The Goblin Emperor by Katherine Addison

[Werthead]

The Goblin Emperor by Katherine Addison

The Emperor of the Elflands has been killed in an airship accident, along with his immediate sons and heirs. The imperial crown falls on his youngest son, Maia, who has lived in effective exile. Ignorant of the politics of the Elflands and the ways of the court, Maia has to learn whom he can trust and how to navigate the channels of government, all the while trying to find out who killed his father and brothers, and why.

Originally published in 2014, The Goblin Emperor was a moderate hit for its author, Sarah Monette. Monette had already published or co-published six novels under her own name, but chose to adopt a new pen name to differentiate this work.

The Goblin Emperor is a work heavy on political intrigue and courtly manners and light on action. The story takes place in a well-realised fantasy world, but is constrained almost entirely to the imperial court, with the reader hearing about goings on in faraway places only through reports, rumours and hearsay. Those looking for a traditional epic fantasy with lots of travelling, sword fights, awesome displays of magic and epic battles best look elsewhere, but those who are looking for a well-written, in-depth character study will find much here that is rewarding.

This is a novel of manners, where characters behave and comport themselves through strict protocols which sometimes make it hard to discern their true motivations. Maia's job is to sort through the restrictions of hierarchy to work out who is an ally, who is an enemy and who is an enemy posing as a friend, and who is a friend who feels it impolite to impose themselves on the emperor. It requires a deft hand at characterisation to make this work, but the author succeeds in making these characters rise through the layers of formality and work as fully-fleshed-out individuals.

The book makes much of language and terminology, a bit oddly for a book that also uses fairly generic terms like "elf" and "goblin," although these don't seem to be describing the traditional fantasy races but merely different ethnicities of humans, similar to the witches, goblins and demons of The Worm Ouroboros (who are actually just different types of human). There's a complex system of address, titles and styles which occasionally means the same character may be referred to in several different ways and even by different names. This doesn't happen too often and from context it's relatively easy to pick up on who's who, but it does occasionally briefly disrupt the flow of the story as you try to work out if this character is someone we've met before.

The downside to all of this is that the pace is "relaxed" and occasionally risks being "languid," with major plot movements slow to develop and having to occasionally bulldoze your way through a dozen pages of Maia musing on dining etiquette and what is the acceptable level of formalwear for the next event he has to attend. If you're looking for a fast-paced, exciting book, this is definitely not it.

The Goblin Emperor (****) is an intelligent, thoughtful and slow (sometimes a tad too slow) book, well-written and solidly-characterised with a strong background. The novel lacks a certain dynamism but makes up for it with the richness of the setting and characters.

 

[CTRandall]

I've been curious about this one for a while. I'm happy skipping action-packed action and save-the-world epicness, so I think I'll add this to my reading list.

 

[Bick]

Nice review, thanks. So is Katherine Addison her real name, which she's reverted to?

 

[The Big Peat]

I disagree with Werthead on the strength of the characters, which is probably why I found it enjoyable in places but ultimately frustrating. I never felt like I got to know any of them well enough.

 

[CTRandall]

@The Big Peat Have you reviewed this on your blog?

 

[The Big Peat]

@The Big Peat Have you reviewed this on your blog?

I haven't because I read it as part of a readalong, which meant I did a bunch of blog posts answering questions about it as I went. Looking back at what I said I was even more critical - I loved the prose, I loved the idea, the end's pretty cool, but the middle felt like the same scene over and over only with different characters and there were too many characters to care. I couldn't remember which character was which and let me tell you, I can't remember my parents' birthdays, but I can remember the names of minor side characters from books I read once ten years ago and by the end I didn't know who anyone was.

I guess I still recommend it, most people who like that slow courtly warm-hearted book liked it more than me, but if you don't like very big casts (also thees and thous, and weird names), maybe think twice.

 

[The Judge]

Well, I ordered it the other day on the basis of Werthead's review, so I'll post here as and when I've read it, which will no doubt provide a different opinion entirely!

 

[The Judge]

Right, well I read it Friday, but for the second time in a week I'm faced with trying to work out why I enjoyed a book which I romped through in less than a day, but the flaws of which -- flaws in my eyes at least -- vastly outnumbered its good points. Miscellaneous thoughts in no particular order:

