Ken Liu's Top Book Recommendations

Want to know what books Ken Liu recommends? We've researched interviews, social media posts, podcasts, and articles to build a comprehensive list of Ken Liu's favorite book recommendations of all time. At Shortform, we know books. Our book guides are the best in the world. Learn why.

This Is How You Lose the Time War

Amal El-Mohtar, Max Gladstone

4.1

Two time-traveling agents from warring futures, working their way through the past, begin to exchange letters—and fall in love in this thrilling and romantic book from award-winning authors Amal-El Mohtar and Max Gladstone.

Among the ashes of a dying world, an agent of the Commandant finds a letter. It reads: Burn before reading.

Thus begins an unlikely correspondence between two rival agents hellb

Recommended by Ezra Klein and Ken Liu.

Ken Liu

I suppose you could call it a time travel story. It takes place across all history, and features two protagonists, two women who are essentially spies—saboteurs for rival visions of the future, who are trying to twist the timeline to lead to their respective faction’s visions. But then they fall in love with each other. The story is incredibly beautiful and moving, and the language is so poetic. [source]

Ezra Klein

This book is amazing and if you haven't read it you should. https://t.co/0PNy4Kmbip [source]

Riot Baby

Tochi Onyebuchi

4.3

"Riot Baby bursts at the seams of story with so much fire, passion and power that in the end it turns what we call a narrative into something different altogether."—Marlon James

Rooted in foundational loss and the hope that can live in anger, Riot Baby is both a global dystopian narrative an intimate family story with quietly devastating things to say about love, fury, and the black American experi

Recommended by Ken Liu.

Ken Liu

Such a powerful, powerful book. It is amazing. It is, in some ways, a superhero story that literalizes power, and powerlessness, and anger, and allows us to understand and view racial injustice in America in a way that I think few works have been able to do for me, at an emotional level. [source]

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United States of Japan

Howard Hughes

3.6

Decades ago, Japan won the Second World War. Americans worship their infallible Emperor, and nobody believes that Japan’s conduct in the war was anything but exemplary. Nobody, that is, except the George Washingtons – a shadowy group of rebels fighting for freedom. Their latest subversive tactic is to distribute an illegal video game that asks players to imagine what the world might be like if the

Recommended by Ken Liu.

Ken Liu

It’s an alternate history in which the Axis powers won World War II, and Japan has conquered parts of the United States. And it’s a book in which there are giant mechas, and there are references to gaming culture, a lot of nerdy, geeky references that we love to see in science fiction. [source]

A Song for a New Day

Sarah Pinsker

4.5

In this captivating science fiction novel from an award-winning author, public gatherings are illegal making concerts impossible, except for those willing to break the law for the love of music, and for one chance at human connection.

In the Before, when the government didn't prohibit large public gatherings, Luce Cannon was on top of the world. One of her songs had just taken off and she was on he

Recommended by Ken Liu.

Ken Liu

The novel is in the subgenre of post-apocalyptic fiction, and imagines a world in which a plague has caused all of us to become isolated. Everyone is living like a hermit, working from home, eating at home, studying at home, and there are no large-scale gatherings anymore. So, the very visceral experience of going to a live concert, of that connection between the performer and the audience, of being part of an audience, and performing for an audience—these experiences are no longer possible. [source]

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Zero Sum Game (Cas Russell, #1)

S. L. Huang

3.9

A blockbuster, near-future science fiction thriller, S.L. Huang's Zero Sum Game introduces a math-genius mercenary who finds herself being manipulated by someone possessing unimaginable power…

Cas Russell is good at math. Scary good. The vector calculus blazing through her head lets her smash through armed men twice her size and dodge every bullet in a gunfight, and she'll take any job for the righ

Recommended by Ken Liu.

Ken Liu

Zero Sum Game has an action hero whose superpower is math. The hero is an expert in mathematics, and has the ability to see the math behind everyday things, and she uses that to perform superhuman feats. It’s fresh, it’s exciting, it’s fun, and it’s so moving. [source]