(no subject)

[seekingferret]

I read the last of the non-puppy Hugo for Best Novel finalists, Katherine Addison's The Goblin Emperor. I thought it was really good. It's my favorite to win. (I probably will read the Puppy finalists, and the Kloos book as well, but I still may choose to No-Award them for political reasons even if I like them.)

I think I've read that Addison/Monette considers the book a standalone, which is fine- narratively it stands alone just fine- but the worldbuilding is exceptionally fine and detailed for a single volume secondary world fantasy. There are many regions and world elements that are hinted at in fascinating ways but not developed, all of which serves to make the world feel really immersive. Though it should be noted that the other way to look at it is to say that the novel strongly violates Randall Munroe's Fiction Rule of Thumb, and as GRRM says, it probably needed a map.

My favorite structural thing about The Goblin Emperor is that it's a fantasy world with no humans. This has been a thing I have wanted to see more of for a while. There are goblins and there are elves, and I think they hint at some trolls, but there are no humans and Addison is able to develop the tropey elves and goblins of classic High Fantasy into something richer and more unique by developing them without any consideration of their relationship to humans.

The complaint people have about the book is also its greatest virtue- it is a warm-hearted novel about finding people you can trust and building something together, and even though at times it looks like it's going to be full of courtly intrigue and betrayals, there are no surprising revelations of treachery. Everyone who appears trustworthy is, basically. Everyone who seems like a bad guy is a bad guy, to one degree or another. The result is that The Goblin Emperor is basically a story about a group of friends working together to figure out how government works.

Something I particularly liked about that was the book's curious preoccupation with and fascination with the way large institutions get enough momentum to sort of run on their own. Which of course isn't because institutions actually run on their own, it's because there are people doing things invisibly, and Addison spends a lot of time pulling those invisible pieces out and looking at them, and I thought that was a really interesting and effective approach. The questions Maia is asking throughout the book were things like "How does trade work?"; "How does an emperor influence trade?"; "How do cabinet meetings work"; "How does an emperor influence such meetings?"; "How does class work in an overtly tiered society, and how can one make it work better without offending the people with a vested interest in the system?" Maia brushing up against invisible limits and rules was endlessly fascinating.

Comments

[morbane]

I have varying degrees of agreement with each of your points here; however, with your last paragraph I have nothing but enthusiastic agreement. It's a particularly fine facet of Addison's worldbuilding, I think, that the book is simultaneously convincing at establishing a great big non-homogenous world, and applies that same enthusiasm for potential and detail to the everyday world our hero lives in. I loved the cabinet meetings. I loved everything about the layers of interaction with the opera singer (I keep thinking her name is Min, which is utterly unhelpful, as Min is a title). And yes: in large organisations, people want to keep doing the things they are doing, for simplicity and purpose and stability, and I loved that the plot relied on that.

The complaint people have about the book is also its greatest virtue- it is a warm-hearted novel about finding people you can trust and building something together, and even though at times it looks like it's going to be full of courtly intrigue and betrayals, there are no surprising revelations of treachery.

What did you think of that very late, clumsy stabbing attempt? I wasn't so impressed by it.

a story about a group of friends working together to figure out how government works

Hm. Maia was trying to figure out how government worked, but his personal network felt, to me, far too fragile to be called 'friends'.

[seekingferret]

What did you think of that very late, clumsy stabbing attempt? I wasn't so impressed by it.

When you call it clumsy, is that a critique directed at the would-be assassin or at the author?

I think I would say that Addison invests a lot of time over the course of the book establishing that Tethimar was both brutish and crude. I did not find it particularly surprising that he would attempt to kill Maia, and I do not find it particularly surprising that he would fail. In that regard, I think it contrasts quite sharply with the attempted coup, which is the sort of effort that has quite often succeeded in Earthly courts and could quite possibly have succeeded in this case had it not been for Maia's nephew.

On the other hand, I did feel that the timing of it as compared to the timing of the airship crash investigation was rather neat- there was no clear sign that I saw of what forced Tethimar's hand.

Hm. Maia was trying to figure out how government worked, but his personal network felt, to me, far too fragile to be called 'friends'.

Hmm... Well, I think there's a lot of the fact that we're seeing this tightly from Maia's perspective. In my judgement, there's a lot of evidence of the affection the people in his personal network feel for him long before he starts to realize it at the end of the book. I would also flip your first statement and suggest that Maia also teaches his personal network a lot about government. Addison uses a repeated motif early in the novel where Maia asks pretty basic questions about government and Csevet and crew are unable to even understand the question. She uses that device a lot less as the book moves on- partly this is because Maia becomes better at asking good questions, but partly it's also because Maia has taught his friends new ways of thinking about government, so that they start to understand his questions.

[morbane]

When you call it clumsy, is that a critique directed at the would-be assassin or at the author?

Well: that the assassin made such a clumsy attempt did not seem to reflect well on the author's plotting, to me. I agree that Tethimar was set up as brutish and crude. I would add further that Tethimar seemed to think he was far better at manipulating political situations than he, in fact, was, and so his continued failure to get anywhere with Maia must have been confusing and maddening. But walking up to the emperor with a knife - an emperor flanked by elite bodyguards - was a level of stupidity that I didn't expect from anyone in the book.

Addison uses a repeated motif early in the novel where Maia asks pretty basic questions about government and Csevet and crew are unable to even understand the question. Yes. Addison uses that device pretty deftly. What I mean was, when you say it's about a group of friends figuring out government - the figuring out government part is true, but I would not precisely recommend this book based on a group of friends doing something. Maia gets to a happier place, but he is desperately lonely - I'm particularly thinking of the subplot whereby his bodyguards tell him they can't be his friends.