The Goblin Emperor

This book should be boring. In all honesty, at first it kind of was. I am not one for political thrillers, and really that's who this book is geared towards. It has elves and goblins and airships and pneumatic tubes, but if you replaced those with feudal houses in Edo era Japan, ocean-going vessels, and printing presses, the story would not have to change much at all. The heart of this story is politics and all the rest is dressing.

That said, it is the kind of dressing a master baker spends hours crafting to look simple. Addison has created multiple, distinct cultures, religions, dialects, systems of government, and classes. She could have borrowed terminology from actual societies or just used more traditional terminology, but she doesn't. She worked hard to build this engaging panorama, and I think that's why I ended up feeling the story differently than I would if this were straight-up historical fiction.

The essential story is of a half-elf/half-goblin exiled child of an emperor suddenly and unexpectedly being thrust on the throne. He has no political acumen or alliances to speak of, but has no choice but to adjust, abdicate, or be assassinated. The first third of the book is really just following Maia to meetings, parties, and ceremonies. This really bored me at first, but then I started getting into it when things stopped playing out along the cliched lines. Admittedly, the bad characters get worse and the good characters get better, but it is still not a cliched rice to power by any means. By the end, I cared about the characters even if the pacing was a bit slow.

Addison has said she is not writing a sequel, but might return to the world for another novel. I hope she does because it would be wasteful not to keep exploring the multi-faceted cultures of which this book presents just the tip of the iceberg.

First: please imagine this review written in this font.

Second: so, goblins, eh!

Third: I read this as part of the Nebula Nominees for Best Novel list, and would probably have missed it otherwise. Despite what I am about to say, I was happy to be given a chance to read it! Because, different!

So, The Goblin Emperor is a fairly charming, one-note high fantasy book about Maia, a half-elf, half-goblin teen kid who ends up - thanks to a blimp accident which kills his dad and everyone else ahead of him in line for the throne - becoming the all-powerful emperor of Elflands. Or part of Elflands? There is a map somewhere (of course there is! high fantasy!). Imagine the emperor and his empireness as a sort of late 19th century Russian thing, a la Romanovs. There are blimps, steam, iron and other “steampunk” (STEAMPUNK!!!, the jacket cover screams in advertisement) things. People have notable, expressive, possibly pointy ears.

Anyway, Maia is a Sensitive Soul. He's been raised outside of the Palatial Palace by Setheris (NOT Severus, one needs to remind oneself), his evil tutor who berated him and abused him and never bothered to give him any helpful hints about how to be an emperor. Maia is thus woefully unprepared when it comes time to be crowned, woefully unprepared to even survive socially at court, and he's also super insecure, and basically a woobie. If this feels like fanfic, yeah. It felt like fanfic to me, at least in terms of his characterization.

The rest of the book is about courtly intrigues, both petty and grand, and if that stuff rocks your boat, cool. I found it mostly dull, and very predictable. What saves the book is its general humanistic charm: Maia's entourage is mostly lovable, from the lovable secretary man to the lovable bodyguards (1 wizard guy, 1 soldier guy) and so on. There is a visit from Maia's full-goblin grandfather, the king/ruler/pasha of the neighboring goblin kingdom. There is a fair amount of Jane Austen-style “human drama”, if you will, about people's feelings and relationships. Again, I say, if this sounds good to you, you will enjoy this stuff, because it's very satisfying on those dimensions.

