Rating any short story collection is difficult, but this one more so than most I've read simply due to the un-evenness of the quality of the stories.
At least 2/3 of the page count is made up of half dozen semi-connected stories exploring a post-apocalyptic world where humans thrive via uploaded consciousness and the Earth returns to an Edenic state. These stories are fine but they (accidentally?) acted as a distracting center of gravity. Was this collection meant to dwell so much on that theme? Given the title story, which didn't fall into that arch, I would assume not.
The second-to-last story, The Message, was incredible. As good as many in Liu's incredible Paper Menagerie collection. Ghost Days and The Hidden Girl were also very good.

A collection exploring the threads connecting humanity's past and future, parents and their children.

I'm not usually a fan of short story collections, but each of these drew me in quickly and I loved when some of them circled around to previous stories.

I have read a story or two by this author in the past and so decided to attempt his collection.

I did enjoy the novella trilogy The Gods Will Not... Which was about uploaded consciousness as well as a couple of others, including the first and last story both about xenoarcheology. But ultimately I didn't love the collection. There was a lot of repetition of themes that felt unnecessary, overall very depressing and cynical tones, unsatisfying endings, and it all just felt too preachy for my tastes. Too many stories felt like they sacraficed plot and characterisation in favour of pushing the author's ideologies, which were very pessimistic and repetitive.

There were two versions of the story about the birthdays, and many stories set in the same universe about the Singularity and the uploading. I would have preferred either a single novel weaving together a story arc or a collection of independent stories, personally.

However I acknowledge that sci-fi isn't often my preferred reading. I think regular sci-fi readers might like this collection better than me as generally sci-fi (aside from Andy Weir, Blake Crouch and Michael Crichton) is a bit out of my comfort zone.

Ken Liu is hands down the master of short stories and of science fiction. This is a bewildering, beautiful and sensitive collection of stories, written for intellectuals, nerds, parents, people who love the natural, people who worship the scientific, for old souls and new minds. The stories touch on everything from Chinese myths to the recreating of the entirety of human possibility by an uploaded singularity-enhanced psyche.
I love the fact that Ken Liu constructed an interwoven web of stories, adding colour to the same world, based on our obsession with space travel, AI, human condition, terraformation, immortality, memory, legacy. I was touched and this is also how you bring awareness to current affairs such as climate change, imbalance of wealth and dwindling resources.
This is a must read and to be honest, most modern readers would benefit from an injection of intelligence after this book (or even in order to understand it).

Ahoy there me mateys!  I received this short story  collection eARC from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.  So here be me honest musings . . .

One of the best short stories I have ever read was Ken Liu's the paper menagerie which in 2012 was the first work to win the Hugo, the Nebula and the World Fantasy Award.  Ye can read it for free by clicking here.  This lovely cover for his second short story collection caught me eye and I was excited to read more of his work.  This book has 16 stories from the past five years and a brand new novelette.  There were 19 all together.

All short story collections are kinda hard to review.  I usually try to give thoughts about each story individually but I am not able to do that for this book.  This stems from the fact that the stories, as the author's preface states, have been arranged by the editor into a "meta-narrative."  The stories at the beginning seem to standalone but later stories have many characters and plots reappear.  I think the beginning of the collection was the strongest but much of the middle blurred together and felt very slow for reasons I will get to.  Here are the stories that I loved:

"Ghost Days" - The first story was cool and the historical fiction aspects excellent.  I didn't particularly love the ending but I did learn about bubi which are awesome Chinese coins.  After the story I went looking to find out more about them and found this cool page.

"Maxwell's Demon"- This was the second story and the best for me.  It deals with the Japanese internment in 1943 and ghosts.  Poignant and beautiful.

"Thoughts and Prayers" - A thought-provoking tale about the consequences of a mass shooting on one family and how the digital world impacts how each member deals with grief.

"Real Artists" - A weird but fascinating look at how films could be made.

"Grey Rabbit, Crimson Mare, Coal Leopard" - Cool magic.  Super fun characters.  I wouldn't mind this one being expanded into a longer form.

"The Hidden Girl"- Assassins and magic.  Arrrr!

"The Message"- Lovely story about familial bonds, alien archaeology, and tough choices.  Bittersweet.

About 30% of the way through is where the tone switched.  Much of the middle of this book deals with the unforeseen impact of technology advancing.  One story dealt with what happens when ye crowdfund charity and the non-profits have to compete.  Multiple stories dealt with uploading the human consciousness to computers.

Two repeating ones were 1) a girl, Maddie, who talks to her dead AI father and 2) the Singularity which is where people gave up their physical bodies.  Many of the stories with Maddie used emoji which I couldn't see very well on me Kindle and couldn't enlarge.  It irked me and I missed a lot of the meaning.  I enjoyed the Singularity ones better.  But the switching back and forth did lead to some whiplash.  And some of the tech made no sense to me so I was just confused about what was going on.

At 65% it switched to fantasy second with the "Grey Rabbit" story.  I loved that one.  Next from 76 - 81% there was an excerpt from the third Dandelion Dynasty book.  Horrible, horrible choice.  It didn't fit and should have been put at the end of the book if they wanted to promote it.  Blech.  "The Hidden Girl" was next.  Fantastic story whose theme and tone matched the "Grey Rabbit" story.  The remainder of the stories were good.

Out of the 19 stories, I loved 7, enjoyed 7, and didn't like 5.  That is pretty darn good for me and a collection.  So while there were quibbles, I am very glad to have read this collection.

So lastly . . .

Thank you Saga Press!