This Ken Liu guy is good.

Historical fiction and science fiction are similar in that they allow us to live in a world that is not ours to experience. It has either passed or doesn’t exist.

Liu blends myths, historical fiction, and science fiction in a series of cutting stories that take you down a river of emotions. Some navigate you through rapids with jagged rocks, others a tranquil flow of poetry, and some are sudden waterfalls that force you to put down the book to rest your heart.

The fifteen stories from The Paper Menagerie & Other Stories show inspiration from across the board, from a spaceship powered by a solar sail to the general Guan Yu of the Three Kingdoms; from Chinese-American railroad workers in the late 1800s to the manifestation of a physical soul made of ice; from the moral decision of deciding on eternal life, to ethical dilemmas in American bases in Taiwan combating Communism in the 1950s.

The headliner is “The Paper Menagerie” short story from 2011 (available publicly), but that is just a teaser to the ride. It’s a quick read, but be warned – it will be difficult to keep the tears in. This especially hit home for me as I grew up learning english, but english was a difficult second language for my parents.

The stories can be sobering. Sometimes the stories can be “[…] like a gentle kitten is licking the inside of my heart.”