The Veiled Throne

The Dandelion Dynasty, Book 3

By: Ken Liu

Narrated by: Michael Kramer

With the invasion of Dara complete, and the Wall of Storms breached, the world has opened to new possibilities for the gods and peoples of both empires as the sweeping saga of the award-winning Dandelion Dynasty continues in this third book of the “magnificent fantasy epic” (NPR).

Princess Théra, once known as Empress Üna of Dara, entrusted the throne to her younger brother in order to journey to Ukyu-Gondé to war with the Lyucu. She has crossed the fabled Wall of Storms with a fleet of advanced warships and 10,000 people. Beset by adversity, Théra and her most trusted companions attempt to overcome every challenge by doing the most interesting thing. But is not letting the past dictate the present always possible or even desirable?

In Dara, the Lyucu leadership as well as the surviving Dandelion Court bristle with rivalries as currents of power surge and ebb and perspectives spin and shift. Here, parents and children, teachers and students, Empress and Pékyu, all nurture the seeds of plans that will take years to bloom. Will tradition yield to new justifications for power?

Everywhere, the spirit of innovation dances like dandelion seeds on the wind, and the commoners, the forgotten, the ignored begin to engineer new solutions for a new age. Ken Liu returns to the series that draws from a tradition of the great epics of our history from the Aeneid to the Romance of the Three Kingdoms and builds a new tale unsurpassed in its scope and ambition.

©2021 Ken Liu. All rights reserved. (P)2021 Simon & Schuster, Inc. All rights reserved.

Fantastic storytelling

Overall great, but takes a good chunk of time to indulge itself and enjoy the world; which all great fantasy sagas inevitably do. Looking forward to Speaking Bones

still loving it. new characters get a spotlight.

I just love watching the story unravel, at times I wanted certain stories to be focused on but eventually I came around to just loving every second of it.

1 Star deducted due to lack of editor!

Another 5-star book but Im deducting a star because of the weird detour in the third act of the book for a really boring cooking competition. i mean, what? By the end of the book you find out why that plot device was used but it could’ve been done in a more concise way. Otherwise another great book in the series.

Epic in scope

Ken Liu is one of the best modern fiction writers. He builds a world and continues to expand on it in great detail. I love the character development and the prose he writes.

Michael Kramer breathes life into this beautiful narrative of a war between two people.

I cannot wait for the finale of the series.

A Rollercoaster of Emotions

having read the first two books, I can certainly say that I'm enthralled into this world at this point. while I like the way that the story is constantly evolving, I think that at times there's a omission of some of the things that originally made the story great. The idea of silk punk is unique to this story. I love seeing that included and I love seeing it rationalized throughout the story. while I think overall the story is still really solid and still very, very good. there are some chapters that dragged on a little bit too long for me. And, some characters that were given a little too much emphasis. where is the first few books moved around between the main character and secondary characters these ones seem to be more stagnant and the stories weren't as gripping or as enthralling as some of the previous ones. nonetheless really great story and excellent read very much looking forward to the last book.

Odd cooking competition

The usual great story and characters take center stage and we prepare for a huge climax in the world. Then an odd cooking competition takes place. Still great, but they kinda lost me there.

Better Than Previous Installment

This was quite a pleasant surprise for me, having listened to the first two so long ago, and, for some reason, highly suspicious of the notion this could be, in any sense, well... Good!

It was... It truly was. Do yourself a favor and add this to your library

Phenomenal

I went into Veiled Throne with hesitant expectations due to numerous friends/reviews stating this is the "weakest" of the series, and I think this helped me appreciate this book more than I would have otherwise.

From a technical standpoint, Ken continues to be a master story teller weaving the intricate plots together, crafting such an incredibly well thought out world along with the magic and science to back up the decisions made, and is an absolute genius when it comes to characters.

What I was not expecting in this book (and what I am assuming threw most others as well) was the very intricate and detailed (and quite long) plot point of the cooking competition that takes up the majority of the 2nd half of this book.

Was it written badly? No. In fact, Ken put as much thought and detail into this as some of the war/fight scenes in other books and it truly shows his range.

Was it out of place? Also, somehow no. Ken found such a unique way of weaving the Blossom Gang's story into the overarching series.

Honestly, it felt like we put this epic story on pause for a holiday special that turned into a rather long side quest. I had a lot of fun with it, but I was also not expecting it whatsoever.

Overall, Ken Liu is still an incredible author and I am so excited about getting to Speaking Bones and his other works.

Cooking, Conversations, & Cross-Cultural Exchange

The Veiled Throne: The Dandelion Dynasty Book 3 (2021) is a nearly 1000-page epic fantasy novel whose long set piece climax is a three-part cooking contest between rival restaurants that even the gods of Dara show up to watch. Although the novel does also feature infiltrations, massacres, and escapes, as well as a large-scale naval battle involving a gargantuan city ship, a submersible ship, a large-screen shadow-puppet show, explosives, hand-to-hand combat, cow-dragons, and whales, author Ken Liu seems most interested in cooking and conversations—about politics, love, philosophy, strategy, engineering, storytelling, truth, taste, drama, disguise, parents and children, teachers and students, literacy vs. orality, genius vs. nature, character-based writing vs. alphabet writing, accommodation vs. war, and more.

