Jun’s Reviews > The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories > Status Update

Finished A Brief History of the Trans-Pacific Tunnel: as always with Ken Liu, I was lulled into a false solace that this would be a regular dystopian short story. However, he has managed to make the characters feel so real and the underlying emotions and tensions between racial and social divides and how the main character has forced himself to become numb to these in order to survive.

Finished the short story All The Flavours: an interesting account of a Chinese man during the period where Chinese men were flocking to America seeking a better life for themselves and their families and the hardships they faced and how they integrated into the community (especially in Idaho City). It was probably the longest short story in this collection but I definitely enjoyed it still.

Just finished reading Mono No Aware - thought it was beautiful and loved how he blended the past and present of Hiroto and the use of his father’s teachings to work through and describe his current issues.

The Literomancer - Be warned, it is tragic and morbidly descriptive, and definitely not for the faint of heart.

Just finished The Literomancer and my word is this short story mind-blowing. Not only informative as I was not aware of the 228 massacre and the White Terror period, but how it managed to fully encapsulate the feelings and sentiments and devastation of that period in Taiwan in so little words.