I myself! However! Found it pretty blah, and it tried my patience after a while. In particular, I was sooooo(ooo) disappointed by the kinda lame “let's be socially liberal!” attempts. i.e. Elflands are a land where elves are white (like snow), goblins are black (like charcoal), mixed people are gray (like slate, aluminum, etc.), men wear the pants, and gay stuff is like whaaaat totally not cool. Maia, being Maia our Sensitive Hero, is thus: conflicted about his ethnic heritage, kinda thinking maybe women can be more than babymakers, and kinda OK with gay folks. He makes some kinda small-fry attempts to fix the homophobic sexism around him. Good? Yo, I was disappointed. The book really missed a golden opportunity here (as, well, so many, many sci-fi/fantasy books do), in that, instead of just making Elflands a matriarchal, bisexual empire full of purple-skinned oppressors and polka-dotted oppressees, we instead had to suffer through a tediously usual replication of our own social mores. Again! Sci-fi/fantasy! Should be visionary! And yet - on the social stuff, such failure of vision. So I found this stuff lame, and I worry about the little girls reading about the little girls who do nothing but act cute, or the grown women who are basically all either vamps or butch.

I was also miffed by the “evil Marxists coming to kill us all” assassination subplot/allegory, but I guess that fits in with the emperors-as-Romanovs stuff? Oh, and another failure of vision: imagine, in your mind, what a foreign dignitary from a foreign land would look like? One who is introduced as pasha-like? Do you imagine a very large, very bearded man who booms, bellows, blusters, is gruff and so on? Yes, so does everyone else, so it was kinda cliche to have the goblin king be basically that.

OK, I will stop abusing this book. It is not bad, and I'm sure most people will forgive it these things and be charmed by the Austeny Romanov courtly drama stuff. For me, though - meh. I wanted more.

Executive Summary: The second half of this book is far superior to the first half making for a rather enjoyable read for me in the end. It won't be for everyone though.

Full Review
I must say I'm surprised to be giving this such a high rating. And not a 3.5 rounded up, but a solid 4. At the start of the book this was more like the 2.5 area.

The writing is fine. The world building, though sparse was decent. And I liked Maia from the start. With the reading funk I was in, this seemed like a good option to get me out of it. But despite all that I was bored. I barely touched it for a week. I'd read maybe one chapter a night. I skipped a few nights without reading it all. There just didn't seem to be much plot. Maia kept meeting a bunch of people whose names I still can't keep straight.

Then somewhere around the midway point, the plot finally seemed to kick in and I was hooked. I read the first 200 pages in 12 days. I read the rest of the book in 2. I was hoping to put a good dent in this book this weekend because it's due back to the library soon. I wasn't expecting to finish it.

If it hadn't been a group pick, I might have quit on it. I haven't quit on a book in years though, and I didn't hate it, I just wasn't really into it either.

I'm really glad I stuck with it. It was a lot of fun. I just wish the first half of it hadn't been so slow. I think that may turn a lot of people off who might end up liking it in the end as I did. There are just too many books out there to stick it out.

I'm not sure if this deserves the Nebula it's been nominated for, but I can see why it was nominated. But I expect a lot of people will question it however. The sense of danger prevalent in most fantasy novels is never really there. The conflicts may be a bit too light/easy for some. For me though, it was just what I needed.

And I'm glad that it's a stand alone. That is so rare these days. I'd read more books about Maia, but I think sort of coming of age/learning how to rule story is sufficient as it is.

Tales of courtly intrigue live or die depending on how much you care about the characters. Fortunately Maia, the main character in The Goblin Emperor, is well drawn and carries the story from beginning to end. The story itself would be fairly slight, since not a huge amount happens beyond a naif getting to grips with a situation he never envisaged (although maybe “naif” is not the correct word, since he is not so much naive as unprepared), but the way in which Maia faces up to his new responsibilities and proves a match for those around him is both inspiring and refreshing.

A lot of fantasy novels in the same vain tend to be dour; they insist on lumping lengthy trial after trial on the protagonist's shoulders. In this case the events follow a believable, natural progression and the tone is largely light and optimistic. It is nice to have a world where the majority of people do not spend the entire novel trying to dispose of the ruler but instead recognise that he has been set a hard task and needs all the help he can get.

As others have commented, if the book has a failing it is probably the somewhat overwhelming amount of unusual names, which can make it hard to keep a track of who is who. Personally I didn't find this to be too much of a problem, but I can see why this would be daunting. I hope this doesn't put people off.

