The Goblin Emperor Hardcover – April 1, 2014

THE GOBLIN EMPEROR by Katherine Addison is a book that I've had on my TBR list for some time but never quite got around to actually reading. I am regretful of this because this is a book that reads easily, was consistently entertaining, and is wholly unlike the vast majority of fantasy that I have read. It is a little steampunk, a little Netflix's THE CROWN, and a bit of GAME OF THRONES on top but remarkably nonviolent or falling on traditional fantasy tropes. The two races may be elves and goblins but they are wholly unlike their traditional depictions in fantasy.The premise is that the Emperor of Elfland has been killed alongside all but one of his heirs: Maia, the half-goblin Prince that was banished to the outskirts of the Empire from the day he was born. Crowned Emperor mostly because he's smart enough to realize that if he's not before someone objects then he's likely to become a loose end, Maia proceeds to deal with all of the issues of running a government despite the fact that he was never properly educated on how. His story is a bit of a combination of Henry VIII, Queen Victoria, and a handful of other unexpected monarchs.Before I continue, I should point out that Katherine Addison does something clever here and makes it clear that Elf and Goblin are pretty much just human beings. They live the same way, they are differentiated primarily by skin tone, and have no appreciable biological differences. I feel she did this as a way to play with readers' expectations.Certainly, I've long believed the only good goblin is a dead goblin but I've also noted that plenty of writers have picked up on the Master Race overtones some people ascribe elves. THE COMPLETE BOOK OF ELVES was something my gaming group nicknamed "Mein Alf" with its ludicrous over-the-top portrayal of sidhe superiority while SKYRIM outright made the High Elves into Nazis. Here, they're more like a combination of the British Empire and Hapsburg Empire. There's a lot of racism and sexism but the primary quality of Maia is that he is the Royal Heir (and later Emperor) in everyone's eyes.Maia is an excellent character and painfully relatable to anyone who suffers social anxiety or is of an introverted bent. He wants to be the nice guy in a society that is founded on heirarchy, misogyny, and racial supremacy but that turns out to be harder than it sounds. He's also terrified of his former teacher who, ironically, he could have throw out a window with a word and no one would care.It's a time of change in his society with airships, pneumatic tubes, and other devices as well as the beginnings of anarchist as well as socialist movements. Nevertheless, educating noble women is still unheard of and there's no sign of any sort of Parliament. It is an absolute monarchy and the buck stops with Maia. It's a subtler version of steampunk but one that does deal with the changing of the world. Ironically, Maia being completely uneducated about what he's supposed to be doing as a royal allows him to avoid some problems opposing the changes that got other monarchs in RL killed (and may have gotten his relations slain).The book is almost completely lacking in violence and is really about the troubles of administration. It's really much closer to THE CROWN and VICTORIA than GOT but that's hardly a bad thing and helps distinguish it. There are some things that I think certain readers will object to. Katherine Addison fully embraces "weird fantasy names vs. normal names" when I usually prefer the Joe Abercrombie alternative of, "call a priest a priest and a horse a horse." The names are also all but unpronouncable and bizarre to even look at. It wasn't impossible to read but occasionally verged on the overwhelming: the Arch-Prelate of Almo speaking to Emperor Maia Drazhar, Edrehasivar Zhas, seventh of that name.On a slightly more critical note, I wish the women of the book hadn't been regulated to the role of wife, mother, daughter, or potential mistress as their only real roles. That seems to be a plot point, though. The book's pace is very slow and more interested in soaking you up in the atmosphere than any plot developments, which isn't a bad thing. I think some readers will also have an issue with the fact that Maia has a somewhat easy time of it with advisors who are mostly on his side and the right thing usually being the moral thing. I'm okay with this message, though, and have no problem with not every good king ending like Robb Stark or Tommen.In conclusion, I think this is the best book I've read this year and that is high praise given I read FEVRE DREAM and ANNO DRACULA just this past month. This is a strong story that hits on a lot of beats I enjoyed and doesn't read like the majority of fantasy out there. It's a comedy of manners, only the stakes are the throne and the life of whoever sits on it.

