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4.16 AVERAGE
4.16 AVERAGE
adventurous
hopeful
inspiring
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
This book's strength lies in its protagonist Maia. He is kind and noble despite the many chances offered to him to exact vengeance on the people who hurt him. I think in a sea of modern fantasy novels where you are asked to root for "morally grey" antiheros, it's refreshing to read about a character who does not want power and still tries to do the best he can with it for the people he rules over. As for critiques, I wish we could have seen a bit more of his relationship develop with Ceredin. I also found the vast array of characters and honourific conventions confusing to keep up with at times, which undermined some of the plot reveals because I couldn't keep the characters straight in my head. Overall, a solid cozy read and I look forward to continuing the series with The Witness for the Dead.
I don't know how to rate you.
I've tried to read you four times before now, and I've bounced off every time, anywhere from the 20% mark to the 50% mark. Something about you, you tangled tale with your outrageously complex prose and your multitude of complex characters and your thorny descriptions of the universe and politics and policies and tradition...simply, something about you baffles and mires.
And that is the point, for you are a story about a young man, a teenager basically, who has been abused and frightened and abandonded for almost all his life, suddenly becoming the most high and esteemed political figure in the land.
And that's fine, but that doesn't make you any more palatable, and no matter how much I wanted to read this, knew it was my sort of book, I couldn't do it.
Until I got my hands on the audiobook, and everything changed.
I didn't have to struggle with character names or descriptions, I didn't have to interpret what I was reading through the lens of bafflement and uncertainty, but I could just become lost in it, as I was meant to while reading but could never really fully engage with prior. The prose swept me along instead of pushing me away, and I loved its twists and turns and curves. Finally, finally, I finished this book, and it took the audiobook to take me there. I cringed with Maia, and celebrated his successes and growing confidences, and felt deliciously happy once all was said and done.
Even the audiobook was challenging at times. This is a complex book, and the cast and all their different ideas and tricks is really a lot to handle. But the end result, if you let it take you on its merry way at its own pace, is well worth it.
And now I'd like to listen to it again, because I know I missed so much, and I want it all. I want to understand every facet of this glittering, beautiful, deadly place, with precious Maia at its center spinning within it.
(also it has earspressions, in which oversized goblin and elf ears can relate emotion, and that is without a doubt my favorite visual cue in any media and it's delicious to see it in text form, which I hadn't actually thought possible)
I've tried to read you four times before now, and I've bounced off every time, anywhere from the 20% mark to the 50% mark. Something about you, you tangled tale with your outrageously complex prose and your multitude of complex characters and your thorny descriptions of the universe and politics and policies and tradition...simply, something about you baffles and mires.
And that is the point, for you are a story about a young man, a teenager basically, who has been abused and frightened and abandonded for almost all his life, suddenly becoming the most high and esteemed political figure in the land.
And that's fine, but that doesn't make you any more palatable, and no matter how much I wanted to read this, knew it was my sort of book, I couldn't do it.
Until I got my hands on the audiobook, and everything changed.
I didn't have to struggle with character names or descriptions, I didn't have to interpret what I was reading through the lens of bafflement and uncertainty, but I could just become lost in it, as I was meant to while reading but could never really fully engage with prior. The prose swept me along instead of pushing me away, and I loved its twists and turns and curves. Finally, finally, I finished this book, and it took the audiobook to take me there. I cringed with Maia, and celebrated his successes and growing confidences, and felt deliciously happy once all was said and done.
Even the audiobook was challenging at times. This is a complex book, and the cast and all their different ideas and tricks is really a lot to handle. But the end result, if you let it take you on its merry way at its own pace, is well worth it.
And now I'd like to listen to it again, because I know I missed so much, and I want it all. I want to understand every facet of this glittering, beautiful, deadly place, with precious Maia at its center spinning within it.