Strongly recommended.

It is interesting, because the reason why I wanted to read this book, was because someone told me that it was a great stand-alone fantasy novel. Now I want to know what happens to “our Serenity.” in a sequel. A little difficult to start with because of the use of elvish names and locations, but I think that is more my lack of practice in the fantasy genre, recently. The other thing your brain has to figure out is that names that end in “a” are male not female. It took me a multiple chapters to convince my English language brain that the main character was indeed male. By the time you finish you find yourself a “friend” to the emperor.






Possible SPOILER:
I wish they would have done more with Setheris.

In all honesty, I'm not sure why I liked it so much. It did so many things that I have learned over the years indicate a painful reading experience, especially with authors I have never read before.

Before I dive into what I liked and didn't, a quick summary: The gist of the story is that a young half-elf prince in exile finds out he has inherited the rule of the whole elven kingdom. His father, the emperor, and brothers die in a mysterious airship accident (yes it has airships) leaving young Maia as emperor. As he clearly does not have the training or experience necessary to do the job, the book is primarily about Maia figuring out how to rule a kingdom and how to survive the process.

There are two red flags that I found in the first few pages of The Goblin Emperor that tend to make me want to put a book down before I waste too much time on it. The first one is elves for the sake of elves. Nothing about this story (that I can see) requires that Maia and company be elves. Usually this is indicative of either a) continued unoriginality or b) an inexperienced story-teller whose story will have more serious issues down the line. And the second red flag is the use of a bajillion names. So many names that it is impossible for those uninitiated in certain subgenres of fantasy to keep track of.

However, I think what kept me reading at first was the sheer quality of the prose. Usually, the red flags I mention also coincide with clunky prose and sketchy characterization. That was certainly not the case with this book. The prose was fluid and in some ways transparent like a majority of so-called “popular” sci-fi and fantasy, but in others ways Addison's prose tip-toes close to the border of “too lush” but it never quite crosses the line. I think this is a most difficult balance to achieve, and Addison did it very, very, well.

The other thing that kept me attached to the story is Maia himself. He is kind of a tragic character, but in the softest most upbeat sense. He struggles to be kind and compassionate where everyone in his life except for maybe his mother did the opposite to him. The best parts of the book were when we get to see Maia take the high road when it would be easy to be vindictive, or even violent to those that caused him pain before he became emperor.

The only small gripe I have about the book as that there really was no mystery. The guy you thought was behind the airship crash, was indeed behind the airship crash. There was not a whole lot of misdirection that happened, and I guess I had expected a deeper level of subterfuge coming from a book that was ostensibly about court intrigue. However I think all of this could be put on my expectations of the book and is not really a fault in the book itself.

So in summary, I loved it. The Goblin Emperor is a smooth read. Its an in depth exploration of a sympathetic character, but at the same time the pace never seems to lag. So if you are in the mood for something a little bit mellow, but still engaging. I highly recommend you pick up a copy.

Just a delightful book.

(really 4.5 stars; minus 1/2 star for the over-busy naming conventions) Add me to the list of those pining for a sequel, or at least more in this world. What a completely charming story. I did especially enjoy how the character of some of the more important secondary characters was slowly revealed. I will need to buy a copy of this book for sure.

I am one of those people who can be skeptical of hype. I don???t think too negatively of it, and in fact hype will usually make me curious, but I do tend to raise my eyebrows at anything that has a lot of hype attached to it. There have been enough times when I???ve believed in the hype, and been disappointed to find that whatever is being hyped doesn???t quite live up to the expectations generated by the hype.

But sometimes, there are books that live up to the hype - and, even more rarely, exceed it. They don???t happen often, but when they do, I tend to find books that make me scream and shriek with delight, that force me to resist the urge to cry in the middle of my workplace, that have me reaching for my cellphone so I can send a text to Hope because I have no one else to talk to about the book in question (because she???s usually the one who gets me into the book in the first place). When such a book comes into my life, I hold it in high regard, and hold it very dear, because they happen only so very rarely.

