Book Review: The Goblin Emperor
The Goblin Emperor by Katherine Addison is a steampunk fantasy about a half-goblin who unexpectedly inherits the elvish throne when his father and older half-brothers are all killed in an airship accident. The first thing I need to say about this book is, if you don't like fantasy words or have a hard time with unfamiliar words and names, this is not the book for you. Addison created a naming system for the book that is somewhat complicated, with prefixes and suffixes for different things, and how it works is not explained at all within the book. There is a glossary/explanation at the beginning, like a language primer, which helps, but with place names like Untheileneise'meire and people names like Edrahasivar used regularly, it will be a struggle.
With that said, I very much enjoyed this book. I'm a big language nerd, so while it did slow my reading down while I pronounced every fantasy word, it was a good experience and very gratifying to realize by the end that I could recognize the words and understand the prefixes and suffixes enough to recognize new places and people being introduced. The worldbuilding is dense, and has a very steep learning curve, but it felt real and deep, and it was nice, especially after the last book, which was not fantasy at all.
I have three quibbles with the book, however.
The first is, surprisingly like the last book I read, a lot of the plot and mystery stuff happens off the page and is then relayed to the narrator. This is quite frustrating. There was a particular part where I really wished the story was being told by a priestly detective character, investigating the airship accident, rather than the newly ascended emperor. That would have made an interesting, exciting story as this detective sniffed out clues, interrogated the dead (part of the almost invisible magic system), and worked to find the answers before something bad happened to the new emperor1.
Second, the main character, Maia, felt very passive, and didn't appear to have any real goal he was working toward as part of the arc of the novel. On top of that, I didn't feel there were any stakes at all. Maia didn't feel in physical danger for most of the book, so it wasn't a deathly stake, he didn't really stand to lose anything socially, or emotionally, or spiritually. Of course, there was a physical danger, and a social danger, but up until the 75% mark and then the 85% mark, those two dangers were totally invisible. So there wasn't much tension or suspense throughout the story.
The last thing was an undercurrent of de-emphasizing the importance of raising children as a worthwhile work. Firstly, the society has a very patriarchal (in the negative way) culture, even embedded within the language itself, and the only reason I could think for it to be like that was so that the main character would have to be the one put on the throne, and not one of his half-sisters or sisters-in-law. So the language at least felt a bit like English transposed, rather than its own unique thing. What I mean by that is, there was one word/suffix for addressing a man, but a word/suffix for addressing a married woman and a separate word/suffix for addressing an unmarried woman, just like in English. For a fantasy world where anything is possible, I really wish Addison had come up with something a little more original. The other part of this is, any time "get married or not" was brought up for some of the single women around the main character (and for someone mostly raised by a hateful, patriarchal guardian, I still can't quite understand where he got the idea to even ask these women what they wanted to do), there was always this annoying "women shouldn't just be for bearing children" idea, as if giving birth was the only thing involved and that it was an onerous task for women. I see this idea far too often in fantasy written by women (thanks, feminism) and it bothers me because sure, women can and should be allowed to do other things, but how can women not see that raising children is just as, if not more, important and just as, if not more, honorable? Anyway, that's a whole other blog post.
That all isn't to say it wasn't enjoyable or didn't pull me inexorably through the story, because it was and it did. I was interested to see how Maia engaged with the politics of his new position, how he learned to navigate his new obligations, and other things of the sort. But the story was missing an extra layer of active momentum from Maia and any sort of worry about how he will achieve his goal or what he will have to sacrifice in order to do so. And it's this lack of sacrifice in particular that meant I can't give it five stars.
But to end on a positive note, I was pleasantly surprised by some of the religious worldbuilding, and some of the philosophical ideas that are brought up through the worldbuilding and story. There's a subtle undercurrent of spirituality, as well as a minor anti-communism idea that I thought was interesting, especially within the context of other worldbuilding ideas.
In the end, I gave the book 4 out of 5 stars.
I must fight the urge to write that story myself.↩