** spoiler alert **I'm marking this review as a spoiler because the central fact of The Goblin Emperor is that Maia is a really, really good politician. It is impossible to say that convincingly without also saying that he has political success. Of course, it could always happen that something goes horribly wrong in the end. But I would still have to admit that at some point in the book he is politically successful, which would be a spoiler. So, I'm taking the easy way out -- just mark the entire review a spoiler, and then I don't have to waddle awkwardly around the fact that Maia survives a coup attempt and an assassination attempt and ends the book as a successful and mostly well-liked leader.Now, I want to be clear, when I say "Maia is a really good politician", I understand that as a good thing. Politics is the name we give to the social mechanisms for making difficult decisions without violence. That is an extraordinarily important job, and people who do it well should be valued. I have no difficulty thinking of real-life politicians who are or have been, in my opinion, good people. And Maia, in my opinion, exemplifies the kind of behavior that such people should emulate.Right from the start, it is clear that Maia has good instincts. For instance, he hates his cousin Setheris, who was cruel to him throughout his childhood. Yet he knows that he cannot take revenge on him"... they left Setheris fuming, ... Maia reminded himself that glee was unbefitting an emperor, and thought soberly as the crewwoman opened the narrow door at the front of the cabin, I must not acquire a taste for this pleasure. It was heady, but he knew it was also poison."Damn straight! Later, he prays thus before the execution of his personal guard who betrayed him,"I cannot afford this anger. The Emperor of the Ethuveraz cannot become vengeful, for once begun, there will never be an end of it. Ulis, he prayed, abandoning the set words, let my anger die with him. Let both of us be freed from the burden of his actions. Even if I cannot forgive him, help me not to hate him."So, even though he enters the job ignorant and untaught, right from the start Maia has good instincts. Perhaps his most valuable asset is that he KNOWS he is ignorant. Thus he asks advice from people who know more, and he listens to them, and uses what he learns, intelligently. He has the sense to delegate. He also has the sense to realize when delegating isn't working, when he needs to be decisive. He thinks this of himself,"He was not stupid and he was not incapable. He remembered the moment when his thoughts had inverted themselves—that shift from not being able to please everyone to not trying—and the way that change had enabled him to see past the maneuverings and histrionics of the representatives to the deeper structures of the problem..."One of my favorite parts of the story was the attempted coup d'état by Sheveän and Chavar. Maia got out of that in part because he was smart, but also because they were incompetent. Sheveän and Chavar meant to put Sheveän's son Idra on the throne in Maia's place, but didn't clear the plan with Idra first. That was big mistake #1. Big mistake #2 was acceding to Maia's demand to talk to Idra;. Big mistake #3 was failing to realize that they were on the clock. Maia only needed to stall long enough for his guards to show up.I liked this because this incompetence struck me as entirely plausible for Sheveän and Chavar, especially Chavar. Although Chavar's incompetence may seem implausible to a naïve reader, anyone who has read a lot of history will recognize it as a trap that the powerful are apt to fall into. Chavar has been powerful for many, many years. Like most people who wield power for a long time, Chavar has an inflated opinion of his own abilities and fails to realize that he has surrounded himself with people who tell him what he wants to hear. Also Chavar has nothing but contempt for Maia, and that contempt blinds him to Maia's very real abilities.Of course, that means that Maia was lucky. But he positioned himself to get lucky, and he exploited his luck intelligently.