So when I first started seeing Katherine Addison???s The Goblin Emperor floating up at the usual places I haunt on the Internet, and saw the praise that was being heaped upon it, I was curious, but not entirely ready to jump on that bandwagon just yet. I was the same with Ann Leckie???s Ancillary Justice earlier this year: there was so much praise being heaped on it that I didn???t know if I wanted to get into it right away. It???s not because the people praising the book are questionable: the praise was coming from authors that I loved to read, and whom I respected. I guess I just didn???t want to jump onto the bandwagon when everyone else was on it because it would influence my opinion of the book.

But Hope? I trust Hope, and she is free to influence me any way she wishes. So, hot on the heels of my finishing Jeff VanderMeer???s Authority, and while I was in the middle of writing a review for Annihilation, she called me to tell me that she???d read The Goblin Emperor, and that I should read it too, because the hype was real, and she needed someone to talk to about it so could I please read it already?

And that night, I picked it up, and found it very, very hard to stop, practically inhaling it over the course of perhaps three days during the long downtimes I have at my new job. And she was, as always, very right: The Goblin Emperor lives up to the hype, and more, at least for me, because in a way, I feel like it was perfectly crafted specifically for me.

Set in a fantasy world inhabited by elves and goblins, The Goblin Emperor is the story of Maia, the youngest, half-goblin son of the Emperor of the Elflands. Cast aside almost from his birth, Maia never once thought that he would sit upon the throne his father currently ruled from. After all, he had a handful of older half-brothers, all of whom were more favoured by his father and therefore in a better position to inherit the throne. But when his father and his brothers all suddenly die, he is the last legitimate heir to Empire - and he has almost no choice except to take the throne, lest the entire country descend into civil war.

And so Maia, who has no experience of court politics, and no desire to play them if he can, must now find a way to hold onto his newfound position, threading his way through this labyrinth of a world that he???d never expected to be caught up in, and hope that he can keep his throne - and his life.

I mentioned earlier that this book felt like it was crafted specifically for me. To understand why I say that, it helps to know that I absolutely adore any book that deals with court intrigue. I enjoy more action-oriented books, of course, but I have an enormous soft spot in my heart for books that devote time to the deadly games played in throne rooms and court councils and in more private, secret moments: scenes wherein a well-placed word, or even a smile, can bring immense change. Writing action scenes presents its own unique challenge, but I am a mite more appreciative of scenes that depict court intrigue well.

The Goblin Emperor is practically ninety percent court intrigue. Once Maia enters the Imperial Palace, he very rarely leaves its confines and immediate vicinity, and almost all the action has to do with how he interacts with the denizens of the court. Maia himself is not the violent sort, and so most of the fighting back that he does (such as it is, given his personality) has to do with what he does (or does not) do and/or say, and how he says and/or does it. The other characters comment upon (and react to) his words and his actions, for better or for worse, and Maia has to respond to those actions and words in his own way. Most moments of tension involve, not actual physical violence, but the threat of it, or questions of etiquette or law or some other point of statecraft that Maia is trying to grasp. Those moments of tension are also very personal to Maia, as he tries to figure out who means him harm, and who does not.

This sort of thing absolutely, utterly delights me. I love reading about how Maia learns to play the court game, but doing so on his own terms. To be sure, Maia???s not very good at it at first, but he does have people behind him who are quite good at playing the game, and reading about how they manoeuvre and manipulate things behind the scenes (from Maia???s, and thus the reader???s, perspective) is also ridiculously fun. While swords are drawn, eventually, a wonderful majority of the novel deals with using the pen, the word, manners, and good intentions as weapons, both for good and for ill.

