjoyed this tale. The ending felt poignant yet also paradoxically weak, but I suppose for a story of this nature that's quite fitting.

The Book of Locked Doors 4/5

This is one of those cases where I'm pretty sure a significant chunk of the worldbuilding went over my head and I still enjoyed the experience. I've been feeling the edges of reading slump sink back into place due to reading some less-than-enjoyable books and stories between sections of this book, so I think that impacted the attention I paid. I'll definitely come back to this one at a later date.

What I do know is that the concept of spirits written through magic onto pages, where readers can harness the essence of their lives is intriguing. Add to that a story about an agent in a rebellion after her homeland was conquered by strong invaders, and I was hooked. The twists were cliché to some degree, but I still managed not to see everything coming and found myself so thoroughly engrossed that I restarted from the beginning instead of middle when matters of real life kept me from finishing in one sitting.

I crave a story following what happens to the main character, her homeland, and the resistance forces afterward. Though I wouldn't call this a cliffhanger, I do want to know more about the world presented and the consequences of certain actions.

Conservation of Shadows - 5/5

Once a woman put her hand in a gate and it ate her fingers. A five-legged spider with red eyes crawled out. That woman put in three fingers from her other hand, so that the spider might be complete. Do you have that integrity of purpose, sister?

Written in second person, addressing 'you' - the reader, placed into the role of a specific character - this story feels at once like a fever dream and the beautiful marriage of a video game with written media. The prose is flowery in a way I find perfect: mysterious, compelling, confusing in the most entrancing of ways. Is this about a literal video game character, facing her final boss? Is this about gods and immortals in the end of time? Is this about the mysticism of souls and the afterlife, twisted in themes of reincarnation? I don't know, and I'm so strangely okay with such uncertainty that I've surprised even myself with how much I loved this one.

It feels like a story written somehow exactly to my personal specifications: the right amount of intrigue, spookiness, 'edgy'-darkness, science fiction, fantasy... and all wrapped in this eerie sense of belonging while not belonging which gave me chills. I suspect it will be a bit much for many readers, but for me it was perfectly attuned to my tastes and a great way to end such a strong anthology.

Story Notes

Okay, this bit isn't so much a review as, well, a note... on the fact there are story notes at the end of this book. I wanted to make it clear that my reviews of each story were written entirely without having read these notes - I made the reviews immediately after I finished each story, or at least before continuing to anything else (some required a bit of thought first). I both didn't realize this section existed, and decided against redoing the reviews after the fact because I think it's important to go based on how I feel and what I think after reading the stories themselves without factoring in meta knowledge.

I did leave the notes with a better understanding and appreciation for Between Two Dragons and a confirmation of my suspicions about the writing system in Iseul's Lexicon, though. Also, it was just fun in general to get a peek behind the curtain into the author's mind with regards to each story - especially the ones I loved most.

[kari · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've been reading this collection very slowly to appreciate its beauty: intricate worldbuilding, myth-like quality to high fantasy plots, characters who may exist just for the duration of a short story, but their existence is powerful and lingers. And, most importantly, the lyricism and aesthetic side to sciences and mathematics; Lee knows these are emotional, aesthetic endeavors, and pours his fondness for them onto the pages. Between Conservation of Shadows and Machineries of Empire, I think I've found my new favorite SFF author.

[Tim Hicks · Rating 4 out of 5]

If I have a complaint with this collection, it's that it makes me feel less smart than when I started. Lee has a very wide thinking range indeed.

The Shuos Jedao story is exceptional, not least because it re-frames a real battle from Korea's history.

The others were uneven, but the bright flame of Lee's imagination kept me fluttering around.

It will probably help if you have already read some or all of the Ninefox Gambit series. I found them a tad more accessible, and as such good preparation for these stories. Also, of course, you'll know who Shuos Jedao is.

[Tim · Rating 4 out of 5]

When checking out the works of an authors unknown to you, it's usually best, or, at least, safer, to go for a stand-alone novel or a collection of short-stories. In this case, I went for 'Conservation of Shadows', a book that was (is?) hard to get on European soil. Luckily, an American supplier of the Belgian bookshop Sterling Books (Brussels) had a copy in stock.