The Dandelion Dynasty is closer to traditional sf than to traditional epic fantasy, in that the books are novels of ideas based on the concept that the universe is knowable, with biological/scientific explanations for the seemingly fantastic creatures (like the flight and fiery breath of the cow-dragon garanafin) and convincing cultures (art, religion, war, language, cuisine, ethics, funeral customs, gender roles, families, and foundation myths) extrapolated from different environments and histories. No magic. Although gods do play a role, at times trying to influence events, they generally fail to prevent the mortals from doing what they want to do and mostly serve as a chorus for the action. It has been called a silkpunk epic, with technology, devices, and inventions based on scientific principles, e.g., silkmotic (static electricity) lamps and lances, airships, submersible ships, programmable mechanical carts, a roller coaster, etc.

The main plot starts eight years after the events of the second book, The Wall of Storms (2016). Two years remain in the uneasy ten-year truce between the “barbaric” Lyucu invaders of two Daran islands (Unredeemed Dara) and the rest of the “civilized” Daran islands (Free Dara), with Daran Empress Jia still wielding power as Regent for still “unready” to rule twenty-year-old Phyro, while mollifying the Lyucu occupiers by giving them tribute and ignoring their atrocities and attempts to use pirates to kidnap scholars and craftsmen from Free Dara. As usual, Jia is working on a secret scheme “to uproot the weeds of war and cultivate the plants of peace” despite knowing it will alienate her from her people and family. (To—unfairly—generate suspense, Liu narrates much of the novel from Jia’s point of view so that whenever we’re in her head she avoids thinking about the details of her it’s-fine-to-fight-evil-with-evil plan, apart from a highly addictive drug she’s developing.)

The conquering Lyucu stuck on their two occupied islands are divided between their accommodation faction wanting to treat the local Darans as subjects rather than slaves and wanting to learn Daran writing and technology and to incorporate the Darans into their government and army and the hardline faction wanting to destroy the language, religion, bodies, and souls of the Darans to turn them into obedient slaves and their towns into pastures. The Lyucu ruler Tanvanaki is trying to strengthen the accommodators with the help of her righthand thane Goztan (whose son Kinri is secretly learning Daran history and language and culture from a Daran scholar), but the hardcore haters are persistent and potent.

At the end of the second novel, Thera abdicated as Empress of Dara to sail on a desperate mission with about 1000 Daran soldiers and scholars and her husband to be, Takval, scion of the Agon (ancient enemies of the Lyucu) to the scrublands on the far side of the world across the Wall of Storms to make an alliance between Dara and the Agon which will (she hopes) end in the Agon conquering the Lyucu so they’ll be unable to send another invasion fleet with which to complete their conquest of Dara. In this third book Thera is discovering the unexpected costs of merging her Darans with the native Agon.

Whew.

Liu develops all those situations and sub-plots through a rotating array of compelling characters from various classes and cultures. Most of his villains have appealing qualities, as his heroes have disappointing flaws. One of my favorites is Rati Yera, an elderly, illiterate, wheelchair-bound, graverobber-inventor and the leader of the do-gooding Blossom Gang of street performers, but I also like the earnest Kinri, drawn to Daran culture despite being the son of an important Lyucu thane, and the naïve Princess Fara, aka Dandelion, who likes art and stories, unlike her martial, older brother Phyro who’s all, “Free occupied Dara from the yoke of barbarian oppression NOW!”

It’s very much a novel of cross-cultural conflict and influence. Many Lyucu see Daran writing (“word scars”) as an evil force stifling the natural breath of the spoken voice, farming as soul-destroying, and Darans as cowardly, sneaky, scheming villains, while many Darans view the Lyucu as illiterate, savage, sadistic, treacherous monsters. As characters say, “In war you tend to become like the enemy.” Indeed, the Darans are working on raising Lyucu garanafin, while the Lyucu are working on adopting Daran military technology. Is it possible to merge with the other by sharing non-martial things like language and cuisine? Where should one’s loyalty lie when one has a parent from each culture? Will it all end up in an Adrian Tchaikovsky-like salvation via enriching cultural interchange or in a mutually destructive apocalypse? We’ll have to read the fourth novel to find out.

Liu too often indulges in easy plot contrivance, moments where careful characters get sloppy with disguises, or shrewd characters get gullible with untrustworthy villains, etc. But there are also many more impressive scenes (like the cooking contest) and many cool lines like these:

“To hold competing ideals might save your life.”
“Why should we listen to the gods or to dead scholars? What do they know of being alive?”
“History is always a story told through the present.”
“Young people who haven’t experienced suffering easily romanticize the past.”
“One of the best things about teaching is learning something new from one's student.

Audiobook reader Michael Kramer does a professional job of enhancing the story.

By the end of this book, Liu has set up situations with different sets of characters in different places, all of which ought to come together in a massive climax in the last novel, so I’m looking forward to the (41 hour, eek!) conclusion to the series, Speaking Bones (2022).

Entertaining but too little plot development.

I really loved the pace of the first 2 books but thisbone seems to slow down too much. The scope seemed much more narrow.