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A review by mafiabadgers
The Hands of the Emperor by Victoria Goddard
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
3.0
First read 12/2024
I'm really struggling to pick a numeric rating for this one: on the one hand, it pulled me in very quickly, tugged at my heartstrings, and had a lot that appealed to my tastes; on the other hand, it was desperately bloated and self-indulgent. I've never read a book that needed an editor like this one.
Going by the blurb, this is a book centred on the growing relationship between Cliopher and the emperor. And to begin with it is! There's a strong sense of Kip's love for his home, his affection and respect for the emperor, the difficulty of peeling away layers of ritual and taboo that prevent the emperor from being seen as human, as opposed to a god. This is where the fantasy elements are at their best: 'touch me and you might die for magic reasons beyond my control' is a really good way to drive home the alienation of rulers by power and ceremony, in a way that couldn't be done in, say, a Ruritanian setting. And like The Prisoner of Zenda and The Goblin Emperor (to which it is often compared), this is a book very much concerned with what makes a good ruler. Unlike The Goblin Emperor, however, it is unwilling to dwell on the nastier moments. Gruesome punishments for those who have offended the emperor, people Kip has had executed, and the bestowing of military honours are all mentioned in passing, but neither they nor their consequences are ever dwelt on. I understand that this wants to be a cosy, feel-good book, but I think The Goblin Emperor managed to find a better balance between the heart-warming and the body-burning.
By the halfway point, the relationship between Kip and the emperor has very much taken a back seat. Instead, the focus shifts to the lack of respect Kip gets from the wider government and his family. That first one is odd, because pretty early on it becomes apparent that while he's an immensely powerful figure, the court doesn't particularly care to have anything to do with him. Later on we get a better understanding of how racist they are, how utterly incorruptible Kip is, and just how much they're inclined to focus exclusively on the issues that they think are important, but it's jarring to be introduced to this situation so early on and not have any real attempt made to reconcile it until the back half of the book. That's an awfully long way to read without an explanation! Likewise, it's difficult to match Kip's fussy—dare I say frumpy—self with the mentions he makes of running wild through the jungles of Vangavaye-ve as a youth, or sailing alone through the typhoons of the Wide Seas. Not to say that such a person could not do these things, or change drastically afterwards, but a better writer could have made these mesh together much better. Frankly, Goddard could have wrapped up at any point after the first, say, three-hundred pages, but the book just keeps on going, and develops an aimlessness that I never felt with The Goblin Emperor, although that too lacked a driving plot.
Kip's family don't really understand or respect what he does, and when the book takes up this theme, its method of exploring this doesn't really change from the initial Kip-emperor relationship stuff. While it's understandable that breaking down hundreds of years of royal protocol would be a slow, painful job, it was a mistake to use the same approach to make Kip's family respect him. About 45% of the way through we are treated to a series of incidents where people sing Kip's praises in front of his family (some without even realising he's there). It's terribly self-indulgent. Later on in the book, he goes home to visit his family, and we are promptly treated to half a dozen or so situations, back-to-back, which set him up to demonstrate his influence and achievements. Even two would have been bordering on excessive.
The book also presents many opportunities for Kip to browbeat racists into submission. It's fun at first, but my goodness does it start to drag. The entirety of chapter 55 consists of him ripping into some lord. It's also the bulk of chapter 50. While I agree with the general political gist, it feels like inviting someone over for a friendly discussion only to find that they insist on chanting slogans in your living room. Certainly, it was in character, but it felt unbearably didactic, and if I wanted to read an introduction to anti-colonial theory I could simply do that, unfettered by the demands of fiction.
Once this is all said and done, I think the book is too eager to have everyone acknowledge him. Changing the minds of a few lords is one thing. Softening the prejudices of the court is not unreasonable. But to announce that after hisfire dance, every member of the court "sank down into the obeisance that was intended to show the greatest honour and respect to someone not the Emperor. It had been done for generals coming in triumph, for heroes being recognized by the Emperor, for artists presenting the most sublime works of art" ... It's too much, too quickly, to be even remotely feasible. The same is true of the finale; certainly, Kip's family has gained a new respect for him by the time of the Viceroy ceremony , but that the entire community should spontaneously launch into the greatest possible Vangavayan honours ? Please. The book is easy to love but it also wants very desperately to be loved, and while it's not a comedy book it has an unfortunate tendency to take scenarios and characters a bit too far, as comedy does. Unfortunately, without situating itself in that genre, it comes across as silly, and makes the book less impactful.
I've frequently seen the book described as queernormative. It's true that there are a few LGBT characters hanging around in the background, but all the principle characters are men and, within this book, they're never concretely made out to be anything other than heterosexual. I believe this is negated in subsequent books, but Goddard has had a thousand odd pages to explore whatever the hell she wanted, a great deal of which was frankly unnecessary. Certainly, about a third of the way through the book, Kip makes a big speech to the emperor in which he declares his undying love. However, after several hundred more pages, he follows it up with a resounding 'no homo'. Admittedly this is in response to his family's speculation about their relationship, which is a difficult situation for anyone to be in, but even setting aside the instinctive brandishing of his heterosexual credentials in a 'queernorm' book, the book doesn't really do anything to negate this moment. The second half has barely anything to do with Kip and the emperor's interpersonal relationship, and then it wraps up with a big ceremony. Afterwards, a five-year-old asks if they've just been married, which is arguably the closest they've come to a big romantic moment in about seven hundred pages. If it weren't for the sequels, I'd be tempted to call it queerbaiting. As it is, it's incompetent.
