The Hands of the Emperor

I wanted to love this, I really did. And I did for the first half– what a wonderful, gentle character-focused work about a THE SIGN OF THE DRAGON-esque kind leader who truly means to do good in the world. Politics, culture, identity, revolution, all interwoven in a very satisfying story of kidness and slice-of-life nothingness.

Unfortunately, it became too much nothingness. Our Kip here is so accomplished that there seems to be no real conflict or character development left to be done. The plot also, unfortunately, keeps getting more and more repetitive as it goes on– constantly Kip needs to remind people who he is in a grandiose speech, or gets upset at someone offending him and explains why in a very detailed manner, or explains to his family why he feels wronged by them, and we're reminded at all times of how amazing and clever he is. This also has one of my least favourite tropes, one I first acquired a distaste for as a kid in the prehistorical EARTH'S CHILDREN series, where the protagonist seems to invent and fix a great many important things that it just seems completely unrealistic.

I still enjoyed reading it, but was saddened to almost hate it by the end. I'd still like to give the rest of the series a try, because THE BONE HARP was truly something else, but it's with some reservations I now intend to try the others.