This first short-story collection contains sixteen of Lee's stories. While the majority was published previously in magazines like Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Clarkesworld, F&SF, Tor.com, ... Mrs Lee also added one especially for this bundle: 'Iseul's Lexicon', not published before.

The table of contents looks like this: (linked books are just the first links that popped up through the 'Insert book/author' functionality)

00) Introduction by Aliette de Bodard
01) Ghostweight (2011)
02) The Shadow Postulates (2007) (based on Fermat's Last Theorem, Euclid's fifth postulate)
03) The Bones of Giants (2009) (influenced by Neon Genesis Evangelion)
04) Between Two Dragons (2010) (based on the Imjin War, and the Korean War)
05) Swanwatch (2009)
06) Effigy Nights (2013)
07) Flower, Mercy, Needle, Chain (2010) (partly influenced by Freedom Evolves by Daniel C. Dennett)
08) Iseul's Lexicon (2013, exclusive)
09) Counting the Shapes (2001) (influenced by Blue Moon Rising by Simon R. Green)
10) Blue Ink (2008)
11) The Battle of Candle Arc (2012) (based on Admiral Yi and the Battle of Myeongnyang)
12) A Vector Alphabet of Interstellar Travel (2011) (see my review here) (based on Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino)
13) The Unstrung Zither (2009) (partly influenced by A Song for One or Two: Music and the Concept of Art in Early China by Kenneth J. Dewoskin)
14) The Black Abacus (2002)
15) The Book of Locked Doors (2012)
16) Conservation of Shadows (2011) (partly influenced by The Descent of Inanna and the video game Portal)
** Story Notes **

Mrs Lee has a wide range of imagination. The stories vary in length and take place in very diverse contexts (language, music, physics, philosophy, war, freedom, religion, ...), be they fantasy- or science-fiction-oriented and sometimes hard SF at that.

The story notes are a crucial part of this book, as in them Mrs Lee explains in very honest wording how each story came to be and which influences played a role.

The prose is quite simply amazing and a lust for the eye and mind, even if some themes (mathematics and physics, for example) can be a bit of hurdle, depending on your interests and knowledge.

As Tim Hicks wrote in his review: "If I have a complaint with this collection, it's that it makes me feel less smart than when I started. Lee has a very wide thinking range indeed."

After Ken Liu's The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories, and Ted Chiang's Stories of Your Life and Others and Exhalation, I can heavily recommend 'Conservation of Shadows'... also by an Asian author. An original, mind-bending collection.

[milo in the woods · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.5 stars

ghostweight: four stars
the shadow postulates: four stars
the bones of giants: five stars
between two dragons: five stars
swanwatch: five stars
effigy nights: five stars
flower, mercy, needle, chain: five stars
iseul’s lexicon: five stars
counting the shapes: five stars
blue ink: four stars
the battle of candle arc: four stars
a vector alphabet of interstellar travel: four stars
the unstrung zither: five stars
the black abacus: three stars
the book of locked doors: five stars
conservation of shadows: four stars

i have not gelled with yoon ha lee's novels in the past (ninefox gambit was too chaotic for me). however, i think that his writing perfectly distills in the form of short stories. so many of these are stand-out, incredible, imaginative, unique stories. and they are perfect in their conciseness! almost all of these stories feel perfectly encapsulated, with this intense worldbuilding and magnificent concepts. i could happily read more set in so many of these universes, but i was never left feeling unsatisfied.

favourites include swanwatch, counting the shapes, flower, mercy, needle, chain and iseul's lexicon. i desperately hope that yoon ha lee releases another short story collection.

[Teleseparatist · Rating 3 out of 5]

It was fascinating to see the evolution of the themes that recur in Lee's writing, and to see their earliest iterations. Nonetheless, I found some of the stories difficult to get into, perhaps because of how much they expected me to fill in the blanks at times, or perhaps because of the intricate worldbuilding drawing on sciences I have little knowledge about - music, physics, mathematics. Once the narrative dove into explanations of these, I'd re-read sentences and emerge still uncertain what the words meant. I did enjoy a lot of the language and detail, but I don't think I liked them as much as I'd expected to. Still, well worth the time, and my favourite stories were quite amazing.

