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Book Rec: The Goblin Emperor
Dec. 6th, 2018 11:55 am The Goblin Emperor is probably my very favourite fantasy book. Even if nothing much happens in it.
The story follows Maia Drazhar, the 'last and least regarded' son of Varenechibel, Emperor of the Elflands, who unexpectedly ascends to the throne after the emperor and all his other heirs are killed in an airship crash.
Maia is the sole, despised offspring of his father's marriage to a goblin woman (made, as so many imperial marriages have been, for political reasons) and was banished to a country hunting lodge after his mother's death. He thus arrives in court both ill-prepared and ill-regarded, both for his goblin blood and for the rumours that have spread in his absence. "For all the court knows," he notes, "we are an inbred lunatic cretin."
The imperial court is, predictably, a vicious backbiting hell-hole.
The course of the book follows Maia's gradual acclimation to his new role and, reciprocally, that of the court to him. The actual narrative is somewhat meandering. I don't want to call it piecemeal, but there's very much a feeling of a sequence of largely disconnected events one after another. To some extent, I think this is actually beneficial, helping to create a sense of how overwhelming the job of being emperor actually is for Maia. That being said, I can imagine some readers finding it unsatisfying -- there is one narrative thread which runs the length of the book (and which I will not spoil here) but the actual overarching story is that of Maia's personal growth from a frightened young man to a nascent ruler.
The world has obviously been conceived in minute detail, and Addison makes an unusual and rather daring choice to render different levels of formality by using different first- and second-person pronouns; "I" and "thou" for informal speech, "we" and "you" for formal. The names of people and places, and the styles of address, are constructed in a manner that makes evident the existence of at least a proto-conlang somewhere in the author's notebooks, which gives an additional vividness to the world. That being said, it also leads to some awkwardly long names -- who can forget the ongoing war with the Nazhmorhathvereise people?
Above all else, the one thing I find most beautiful about The Goblin Emperor, and which keeps me returning to it, is how hopeful it is. Throughout the book, Maia demonstrates compassion and empathy, and consistently strives to do the right thing in a way which is increasingly rare in modern fiction, with its ever-growing ranks of antiheroes and cynics. Some people will doubtless contend that it is unrealistic, and they may be right.
But this is a fantasy novel, after all, and if it is easier to imagine dragons than people acting with compassion, then that only goes to show how much this book is needed.
The story follows Maia Drazhar, the 'last and least regarded' son of Varenechibel, Emperor of the Elflands, who unexpectedly ascends to the throne after the emperor and all his other heirs are killed in an airship crash.
Maia is the sole, despised offspring of his father's marriage to a goblin woman (made, as so many imperial marriages have been, for political reasons) and was banished to a country hunting lodge after his mother's death. He thus arrives in court both ill-prepared and ill-regarded, both for his goblin blood and for the rumours that have spread in his absence. "For all the court knows," he notes, "we are an inbred lunatic cretin."
The imperial court is, predictably, a vicious backbiting hell-hole.
The course of the book follows Maia's gradual acclimation to his new role and, reciprocally, that of the court to him. The actual narrative is somewhat meandering. I don't want to call it piecemeal, but there's very much a feeling of a sequence of largely disconnected events one after another. To some extent, I think this is actually beneficial, helping to create a sense of how overwhelming the job of being emperor actually is for Maia. That being said, I can imagine some readers finding it unsatisfying -- there is one narrative thread which runs the length of the book (and which I will not spoil here) but the actual overarching story is that of Maia's personal growth from a frightened young man to a nascent ruler.
The world has obviously been conceived in minute detail, and Addison makes an unusual and rather daring choice to render different levels of formality by using different first- and second-person pronouns; "I" and "thou" for informal speech, "we" and "you" for formal. The names of people and places, and the styles of address, are constructed in a manner that makes evident the existence of at least a proto-conlang somewhere in the author's notebooks, which gives an additional vividness to the world. That being said, it also leads to some awkwardly long names -- who can forget the ongoing war with the Nazhmorhathvereise people?
Above all else, the one thing I find most beautiful about The Goblin Emperor, and which keeps me returning to it, is how hopeful it is. Throughout the book, Maia demonstrates compassion and empathy, and consistently strives to do the right thing in a way which is increasingly rare in modern fiction, with its ever-growing ranks of antiheroes and cynics. Some people will doubtless contend that it is unrealistic, and they may be right.
But this is a fantasy novel, after all, and if it is easier to imagine dragons than people acting with compassion, then that only goes to show how much this book is needed.