Speaking of words and language, both play a central role in the story. Addison doesn???t go quite so far as Tolkien did in creating a new language, but she plays with the concepts of ???polite??? and ???familiar??? language in order to create more nuanced dialogue. Understanding that kind of concept is easier for a bilingual reader, but even monolingual English readers will be able to pick up on the nuances eventually, as Addison is careful to leave and build on clues that are scattered - subtly, I might add - throughout the novel, though most heavily in the first third.

She also uses language to build the world itself: as Maia speaks, and as other characters speak, the reader comes to construct the world of The Goblin Emperor in their head, and it is a rich, and very deep, world indeed. One doesn???t see a great deal of it, but Addison is great at implying that though we are only seeing a part of it, the world is vast, and goes far, far beyond the scope of what one reads in the novel. It???s rather sad, actually, that the reader doesn???t get the chance to explore the world more fully, especially since it seems so fascinating and beautiful. This is a complaint that Hope and I share, because while we are certainly happy that Th Goblin Emperor is a one-shot, we do wish that there would be more stories forthcoming set in the same world. If Ms. Addison comes across this review, I hope she decides to go go back and write another story in the same world. It doesn???t have to be a sequel to The Goblin Emperor (though I wouldn???t complain, and neither would Hope, who expressed this desire first), but it would be lovely to explore the world a bit more, because any stories set in it are bound to be marvellous.

But none of this would really matter if it weren???t for the fact that Maia, and the characters around him, are easy to love. The novel is told through third-person limited perspective, and entirely from Maia???s point of view, so the reader really gets to know him, and through him, the other people at the court. In such cases, it???s vital that the primary narrator be, at the very least, a tolerable character, but Maia is not merely tolerable: he is absolutely wonderful, albeit there is a core of shadow and sadness to that, as well. The way he views the world comes from a specific, and (sadly) common perspective: that of someone who has been abused and neglected for most of their life. Maia could have easily become vengeful and hateful the moment he came to the throne, but the circumstances of his life before that - and the way he views those circumstances - prevent him from going on an all-out vengeance spree against those who have hurt him. This just makes him even more loveable, in my opinion, and lends weight to the things he does and does not do as emperor. This leads him to make decisions and do things that startle many of the veterans at court, but what I love the most is that he continues to do as his heart tells him to do. True, he doubts himself over and over and over again (creating some very heartbreaking moments), but in the end, he does what he thinks is right - even if it flies in the face of what an emperor would ???typically??? do.

Assisting him in his attempts to do the right thing is his???well, I suppose ???privy council??? would be a good term for the people closest to Maia throughout the course of the novel. I don???t quite remember if if they were known by a specific term, collectively, but they essentially served Maia in a way a privy council would any other monarch, so I???ll stick with that term. At any rate, these people have been at court long enough to know what is and isn???t done, but they also admire, and love, Maia, and find ways and means of letting Maia do as he pleases - creating some of the best personal moments in the novel. While there are certainly a lot of scenes that have to do with Maia thinking (and occasionally talking) to himself, there are also plenty of others wherein Maia comes to grips with what it means to be emperor, and manages to get through the day thanks to the people around him.

(I must also confess to having an enormous, enormous soft spot for a character named Csevet. I can???t explain why, because that would be revealing too much, but suffice to say that he is, in essence, ???my type,??? and I adore him very much. I do love Maia, of course, but Csevet occupies a space slightly bigger than Maia???s in my heart.)

One more thing about characters, but about Maia, in particular: I am very much puzzled by some of the reactions I???ve seen online. Some reviewers don???t like the novel because they find Maia ???too soft??? or ???too nice.??? These kinds of reactions make me scratch my head, because really, the whole point of this novel is that Maia is kind, that Maia is a good person, with very little ruthlessness to him and even less cruelty - all this, despite his background. The Goblin Emperor is not Game of Thrones or some other grimdark piece. I think it???s meant to be something higher, nobler, something brighter than something by George R.R. Martin or Joe Abercrombie - proof that though fantasy has been walking in the shadows a lot lately, it???s still capable of telling a story about good people doing the right thing without becoming broody and jaded.