[Cassandra · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a totally solid short story collection, but not all the stories resonated for me. I like Yoon Ha Lee's work a lot, and this is a much easier entry point than Ninefox Gambit, so I still recommend it. Common themes include mathematics- and music-based magic, tactical warfare in space, and weird, creepy twists. My favorite stories were "Swanwatch", "Flower, Mercy, Needle, Chain", "Iseul's Lexicon", and "The Battle of Candle Arc".

[gio · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ghostweight: 3.5 stars
The Shadow Postulates: 4 stars
The Bones of Giants: 4.5 stars
Between Two Dragons: 3.5 stars
Swanwatch: 4.5 stars
Effigy Nights: 3.75 stars
Flower, mercy, needle, chain: 2.5 stars
Iseul’s Lexicon: 5 stars
Counting the shapes: 2.75 stars
Blue ink: 3.25 stars
The battle of candle arc: 4.25 stars (we stan Jedao ⭐️)
A vector alphabet of interstellar travel: 3.5 stars
The unstrung zither: 4.5 stars
The black abacus: 3 stars
The book of locked doors: 5 stars
Conservation of shadows: 3 stars

[Francesca Forrest · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read most, but not all, of the stories in this collection, and since I very much enjoyed the stories I read, I assume I'd enjoy the ones I didn't read as well.

The reason I didn't read all of them was because the tone, theme, and plot of the ones I did read created an overall flavor that's very strong and particular and more something that I want to savor in small doses than at length, especially when the at-length is continually starting over with new characters. They're like very rich desserts (except that implies they're trivial or sugary or something, and they're certainly not that): you want one rich dessert, but not sixteen at once. This is a library book: the thing for me to do would be to buy the book, and that way I could savor a story when I was ready for it, and enjoy each one uniquely.

The one I enjoyed most of the ones I read was "Iseul's Lexicon." Like the others, it featured magic that was either linguistic or mathematical in flavor (in this case, linguistic), like the others, it included a highly educated heroine. Like many, but not all, of the others, it featured an East Asian alternate universe, but what I liked particularly about this one was that it was very recognizably Korea in the late 1500s, suffering the second assault from an aggressive Japan, newly unified after centuries of internal warfare. Details like rounding up families that specialized in making Korea's famed celadon pottery and bringing them to Japan as slaves--that really happened. And little cultural flourishes were all familiar. But added into that situation was magic, and additionally, scary elder gods, referred to propitiatingly as the Genial Ones. The story is long, so we really get to know Iseul. The relationship of the elder gods to us mere mortals--the danger of their threat--and trying to address that problem in the context of a war that, in itself, is plenty awful, and the fact that everyone--the enemy foots soldiers, the fleeing populace, Iseul's handler, and even some of the Genial Ones themselves--is trying to maintain their humanity and is trying for compassion, these things all made for a really compelling, really absorbing story.

In the shorter stories, I liked how Lee took a what-if idea or set of ideas (what if the heroes of literature and legend could be cut free from their texts to defend their homeland?--that's the what-if in "Effigy Nights"), and explored it thoroughly. I especially liked the plot twists in the first story in the collection, "Ghostweight."

I recommend the collection--it's imaginative, beautifully written, and features intelligent, thoughtful heroines. You may want to read the stories in small doses, though, interspersed with other reading.

[Morgan Dhu · Rating 5 out of 5]

Conservationof Shadows, Yoon Ha Lee's collection of short stories, is a treat in every way. Lee's voice is a unique one, his rich and evocative prose telling stories synesthetic in their blending of the diverse languages and symbologies of words, music, mathematics and programming.

There is an otherworldliness to his stories, but not the kind of otherworldliness one is accustomed to find in stories of science fiction or fantasy. It is not just the story itself that is in another world, but the very means of perceiving the story. There is something in these tales that reminds me of Borges and Calvino (not just in the one story Lee acknowledges to be a homage to Invisible Cities), something steeped in the history and myth of this world but translated (in both the linguistic and the mathematic sense) into a new dimension.

Richard Lawson, in his review of the collection for Strange Horizons, says:

"The stories in Yoon Ha Lee's debut collection, Conservation of Shadows, are fantasies steeped in history—disguised histories, made-up histories, invented histories, however you want to describe them—taking place in worlds strikingly imbued with a rich sense of the past. The present moments of these stories are so rife with narratives of the past that they provide a real sense of a setting as lived-in, fully realized. These aren't historical fantasies, but rather history fantasies: stories that engage with the idea of history by employing the fantastic, creating worlds with pasts as rich as that of our own so as to engage our innate conceptions of history, our often conflicted relationship with our own past." (http://www.strangehorizons.com/review...)