It's a very strange book. I am thoroughly sick of it, glad I reached the end, and will not be reading the sequels. However, I also enjoyed it immensely, and really want more of it (not necessarily because I liked it, but because it felt unfulfilling). Huh.
I'm really struggling to pick a numeric rating for this one: on the one hand, it pulled me in very quickly, tugged at my heartstrings, and had a lot that appealed to my tastes; on the other hand, it was desperately bloated and self-indulgent. I've never read a book that needed an editor like this one.
Going by the blurb, this is a book centred on the growing relationship between Cliopher and the emperor. And to begin with it is! There's a strong sense of Kip's love for his home, his affection and respect for the emperor, the difficulty of peeling away layers of ritual and taboo that prevent the emperor from being seen as human, as opposed to a god. This is where the fantasy elements are at their best: 'touch me and you might die for magic reasons beyond my control' is a really good way to drive home the alienation of rulers by power and ceremony, in a way that couldn't be done in, say, a Ruritanian setting. And like The Prisoner of Zenda and The Goblin Emperor (to which it is often compared), this is a book very much concerned with what makes a good ruler. Unlike The Goblin Emperor, however, it is unwilling to dwell on the nastier moments. Gruesome punishments for those who have offended the emperor, people Kip has had executed, and the bestowing of military honours are all mentioned in passing, but neither they nor their consequences are ever dwelt on. I understand that this wants to be a cosy, feel-good book, but I think The Goblin Emperor managed to find a better balance between the heart-warming and the body-burning.
By the halfway point, the relationship between Kip and the emperor has very much taken a back seat. Instead, the focus shifts to the lack of respect Kip gets from the wider government and his family. That first one is odd, because pretty early on it becomes apparent that while he's an immensely powerful figure, the court doesn't particularly care to have anything to do with him. Later on we get a better understanding of how racist they are, how utterly incorruptible Kip is, and just how much they're inclined to focus exclusively on the issues that they think are important, but it's jarring to be introduced to this situation so early on and not have any real attempt made to reconcile it until the back half of the book. That's an awfully long way to read without an explanation! Likewise, it's difficult to match Kip's fussy—dare I say frumpy—self with the mentions he makes of running wild through the jungles of Vangavaye-ve as a youth, or sailing alone through the typhoons of the Wide Seas. Not to say that such a person could not do these things, or change drastically afterwards, but a better writer could have made these mesh together much better. Frankly, Goddard could have wrapped up at any point after the first, say, three-hundred pages, but the book just keeps on going, and develops an aimlessness that I never felt with The Goblin Emperor, although that too lacked a driving plot.
Kip's family don't really understand or respect what he does, and when the book takes up this theme, its method of exploring this doesn't really change from the initial Kip-emperor relationship stuff. While it's understandable that breaking down hundreds of years of royal protocol would be a slow, painful job, it was a mistake to use the same approach to make Kip's family respect him. About 45% of the way through we are treated to a series of incidents where people sing Kip's praises in front of his family (some without even realising he's there). It's terribly self-indulgent. Later on in the book, he goes home to visit his family, and we are promptly treated to half a dozen or so situations, back-to-back, which set him up to demonstrate his influence and achievements. Even two would have been bordering on excessive.
The book also presents many opportunities for Kip to browbeat racists into submission. It's fun at first, but my goodness does it start to drag. The entirety of chapter 55 consists of him ripping into some lord. It's also the bulk of chapter 50. While I agree with the general political gist, it feels like inviting someone over for a friendly discussion only to find that they insist on chanting slogans in your living room. Certainly, it was in character, but it felt unbearably didactic, and if I wanted to read an introduction to anti-colonial theory I could simply do that, unfettered by the demands of fiction.
Once this is all said and done, I think the book is too eager to have everyone acknowledge him. Changing the minds of a few lords is one thing. Softening the prejudices of the court is not unreasonable. But to announce that after his
I've frequently seen the book described as queernormative. It's true that there are a few LGBT characters hanging around in the background, but all the principle characters are men and, within this book, they're never concretely made out to be anything other than heterosexual. I believe this is negated in subsequent books, but Goddard has had a thousand odd pages to explore whatever the hell she wanted, a great deal of which was frankly unnecessary. Certainly, about a third of the way through the book, Kip makes a big speech to the emperor in which he declares his undying love. However, after several hundred more pages, he follows it up with a resounding 'no homo'. Admittedly this is in response to his family's speculation about their relationship, which is a difficult situation for anyone to be in, but even setting aside the instinctive brandishing of his heterosexual credentials in a 'queernorm' book, the book doesn't really do anything to negate this moment. The second half has barely anything to do with Kip and the emperor's interpersonal relationship, and then it wraps up with a big ceremony. Afterwards, a five-year-old asks if they've just been married, which is arguably the closest they've come to a big romantic moment in about seven hundred pages. If it weren't for the sequels, I'd be tempted to call it queerbaiting. As it is, it's incompetent.
It's a very strange book. I am thoroughly sick of it, glad I reached the end, and will not be reading the sequels. However, I also enjoyed it immensely, and really want more of it (not necessarily because I liked it, but because it felt unfulfilling). Huh.