I???ve also come across some complaints regarding the language: how it seems so strange, and is difficult for some readers, to the point that they are completely turned off by it. While others are free to express their dislike for any aspect of a novel that does not suit them, I, for one, absolutely adore the way Addison appears to have created an entire new language for her world, but chooses not to force it down readers??? throats wholesale by using it only in proper names. It???s part of why this world seems so rich, and so deep: every name has a history, after all, and the names suggest so much without making Addison go into long lecture-like explanations. It takes some work, of course, to put names to places and faces and such, but it???s work worth doing. I suspect that some readers are merely lazy and expect everything to be easy, for the writer to spoon-feed them all the information they want, but that???s merely my opinion. I, for one, enjoy being made to do some work for the sake of comprehension, and am very grateful that the author has chosen to believe the best of her readers??? intelligence and written her novel accordingly.

Overall, The Goblin Emperor is a near-perfect gem of a novel. On the surface, it???s about court intrigue, but dig deeper and one sees that it???s not just about court intrigue, but about how a person from difficult circumstances overcomes their own fears to become a genuinely good person - and a truly wonderful leader. It is also very bright and hopeful: sad things happen, and death happens too, but it???s not without reason, and not without some ray of sunshine somewhere in the midst of all the sadness. The language is exquisite, and helps to build a world that I wish I could go back to in another story, just to see its other facets, to explore the corners hinted at but never really shown. There are also deeper, richer themes buried in the novel, but never once do they overshadow the plot or the characters - instead, they are an integral part of the novel itself, and are explored and tackled in a manner that doesn???t get in the way of the story. The only problem with it is that there isn???t more of it, but hopefully the author will do something about that eventually, even if it???s not a direct sequel.

My review is hiding under this link.

This is an excellent book, completely unlike anything I've read before, and in the best possible way. It almost seems wrong to deem it ‘fantasy', for surely a book with no human characters should be ‘speculative fiction'? Regardless of its classification, I highly recommend it to anyone interested in well-written court politics, sympathetic characters, and a reading experience they won't get anywhere else.

Of all the things I would praise most about the book, I would have to consider its treatment of childhood abuse a huge and ambitious success. Too often, characters with abusive or traumatic backgrounds are treated in the most salacious and dramatic fashion possible. In this book, the main character's abusive past is treated with gentle respect, neither leering nor dramatic. The details are never focused on, and instead the most important thing is how it effected the abused character, and how they grow and heal. In this fashion, the entire book uses the metaphor of moving forward, growing past pettiness and cruelty, and– most notably– building bridges, to great effect.

The worldbuilding was similarly an ambitious success, though I found myself at times confused by the byzantine nature of naming conventions and pronunciation among the Goblins and Elves. I was pleased to find a guide at the back of the book explaining my confusion; I only wished I'd found it sooner, or that it had perhaps been at the beginning of the book. At times, all the unfamiliar Elvish and Goblin names bled together, and I would have appreciated knowing sooner that there was a guide. That said, the worldbuilding was still excellent and fascinating, even if I wished it was imparted in a fashion that didn't necessitate a guide quite so much.

If I had to seriously critique anything in the book, it would be how some of the female characters seemed underused. I understand that this is a function of the worldbuilding– they are an oppressively sexist society– but at the same time, the female characters were fascinating, and when they did appear, they shined. I was sad that altogether they only got a handful of scenes, and the subplots involving them and their struggles (in some cases, the collective struggle of all the female characters for more rights and freedoms) were very subtly and quietly dealt with. I would have liked to see them integrated more into the overall plot.

However, overall, I found the novel a tremendous success. I adored all of the characters, the quiet (but never slow) movement of the plot, and the subtle development of the protagonist and his relationships with others. It's a book I'll be rereading in the near future, because there's simply so much life and wonder crammed into it. I would highly recommend it to anyone interested in high fantasy.

I was sent a free copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.