I'm not sure that it's possible to concisely describe what Lee has done in the crafting of these stories, but It is truly something extraordinary.

[Agnieszka · Rating 3 out of 5]

"Jezu nareszcie to skończyłam" chyba niestety najlepiej podsumowuje moje wrażenia. Kilka opowiadań było cool, większość miało ciekawy world-building, który dla mnie był po prostu zmarnowany na krótkie opowiadanie z tekturowymi, kompletnie wymiennymi postaciami. Może działa to lepiej w dłużych książkach autora, ale ja po prostu potrzebuję bardziej uczepić się postaci i zaangażować emocjonalnie, co tutaj było dla mnie niemożliwe.
Podsumowując, cool concepts, but I will forget it in 3 seconds.

[Marzi · Rating 5 out of 5]

Honestly, I didn't expect it to be so good, but this is possibly the best book I've read this year.

First sentence is there to catch attention of the reader, to show how good is the book. The first sentence of Conservation of Shadows?

It is not true that the dead cannot be folded.

What more can you want?

[Birte · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is probably one of the best short story collections I've ever read. I loved that all of these stories had something to do with one nation domineering another one, and what that made people do, just with the most unique settings I've ever read about I think.
There wasn't one that I didn't like and this was a really great read!

[Liz Henry · Rating 4 out of 5]

Seriously blown away by the stories in Conservation of Shadows. Subtle & beautiful! Never obvious! Weird and spacetastic and elliptical. Kick-ass writing.

[David · Rating 5 out of 5]

Often with short story anthologies, you find several stories that carry the collection, a bunch of good/okay ones, and a handful of duds. I enjoyed every story in "Conservation of Shadows". Ghostweight is brilliant. The themes in Lee's stories are highly compelling. A quote from the introduction: "One thing Lee does not shy from is portraying the harrowing cost of war, genocide, and occupation, whether it is for the occupying forces or for those fighting for peace or independence.... far from glorifying war, Lee provides a thoughtful, nuanced examination of the cost of violence..." Lee explores these issues from different angles than I think are typically considered and does so without resorting to graphic description, a choice which I believe brings even greater weight to the discussion. Lee focuses deeply on the people, the choices they make, and the consequences of those choices. The themes described in the introduction come into play clearly and immediately in Ghostweight, and in each story after that, in the face of this war and violence, I found myself asking, "What is the cost?" And there is always a cost.

[Ana · Rating 4 out of 5]

General comments

This is a fabulous short story collection. The stories I loved, I really really loved. Out of sixteen stories over half got 4 stars or above.

The writing is absolutely beautiful. It is sort of jarring, but has this magical quality to it at the same time. The closest comparison I can think of is Tessa Gratton's writing in Strange Grace.

The themes were quite serious, ranging from colonialism, war, revenge, culture, language. Lee does not pull any punches.

The inspiration behind many of the stories derived from mathematics, physics and philosophy, which was at times fascinating, and at others completely beyond my range of comprehension. Still, I really enjoyed the collection overall.

Since I don't want to give too much away, I'll only be giving very brief notes about each story.
--
Ghostweight (2011) ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

I had trouble with this one to start with because I was completely unfamiliar with Lee's style, but it really packed an emotional punch by the end. It is about origami, and ghosts, and spaceships, and colonialism, and revenge. I didn't see the plot twist coming at all. And the world was a mixture of science fiction and fantasy, which I think was seamlessly blended.

The Shadow Postulates (2007) ⭐️⭐️

The plot in this short story was pretty straight forward, but I just didn't really like it. To be completely honest, I don't even really remember much about it beyond two university roommates doing sword dancing.

The Bones of Giants (2009) ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Inspired by Neon Genesis Evangelion, this featured necromancy, a duo riding resurrected giants, and an evil sorcerer. The world was interesting, and although short, the plot was pretty cool.