(also it has earspressions, in which oversized goblin and elf ears can relate emotion, and that is without a doubt my favorite visual cue in any media and it's delicious to see it in text form, which I hadn't actually thought possible)
lighthearted
mysterious
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
فيها شيء ممتع، مش عارفة هو انتصار الخير على الشر، هو قوة الصداقة، ممتعة بالرغم من بساطتها...جيدة لتمضية الوقت.
First: please imagine this review written in this font.
Second: so, goblins, eh!
Third: I read this as part of the Nebula Nominees for Best Novel list, and would probably have missed it otherwise. Despite what I am about to say, I was happy to be given a chance to read it! Because, different!
So, The Goblin Emperor is a fairly charming, one-note high fantasy book about Maia, a half-elf, half-goblin teen kid who ends up - thanks to a blimp accident which kills his dad and everyone else ahead of him in line for the throne - becoming the all-powerful emperor of Elflands. Or part of Elflands? There is a map somewhere (of course there is! high fantasy!). Imagine the emperor and his empireness as a sort of late 19th century Russian thing, a la Romanovs. There are blimps, steam, iron and other "steampunk" (STEAMPUNK!!!, the jacket cover screams in advertisement) things. People have notable, expressive, possibly pointy ears.
Anyway, Maia is a Sensitive Soul. He's been raised outside of the Palatial Palace by Setheris (NOT Severus, one needs to remind oneself), his evil tutor who berated him and abused him and never bothered to give him any helpful hints about how to be an emperor. Maia is thus woefully unprepared when it comes time to be crowned, woefully unprepared to even survive socially at court, and he's also super insecure, and basically a woobie. If this feels like fanfic, yeah. It felt like fanfic to me, at least in terms of his characterization.
The rest of the book is about courtly intrigues, both petty and grand, and if that stuff rocks your boat, cool. I found it mostly dull, and very predictable. What saves the book is its general humanistic charm: Maia's entourage is mostly lovable, from the lovable secretary man to the lovable bodyguards (1 wizard guy, 1 soldier guy) and so on. There is a visit from Maia's full-goblin grandfather, the king/ruler/pasha of the neighboring goblin kingdom. There is a fair amount of Jane Austen-style "human drama", if you will, about people's feelings and relationships. Again, I say, if this sounds good to you, you will enjoy this stuff, because it's very satisfying on those dimensions.
I myself! However! Found it pretty blah, and it tried my patience after a while. In particular, I was sooooo(ooo) disappointed by the kinda lame "let's be socially liberal!" attempts. i.e. Elflands are a land where elves are white (like snow), goblins are black (like charcoal), mixed people are gray (like slate, aluminum, etc.), men wear the pants, and gay stuff is like whaaaat totally not cool. Maia, being Maia our Sensitive Hero, is thus: conflicted about his ethnic heritage, kinda thinking maybe women can be more than babymakers, and kinda OK with gay folks. He makes some kinda small-fry attempts to fix the homophobic sexism around him. Good? Yo, I was disappointed. The book really missed a golden opportunity here (as, well, so many, many sci-fi/fantasy books do), in that, instead of just making Elflands a matriarchal, bisexual empire full of purple-skinned oppressors and polka-dotted oppressees, we instead had to suffer through a tediously usual replication of our own social mores. Again! Sci-fi/fantasy! Should be visionary! And yet - on the social stuff, such failure of vision. So I found this stuff lame, and I worry about the little girls reading about the little girls who do nothing but act cute, or the grown women who are basically all either vamps or butch.
I was also miffed by the "evil Marxists coming to kill us all" assassination subplot/allegory, but I guess that fits in with the emperors-as-Romanovs stuff? Oh, and another failure of vision: imagine, in your mind, what a foreign dignitary from a foreign land would look like? One who is introduced as pasha-like? Do you imagine a very large, very bearded man who booms, bellows, blusters, is gruff and so on? Yes, so does everyone else, so it was kinda cliche to have the goblin king be basically that.
