The Grace of Kings

Das ist wahrhaft epische Fantasy mit Anklängen an chinesische Mythen und Motiven. Kaiser und Reiche erheben sich und werden niedergeworfen, Allianzen geschmiedet und verworfen. Mittendrin zwei ungleiche Freunde und ihre Familien und Freunde. Es liest teilweise wie ein Geschichtsbuch, aber mir hat es gut gefallen.

Finished Grace of Kings and i agree with the people, who say it feels like a very big prequel to a much bigger story (that i will read in the future). The world really hooked me in the beginning. The setting was something i haven’t seen too much before and i was hyped to get a fantasy world mixed with many weird „silkpunk“ machines for the war, creative cities with spots the characters go to and bigger and smaller ideas that are extremely creative. In the end this wasn’t the case as much as i hoped but it still had some elements in it. So far it felt more like a historical description of the wars in the timeframe of the book, with some insides into the characters and there desicions, smaller Silkpunk elements like airships and a lot of politics and intrigue. I liked the characters we got. They had own identities, own desicions and especially the rivalries were interesting too read. My biggest problem is the romance in this book. While the beginning was interesting and i loved the first of three big romances in this book, this later changed a lot due to many weird desicions, that i kinda understand, but still don’t like at all. The second big romance in this book felt extremely flat and uninteresting that i can’t even write anything about it. And the third one was so forced that, yeah it’s part of the story, but it never let me feel anything when they were together - which is maybe exactly what was planned with this There are some characters that are not relevant at all and i also had problems to remember all the relevant people because there were just too many of them. Gladly the book has a list of the main characters at the beginning with a short explanation why we know them, which King they work for and what there role is. Helped me a lot to get trough this book. Sadly - there was a big dip in quality after like 60% of the book with some chapters being extremely annoying to read. I know why they are there, but i‘m not sure if they were placed at the right time. Gladly the last 15% of the story were extremely good again which made my score raise it up to 4/5 again. The ending made me also very interested for the next books and i hope that we will get what i expected already for Grace of Kings And with this it’s only 3370 pages left in the Dandelion Dynasty - oh

This is my new favorite book of all time. This book has everything I lure for in reading. Sometimes you grab a book and dive in and then it grabs you and won´t let you go. This is one oft those. I cannot point my finger on what makes this book my new all time fav, but I think it is mostly Lius Writing. Reading a lot of Fantasy and having often slump parts, this book felt fresh in every way and so pointy written, I was simultaneously excited and sad making progress in the book. Excited to read along in an outstanding world and story and sad because I can only experience this feeling once. On top I really loved how Liu involved little side stories and tales of the Land into this huge enormous book, which on one hand let you dive deeper into the whole universe he builds and also gives you always some fresh impulses besides the main plot. This special feel I felt every time opening the book was only felt back then reading Rothfuss "Name of the wind" or Sandersons "the way of kings" - but the grace of kings tops both of them.