Between Two Dragons (2010) ⭐️⭐️

This was inspired by The Imjin War and Admiral Yi Sun Shin, a Korean hero. I didn't feel that it was a particularly strong piece, because the plot was confusing and it was narrated in second person, which I don't enjoy.

Swanwatch (2009) ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Swanwatch is about exile, music, black holes, and valorising suicide. I liked the characters and their relationships with each other. The whole concept was beautifully executed and really poignant.

Effigy Nights (2013) ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Effigy Nights gave me chills. Blending both science fiction and fantasy, we are thrown into a world that epitomises and values the arts that has been colonised by a technologically superior enemy. Our main character is a surgeon, but not quite as we know it. It involves paper people and rebellion against colonialism and destruction of culture. While I don't believe the author has specifically stated it, I imagine that it is inspired by the Japanese colonisation of Korea, as other stories in the collection are.

Flower, Mercy, Needle, Chain (2010) ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Lee explores the idea that free will and inevitability are not mutually exclusive in this short, but very powerful story. All I can really say about this one is that it involves a series of guns that have very specific abilities. [*Possible Spoiler* *Highlight to see* For example, one gun not only kills you, but your ancestors as well] It was probably my favourite of all the stories in the collection. I can't even describe why I loved it so much, but it really hit me emotionally, and the whole idea was so profound. 

Iseul's Lexicon (2013) ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

By far the longest story in the collection, Iseul's Lexicon is inspired by Imjin War and the Japanese Occupation of Korea. It takes place during war, and melds together language and magic. We follow a magic user, and their attempts to use that magic to influence the war.

Counting the Shapes (2001) ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

This is the oldest story in the collection, and is a little more fantasy than science-fiction. The main character is a mathemagician who is trying to decipher a prophecy using the idea of symmetry to help win a war against demons.

Blue Ink (2008) ⭐️⭐️

Blue Ink was a bit too abstract for my liking. It's basically about a battle at the end of time, and seventy versions of one girl. I honestly struggled to understand the point of it.

The Battle of Candle Arc (2012) DNF

This is another rather long story and it is connected to the novel, Ninefox Gambit. I found it difficult to get into, so all I can tell you is that the author stated it was inspired by the Battle of Myeongnyang and Admiral Yi Sun Shin.

A Vector Alphabet of Interstellar Travel (2011) ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

In the notes, Lee talks about being inspired by Italo Calvino and basis vectors in linear algebra. It sounds terrifying and complicated, but basically was a series of anecdotes about worlds and societies that use FTL star drives (Faster Than Light), and the way it interacts with and influences their beliefs and culture. Or maybe I'm reading too much into it. Still, I found this piece very satisfying despite not really being a cohesive 'story' per se.

The Unstrung Zither (2009) ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

So the basic premise behind this story was the idea that music creates order in society. It's about colonisation at its core, and revolves around a musician and five adolescent assassins. The world was awesome, and music is used to tune warships and such.

The Black Abacus (2002) ⭐️

I really had a hard time with this one. I still only have a vague sense of what it was about, but basically it was war playing out like quantum chess. It was bizarre and I had no idea what was happening with the two main characters.

The Book of Locked Doors (2012) ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Influenced by the anime Code Geass as well as Dungeons and Dragons, The Book of Locked Doors is another story inspired by the Japanese Occupation of Korea. The magic system in this was kind of dark and super interesting, involving dead people being inscribed in books.

Conservation of Shadows (2011) ⭐️⭐️

Inspired by the Sumerian poem, The Descent of Innana, it had a very different feel compared to the rest of the stories in this collection. It was also written in second person which I didn't really like. I had to look at the notes to work out what had actually happened.

[Mark · Rating 4 out of 5]

A book mostly about violence, about invading empires, resistance, and battle. Steeped in Asian history (mostly Korean, according to the authors notes, but China and Japan as well) and Asian imagery (from music and art to anime influence) but mostly set in other times on other worlds. I wish every story didn’t need to be quite so much high drama, but even the stories that end abruptly end pretty well.

[Eliatan · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love sci fi short stories and I love Yoon Ha Lee but I just didn't love this collection as much as I was looking forward to it. Possibly, because the stories veered more towards fantasy than sci fi, possibly because my favourite of the lot was one I'd read before - Ghostweight.

That said, this was still an amazing collection of ideas in fiction form and absolutely worth a read.