I started Wall of Storms right after the first book, Grace of Kings, since I didn’t want to lose momentum on this Dandelion Dynasty series. Grace of Kings introduced us to Dara, an empire of island nations, through a story of rebellion leading to civil war, culminating in a new empire under protagonist Kuni Garu. In the second volume of this “silkpunk”, low-magic fantasy series, we are seeing the empire of Dara during peacetime. The focus shifts over to the younger generation of princes and princesses of this island empire. Not only is this series full of conflict, it is also full of characters, with many names and roles to learn and keep straight. I say this half-jokingly, but by the time I get to know one of the characters, they will probably be dispatched — the deaths in this world are often sudden and brutal. So in this second volume, we get to know some more characters, but in peacetime, the way we get to know the younger characters is surprisingly mundane: an exam.

Ken Liu has put a lot of work into building this world and these characters, and apart from this exam there are many plots, schemes and subplots that are going on within the empire. Nevertheless, it still felt a bit aimless or maybe even a bit dull at the start. Whenever one of the older generation of Grace of Kings characters showed up, I was eager for some excitement to kick off. A dangling thread from the first book was that one of my favourite characters, Luan Zya — a kind of “Renaissance man” character — left on an expedition to lands beyond Dara, where legend told that the “immortals” dwelled. By the second half of the book we finally get some answers about what and whom he finds there. However, it’s perhaps more than the Dara empire is ready for when they meet a strange fleet of invaders.

Ken Liu is a good writer. He has excellent skill with language, but from these books I’m not sure I’m sold on his storytelling abilities. The story of this book (like the first book) feels very much like a history. We have many protagonists, but we aren’t experiencing the events from their perspectives — instead, the events feel recounted to us rather than experienced through them. Even knowing the characters’ thoughts, we still seem to be getting them in a more objective way. Unfortunately, that left me feeling a bit disengaged. Though I am generally not a character-driven reader, having too much of an objective voice across another long novel started to blunt my motivation to keep reading.

Similarly, Liu is very good at world-building. In this series, he has imagined a vast world with various nations within; and there are cities and regions with their own local culture, legends, and personalities. Based on ancient imperial China, there are many aspects of Dara culture that have been thoroughly conceived — from the way the reigns of emperors all have poetic nicknames (e.g. The Reign of Four Placid Seas), to how there were different kinds of bows and gestures to express humility or other ideas. In the first book, there were also all kinds of technology (especially for military uses) which Liu had detailed in a way that seemed as if an engineer could build such a device from the text alone. We learn about the physics, the logistics, even how the ideas were discovered or inspired by the world around. While I’m normally a big fan of well-conceived world-building, in this second book it felt like Liu was spending too much word-count on these details, and that dragged on the story overall. In reality, most of us are not going to take these descriptions and start drafting blueprints with them, so it feels a bit extra.

I’m not going to give much away about the invaders, but sadly they didn’t captivate me. Their culture resembles a type of culture often found in fiction (and has elements of historical, real-world cultures) but not the kind of people I enjoy reading about, and none of their characters won me over. I wanted the story to move past them, but as I kept reading, it was obvious that they were going to be around for the rest of the book (and possibly beyond). I was excited by the military plot that they brought, which broke the story out of that peacetime malaise, but it still wasn’t a slam-dunk for me.

In the end, I appreciated this full Asian-inspired world and was interested to watch it expand and grow, but the tone and focus that Liu chooses is not truly my cup of tea. While I still did enjoy it, and I appreciated everything he’s carefully woven together, it was not enough to keep me enthusiastically engaged for two long books. As for the rest of the series (which doesn’t get any shorter), I’m still interested enough to keep going, but for now I need to take a bit of a break from Dara.

3.5 stars

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