• yep, too many named characters for comfort -- there are 12 pages at the beginning listing "persons, places, things and gods" with a separate explanation of the various different honorifics/terms of address which all look like names -- and it's exacerbated as some people have specific titles eg "Witness for Foreigners" and are sometimes called by title not name. I managed to work out who the more important characters were but it was a struggle at the beginning (those 12 Who's Who pages were repeatedly used, though frankly were rarely of real help), though that does echo Maia's own floundering after being suddenly dropped into the middle of so many strangers.
• some of the named characters have little or nothing to do and no reason to be there. One woman makes a big noise early on, so it appears she will be important but she's hardly seen again, is rarely mentioned and effectively just drops out of the story, while another character who is important at the beginning is wholly sidelined, albeit because of Maia's antipathy towards him. To me this made the story structure feel unbalanced, especially as there are other characters who appear briefly at the end who've never been seen before. It's how real life works, but I expect a novel to be better constructed.
• I understand TBP's comment about characterisation, since we see everything through Maia's eyes and he's not the most perceptive of people, but it didn't worry me -- however, I didn't actually care what happened to any of them, which ought to worry an author.
• I liked that Maia is a good man, albeit really out of his depth at the beginning, and I liked that he tries his best even though he doubts himself. However, while I hate grimdark and the apparent idea that everyone must be loathsome because y'know that's real life innit, I do want some reality that reflects that even the best of people have some faults and even bad people have good traits. Here virtually everyone else who is good is wholly good, and only three characters show any kind of depth and one of them is only met in a brief scene right at the very end of the novel before he's executed.
• there are too many scenes which are pure saccharine which are there just to parade Maia's goodness but which don't add anything to the plot, and the frequent sentimental reminiscing about his mother became tiresome.
• the search for those responsible for the airship disaster seems to be forgotten for great swathes of the book, and although there are some scenes where Maia is told of developments, a major reveal comes via a letter which is beyond excruciating in both length and irrelevant detail -- I'm astounded Addison and her editor couldn't come up with something better.
• there are references to deeper matters/social issues, but they come towards the end of the novel and almost in passing or an afterthought, and there doesn't seem to be an overarching theme which holds the whole novel together.
• I thought the world-building was mixed. There's a lot of wordage spent on jewellery, clothes, hair fashion and food, all of which I was happy with, and it's clear there's been extensive thought over social customs -- I particularly liked the use of "we" in place of "I" in formal settings for all ranks. I also loved the idea of the Witnesses and how they could represent inanimate things and even dead people in a search for justice and I really wish I'd thought of something like that. But because Maia virtually never leaves the palace complex the building of the physical world is largely absent, and I never understood the layout and different bits of the complex, nor of the country as a whole.
• for me there was a lack of real political intriguing or movements and counter-movements -- there are two incidents which are shocking, but both rather come out of the blue and to my mind both lacked any real sense of conspiracy on the one hand or intelligence on the other, and there is a complete dearth of courtiers creating factions and acting against each other with hidden motives.
• while patently the characters aren't ordinary humans since there's a great deal said about eye colour and the way ears display emotion -- in the same way animals do, expressing anger or fear -- I thought the terms "elf" and "goblin" misleading, since it suggests different species, but the physical differences between them are superficial and they can apparently interbreed with fertile offspring.
• a minor irritation in my copy of the book is that about 30 pages have been cut wrongly, so the page numbers at the bottom have been cut off and the last lines are practically at the edge of the page.

Yet for all my cavils I did enjoy it, I did read it all through in one day even though I had plenty of things I ought to have been doing, and I did want to know what happened next, so clearly Addison has done what is the author's most important job, namely keeping my interest and keeping me reading. I'm also interested enough to have a look at some of her other work.

 

[CTRandall]

@The Judge Well, that cleared things up for me. A long list of what not to like followed by a positive recommendation. Are you sure you're not a politician?

 

[The Judge]

I was going to add a last para saying "I bet that's really confused you, CTR!"!

I think most of the issues I had arise from a split between me as a reader and me as a writer. While I was reading it, I was a reader and nothing else, and although the number of characters was confusing, especially at the beginning, it didn't affect my enjoyment, and only twice in the whole book did I actively think "Hang on, why on earth are you showing us this/doing it this way?" -- one of which was the long letter I mentioned, which really was beyond the pale. And as a reader, immersed in the world and wanting to know more, I did enjoy it, though that might also have been an effect of reading it quickly, without giving myself time to reflect on what I was reading. However, on thinking about it afterwards, when I was debating what to say here, I switched over to being a writer and started to consider all the issues I try and deal with in my own writing, and that I look at when I critique for other people, and then all these other things occurred to me, which I hadn't consciously noticed as I was reading.

Basically, it was like guzzling down a huge meal of assorted junk food plus cake and pudding without thinking about calories and nutritional value or anything except "Yummy!!" and then afterwards wondering if the chef should have done things differently to improve the dinner.

 

[The Big Peat]

Where as reading it over many weeks as a readalong with lots of questions killed any chance of immersion and meant I was pretty much going to be in crit mode.

Although I think even if I'd read it straight I wouldn't have been immersed, but rather would have DNF'ed. But then I think the flaws with character matter more to me than many.

 

[The Judge]

Yes, I can see that reading it over several weeks would have produced a wholly different response -- I definitely wouldn't have remembered who all the characters were in that case, and I'd have probably been less forgiving of other issues, not least the pedestrian pace and the focus on the minutiae instead of the bigger picture. Mind, there are probably very few books I could appreciate if read as slowly as that.

One thing though, CTR, when I talked about its flaws I said they "outnumbered" the good points, which isn't the same as "outweighed". There were lots of things I think could have been done better, things which 10 years ago I wouldn't have noticed, but overall they didn't negate the things she did right, and views on saccharinity and sentimentality are highly subjective anyway. Maia is a likeable protagonist, who makes things happen, scenes flowed well, the etiquette and formalities were well thought out, and it was above all eminently readable -- the prose was good, which is something I rate highly -- and she made me keep turning the pages, which is the greatest skill a storyteller needs. So yes, I would recommend it to someone who isn't looking for fast-paced action but wants something more thoughtful and generous in spirit.