Generally this is a very likable story and well written.There was however much left on the table that merited further development and exploration. I concur with others that the naming system was confusing and lessened the enjoyment of an otherwise gentle and positive experience. Some critics noted that “nothing happens”, and in my opinion, although I see how that impression could occur, the complaint is a bit overblown. Plenty occurs with character interaction and I would rather have that any day of the week than a busy plot with cardboard cut outs for characters.The whole Goblin/Elf dynamic fell flat for me and really could have been something… total waste of a great concept.One Elf casts a death spell, and that event barely gets a line or two!? Girlfriend? For real?The main character is so tightly wound, adroit, self aware and controlled that I had a very hard time picturing him as anything but a highly evolved middle aged gentleman, let alone an adolescent fish out of water.So despite the lost opportunities and the nomenclature fiasco, yes it is a book worthy of your time. I just think it could have been great rather than merely good.

I originally saw this book on display at Foyles in London. I started reading the first few pages and I was grabbed and drawn in by the prose. I had not had an experience like that - being compelled to keep reading from the first page onwards - since opening " The Trial" by Franz Kafka. Addison's prose is not as dense as Kafka's, I think it is just the storyline which draws you in.But on that first encounter I did not buy the book. I had been disappointed by the representation of Goblins - they seemed just like human beings, except for a couple of superficial traits like hair and skin colour. This is a feature of the book - that Elves and Goblins are just like humans and can even interbreed. There is no place here for Elves at one with nature, or as immortal semi-mythical beings. In this world, they are just human beings with pointy ears added on, quite capble of any venality humans are capable of. Eventually my longing to get back into Addison's world overcame my objections and I got this book on Kindle.The world is also a bit odd for Goblins and Elves in that I would expect a medieval level of technology, and for magic to be a part of the world. Instead, the world seems similar to seventeenth to eighteenth century Europe in some ways, with a highly developed Elvish government, and extremely refined manners. There is even the inclusion of steampunk vacuum tubes, a hint of some clockwork, and a nascent steam engine technology. It is all blended seamlessly, I could just never understand "why Goblins and Elves?" i.e. why not black skinned and white skinned humans? Perhaps writing this way allows the author to bypass any modern prejudices. It does also allow for the Elves to come express things with their ears, which was a nice detail.There is no map with the book, so the reader is pretty much left to jumble the place names round in their head (I did find a map online). There is an explanation at the beginning of all the complex ways personal names are inflected according to the context, but my kindle version did not open the book there, so I was struggling with that and beginning to deduce some grammatical rules by the time I discovered it. I don't feel this complexity in any way benefits the story. There is also a glossary of all the people mentioned in the story, and I can see the sense of adding this section, since not only are there loads of people, the names are all alien, and the number feels multiplied by at least 3 due to the different grammatical cases. I utterly struggled with the all the names, and rather than search the glossary (which feels very awkward withcan e-book), a lot of times I just ploughed on and hoped the context would make it obvious who this person was. If I say this even applies to the main character's many stepmothers then you can see how fundamentally confused I was. I think actually family tree diagrams would have helped a lot, and also a diagram of how all the different parts of the government and governmental positions were organised and related.The story itself is wonderful. The main character is very decent minded, and likeable for this reason. He has the emotional outlook of a forty year old, which is a bit incongruous for a teenager, but it does mean that he hardly annoys the reader with stupid decisions. Every storyline resolves itself the way you probably wanted, and so it does end up feeling a bit safe. The main character is a bit lucky that there are also some other decent and rational other characters, particularly his Nephew, Idra.The author repects the lives of her characters and so there are not any gratuitous deaths. Any deaths that do occur are respected, and I love that the author has brought this decency to her fiction.A note on the level of subtlety and refinement: there were many occasions where the author flags that you are supposed to make a deduction based on the way someone has behaved or on something they have said. On at least 3 occasions I had no idea what to deduce, so the refinement went way over my head, and the author does not give you the answer!I did not want to leave the story, and I hope there are sequels.