OK, I will stop abusing this book. It is not bad, and I'm sure most people will forgive it these things and be charmed by the Austeny Romanov courtly drama stuff. For me, though - meh. I wanted more.
Second: so, goblins, eh!
Third: I read this as part of the Nebula Nominees for Best Novel list, and would probably have missed it otherwise. Despite what I am about to say, I was happy to be given a chance to read it! Because, different!
So, The Goblin Emperor is a fairly charming, one-note high fantasy book about Maia, a half-elf, half-goblin teen kid who ends up - thanks to a blimp accident which kills his dad and everyone else ahead of him in line for the throne - becoming the all-powerful emperor of Elflands. Or part of Elflands? There is a map somewhere (of course there is! high fantasy!). Imagine the emperor and his empireness as a sort of late 19th century Russian thing, a la Romanovs. There are blimps, steam, iron and other "steampunk" (STEAMPUNK!!!, the jacket cover screams in advertisement) things. People have notable, expressive, possibly pointy ears.
Anyway, Maia is a Sensitive Soul. He's been raised outside of the Palatial Palace by Setheris (NOT Severus, one needs to remind oneself), his evil tutor who berated him and abused him and never bothered to give him any helpful hints about how to be an emperor. Maia is thus woefully unprepared when it comes time to be crowned, woefully unprepared to even survive socially at court, and he's also super insecure, and basically a woobie. If this feels like fanfic, yeah. It felt like fanfic to me, at least in terms of his characterization.
The rest of the book is about courtly intrigues, both petty and grand, and if that stuff rocks your boat, cool. I found it mostly dull, and very predictable. What saves the book is its general humanistic charm: Maia's entourage is mostly lovable, from the lovable secretary man to the lovable bodyguards (1 wizard guy, 1 soldier guy) and so on. There is a visit from Maia's full-goblin grandfather, the king/ruler/pasha of the neighboring goblin kingdom. There is a fair amount of Jane Austen-style "human drama", if you will, about people's feelings and relationships. Again, I say, if this sounds good to you, you will enjoy this stuff, because it's very satisfying on those dimensions.
I myself! However! Found it pretty blah, and it tried my patience after a while. In particular, I was sooooo(ooo) disappointed by the kinda lame "let's be socially liberal!" attempts. i.e. Elflands are a land where elves are white (like snow), goblins are black (like charcoal), mixed people are gray (like slate, aluminum, etc.), men wear the pants, and gay stuff is like whaaaat totally not cool. Maia, being Maia our Sensitive Hero, is thus: conflicted about his ethnic heritage, kinda thinking maybe women can be more than babymakers, and kinda OK with gay folks. He makes some kinda small-fry attempts to fix the homophobic sexism around him. Good? Yo, I was disappointed. The book really missed a golden opportunity here (as, well, so many, many sci-fi/fantasy books do), in that, instead of just making Elflands a matriarchal, bisexual empire full of purple-skinned oppressors and polka-dotted oppressees, we instead had to suffer through a tediously usual replication of our own social mores. Again! Sci-fi/fantasy! Should be visionary! And yet - on the social stuff, such failure of vision. So I found this stuff lame, and I worry about the little girls reading about the little girls who do nothing but act cute, or the grown women who are basically all either vamps or butch.
I was also miffed by the "evil Marxists coming to kill us all" assassination subplot/allegory, but I guess that fits in with the emperors-as-Romanovs stuff? Oh, and another failure of vision: imagine, in your mind, what a foreign dignitary from a foreign land would look like? One who is introduced as pasha-like? Do you imagine a very large, very bearded man who booms, bellows, blusters, is gruff and so on? Yes, so does everyone else, so it was kinda cliche to have the goblin king be basically that.
OK, I will stop abusing this book. It is not bad, and I'm sure most people will forgive it these things and be charmed by the Austeny Romanov courtly drama stuff. For me, though - meh. I wanted more.
emotional
hopeful
mysterious
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
emotional
reflective
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
adventurous
dark
emotional
hopeful
mysterious
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes