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A review by gjamesmoses
The Goblin Emperor by Katherine Addison
2.0
I don't read books with the intention of hating them, you know. This thing was short-listed for a Hugo and the Nebula award. I came into it in good faith thinking I was going to get an enjoyable novel of manners (which also has elves in it). But, as you can see from my two-star rating...
The character work is terrible. The protagonist is pretty well-drawn (I found him more unlikable than I suspect maybe I was supposed to, but that's fine) but the rest of the cast is shockingly thin for a novel of this type. And this isn't the type of fantasy novel with lengthy battles or anything of the sort; it's just people talking, and if the people aren't interesting, you've got nothing, and most members of the cast are lucky if they have a single personality trait. There's absolutely no ambiguity either; you'd think that, in a novel about a character being thrust into a position of authority he's unready for, you could turn that into something (who's trying to use him for what ends?) but the author makes no efforts in that direction; the people who are nice to the protagonist are, in fact, Good and Noble. It's a wildly unfair comparison to make, but I spent this novel wishing I was reading Jane Austin instead; there was someone who could write a novel of manners with some damn characters in it.
The protagonist (I call him that because everyone in this novel has a fake fantasy name that makes them almost impossible to remember) is almost completely passive. He doesn't appear to have policy opinions, or to want to change anything, or really want to do much of anything. Any time anything that matters happens, it's someone else's doing. The investigation of his father's murder? Done off-screen by someone else. The bridge-building project that we're supposed to care about? Entirely someone else's baby (and the protagonist only casts one of the four votes that allows it to happen, making that vote a climactic tie-breaker doesn't fool me.) Physical danger? One of his body-guards can apparently use “death magic” to kill would-be assassins, a piece of world-building that I was totally unprepared for given the otherwise low-magic nature of this setting. If I had more faith in the author, I'd think that this novel about a largely useless emperor who somehow gets the credit for everyone else's hard work was a bit of satire, but I'm basically certain it isn't. On the other hand, the author chose to forgo a direct sequel and instead write spin-off novels about the dude who investigated the old emperor's murder, so I wonder if she did have an impression that Emperor What's-His-Name was pretty limited as a protagonist?
Because the protagonist isn't doing anything to drive a plot, there is no plot. Things happen, one after the other, with no relationship to what has come before. The attempted coup doesn't happen in the chapter it happens because events have led up to it; nothing led up to it. The investigation isn't completed when it is because events lead to it being complete; we're told it's happening, and when it's convenient for it to be done, it's done. The vote on the bridge could have happened half-way through the novel; it happens when it happens again with no relation to anything that came before it. The assassination attempt could have happened at any time, or not have happened at all, and it wouldn't have mattered. The alleged conflict that the emperor wants to view his bodyguards as friends, but cannot have friends as emperor, is resolved for no reason except that the author is sick of it and wanted a happy ending; its resolution, too, could have appeared anywhere, because nothing causes it.
This sucks, and it's embarrassing that it was nominated for a Nebula award. At least it lost. Annihilation is definitely a better novel, although given how different it is from this, I can't say you should read it instead. But seriously, have you read Pride and Prejudice? Go read that, I promise it's good.
The character work is terrible. The protagonist is pretty well-drawn (I found him more unlikable than I suspect maybe I was supposed to, but that's fine) but the rest of the cast is shockingly thin for a novel of this type. And this isn't the type of fantasy novel with lengthy battles or anything of the sort; it's just people talking, and if the people aren't interesting, you've got nothing, and most members of the cast are lucky if they have a single personality trait. There's absolutely no ambiguity either; you'd think that, in a novel about a character being thrust into a position of authority he's unready for, you could turn that into something (who's trying to use him for what ends?) but the author makes no efforts in that direction; the people who are nice to the protagonist are, in fact, Good and Noble. It's a wildly unfair comparison to make, but I spent this novel wishing I was reading Jane Austin instead; there was someone who could write a novel of manners with some damn characters in it.
The protagonist (I call him that because everyone in this novel has a fake fantasy name that makes them almost impossible to remember) is almost completely passive. He doesn't appear to have policy opinions, or to want to change anything, or really want to do much of anything. Any time anything that matters happens, it's someone else's doing. The investigation of his father's murder? Done off-screen by someone else. The bridge-building project that we're supposed to care about? Entirely someone else's baby (and the protagonist only casts one of the four votes that allows it to happen, making that vote a climactic tie-breaker doesn't fool me.) Physical danger? One of his body-guards can apparently use “death magic” to kill would-be assassins, a piece of world-building that I was totally unprepared for given the otherwise low-magic nature of this setting. If I had more faith in the author, I'd think that this novel about a largely useless emperor who somehow gets the credit for everyone else's hard work was a bit of satire, but I'm basically certain it isn't. On the other hand, the author chose to forgo a direct sequel and instead write spin-off novels about the dude who investigated the old emperor's murder, so I wonder if she did have an impression that Emperor What's-His-Name was pretty limited as a protagonist?
Because the protagonist isn't doing anything to drive a plot, there is no plot. Things happen, one after the other, with no relationship to what has come before. The attempted coup doesn't happen in the chapter it happens because events have led up to it; nothing led up to it. The investigation isn't completed when it is because events lead to it being complete; we're told it's happening, and when it's convenient for it to be done, it's done. The vote on the bridge could have happened half-way through the novel; it happens when it happens again with no relation to anything that came before it. The assassination attempt could have happened at any time, or not have happened at all, and it wouldn't have mattered. The alleged conflict that the emperor wants to view his bodyguards as friends, but cannot have friends as emperor, is resolved for no reason except that the author is sick of it and wanted a happy ending; its resolution, too, could have appeared anywhere, because nothing causes it.
This sucks, and it's embarrassing that it was nominated for a Nebula award. At least it lost. Annihilation is definitely a better novel, although given how different it is from this, I can't say you should read it instead. But seriously, have you read Pride and Prejudice? Go read that, I promise it's good.