The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories is Ken Liu’s first collection of short stories. Like his second collection that I had read earlier this month, The Hidden Girl and Other Stories, this cannot in all honesty be placed in the science fiction genre.

I was enthralled by the Chinese mysticism and magic in Good Hunting, The Literomancer, The Paper Menagerie and All the Flavors, my favorite category in this collection. The Regular is a riveting murder mystery. The Perfect Match and Simulacrum belong to contemporary technological fiction.

Liu outdoes himself in two stories, The Litigation Master and the Monkey King and The Man Who Ended History: A Documentary, by bringing to light deeply disturbing historical truth into his fictional world. The former is based on Yangzhou massacre by Manchu emperors, the latter is based on the war atrocities committed in Pingfang by Japanese army Unit 731.

Oh! A handful of the stories do belong to the sci-fi genre. They appealed the least to me in this extraordinary collection of short stories.