Every now and then a book comes along that is quiet, but you can't stop reading it because it is wondrous and full of depth. This is that book. It's about the politics of becoming a ruler when the being in question is not expecting that position, has no training, is not quite the right race, and is a bastard, yet is clever and has a huge heart. Such a beautiful book full of gorgeous imagery and insight. I thoroughly recommend it.The sequels are set in the same world and are a delight but not of the Goblin Emperor's calibre. This is one of those masterpieces. While the sequels satisfied a need to revisit the world and are lovely reads but not quite as jaw-dropping.

‘The Goblin Emperor’ by Katherine Addison is an epic fantasy with an emphasis upon court politics. I combined reading with its unabridged audiobook edition, narrated by Kyle McCarley.I appreciated having both formats as I was able to better follow the story. In addition, the ebook opens with a Listing of Persons, Places, Things, and Gods. Given the novel’s large number of characters I appreciated having this available.This is the opening book in Katherine Addison’s Goblin Emperor series and was originally published in 2014. It tells the story of the Archduke Maia Drazhar, the youngest, half-goblin son of the Emperor, Varenechibel the Fourth. He has lived his entire life in exile, distant from the Imperial Court and the deadly intrigues that suffuses it.When his father and his three half-brothers die in an airship crash, Maia learns that he is the only surviving rightful heir. Completely unschooled in court politics, Maia has no friends or advisors - only sycophants seeking to curry favour with the naïve new emperor. When it becomes clear that the crash of the Wisdom of Choharo was no accident, there is the added threat that whoever assassinated Maia’s father and brothers could make an attempt on his life at any moment.With respect to the audiobook, voice actor Kyle McCarley is an award winning narrator. While this was my first experience of his work, I found his voice rich and very easy to listen to.I enjoyed this epic fantasy and was impressed with Katherine Addison’s world building. The steampunk elements were welcome and Maia proved such an appealing lead. I plan on continuing with the others in the Goblin Emperor series.

The Goblin Emperor is a 2014 fantasy novel by Sarah Monette writing under the name of Katherine Addison. We find ourselves in an early industrial society of goblins and elves. The emperor and most of his immediate family have been killed in an airship crash. Destiny travels a long way down the line of succession, arriving at the door of young Maia. This unfavoured son has been living in an internal exile with a cruel guardian, after the former emperor cast his mother aside in favour of a new wife.While the story’s setting is firmly in the fantasy realm, there are many parallels with the real world. Historically, I was reminded of the White Ship disaster of 1120 when a voyage across the Channel went horribly wrong, wiping out most of England’s royal family. Henry I was not aboard the doomed vessel, but the heir and most of his royal siblings all drowned. Mathilda, one the King’s daughters, was left to inherit the throne. Henry tried to get Mathilda recognised as heir, but the nobles weren’t having any of it. England had never had a queen and was not ready to accept one. A period known as the Anarchy followed.The scenario in The Goblin Emperor is similar, but more positive. Maia, of mixed goblin and elf parentage, is young, inexperienced and lacks training, which all puts him in a rather Mathilda-like position. Inevitably there is a threat of anarchy, which does come close. But as I say, Maia’s story is generally a positive one. Much reading pleasure is derived watching the young man growing into his role, under the guidance and protection of advisors and bodyguards. Maia is no revolutionary, but in just being who he is, a decent and friendly person who has seen the problems of ordinary life, there is real hope for positive change, despite aggressive attempts by the powers-that-be to maintain the status quo. This sense of potential is centred on a project to build a bridge across a large river dividing east from west. In scenes reminiscent of the controversies of Brexit, wealthy and powerful figures want to maintain their monopolies. It is the many ordinary merchants who stand to gain by bridging divides. And it is these people who are given renewed hope by their young emperor.The Goblin Emperor is a warm story, with a highly sympathetic central character, which has much to say about politics and leadership generally. I admit I did find the names confusing - characters can be referred to by first or last names, or by their titles, all of which might involve many syllables, umlauts and accents. This did leave me feeling a bit lost on occasion. But then Tolstoy had a habit of doing a similar thing and it didn’t do him any harm.A heartening read with interesting relevance to real events.

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.