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mafiabadgers's reviews
132 reviews
Love in a Fallen City by Eileen Chang
dark
emotional
reflective
sad
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
First read 01/2025
There's a decent introduction from translator Karen S. Kingsbury, giving some background on the circumstances of Chang's upbringing and the demands made by the political climate of her writing. Also some insight into Kingsbury's motives for translating in the way she has done.
I hadn't been expecting Chang's Preface to the Second Edition of Romances (an early collection of her work, from these stories come, barring Red Rose, White Rose) to be anything particularly remarkable; instead, its meditations on fame, on the enduring nature of Chinese folk opera, and the end of life as we know it were startlingly powerful and melancholic. By the time I reached the first novella, my hopes were high.
Aloeswood Incense: The First Brazier, five stars.
A young woman convinces her wealthy but scandalous aunt to fund her education. The implicit deal is that Weilong will be dressed up by her aunt, made to attend her parties, and will generally boost her social cachet. The story of being dragged into the power games and seedy life of the elite and coming off the worse for it is an old one, but here it's utterly engrossing. We see the evils of English colonial rule in Hong Kong paired off with the ailing mores of traditional Chinese society, crashing up against a fashionable Westernisation. Hearts are broken, reputations endangered, the young grapple with the old: this novella is everything literary fiction dreams of being.
'Jasmine Tea', four stars.
Today, Nie Chuanqing would be written as either an incel or a deeply repressed trans woman. Perhaps he's both. Either way, it's an intensely fragile masculinity explored in this story; a little uncomfortable to read, but compellingly done.
Love in a Fallen City, four stars.
A very confusing opening, with a panoply of characters referred to as Third Master, Third Mistress, Seventh Sister, and so on, but I gather this is a Chinese custom so I ought to give it a pass. Aside from Sixth Sister Bai Liusu, these characters soon drop out of the story, so it's really not so bad. Liusu, having divorced her abusive husband, now lives with her family, who have very little warmth for her, their disdain compounded by their financial hardships (as a point of reference, they retain their servants). She decides to remarry, and the novella is mostly about her attempts to secure not just the affections, but also the hand, of a well-off but somewhat fickle man, Fan Liuyuan. It feels not dissimilar to a Jane Austen, and I don't think that's entirely due to my ignorance: both this and, say, Pride and Prejudice are very much about women's economic insecurity in a male-dominated world, and their dependency on securing a good marriage. Love is far more cynical than Pride, though.
I don't know how it compares to the Chinese, but the English title is excellent, as fallen can refer either to a state of moral decay (making it an excellent name for the collection—it could easily be given to any of the stories), or a fallen city in the military sense. Eventually it is the 1941 fall of Hong Kong to the Japanese that breaks through social convention and fecklessness to bring about a lasting relationship between Liusu and Liuyuan—for a while. "They looked and saw each other, saw each other entirely. It was a mere moment of deep understanding, but it was enough to keep them happy together for a decade or so." The death of thousands brings about a sort of joy for the lucky couple, but in the end, Chang is far too good to close her story with a trite message about silver linings. This remains "a tale too desolate for words—oh! why go into it?"
The Golden Cangue, one star.
As the only part of the collection translated by Chang, I was looking forward to this one; unfortunately, despite having the shape of a good story, I found it very difficult to follow (at least partly due to my unfamiliarity with Chinese naming conventions, I'm sure). There were a few moments when the prose really worked, but for the most part it was unremarkable. Disappointing, but oodles of potential—overall an interesting piece, then, and a glowing commendation of Kingsbury's translation.
'Sealed Off', four stars.
"The military situation that creates this interlude is presented very obliquely; all that we know is that the authorities have shut down, or cordoned off, all or part of the city. The authorities, in this case, are probably the Japanese occupiers or (more likely) the Chinese puppet government that answered to them." (from Kingsbury's Notes) This is a really strong short story about the occupants of a tram that's been shut down on the street. They can't leave, but none of them are overly fussed about this. Whether or not they'll miss dinner seems to be their biggest concern. There's almost something apocalyptic about it, that life is continuing in its little ways while events with huge ramifications happen just out of view. It brings back memories of the pandemic, though of course, being shut in a tram with a group of strangers is the last thing you'd want under those circumstances. Two characters fall beautifully, passionately in love—but only for a moment. The tram moves on, and everything is left behind.
Red Rose, White Rose, three stars.
If you like stereotypically literary work about people having affairs with each other, you'll love this. It's not my thing. Lots of stuff about 'this is what men are like, this is what women are like', and I've never cared for that, but I have to concede it's well done.
There's a decent introduction from translator Karen S. Kingsbury, giving some background on the circumstances of Chang's upbringing and the demands made by the political climate of her writing. Also some insight into Kingsbury's motives for translating in the way she has done.
I hadn't been expecting Chang's Preface to the Second Edition of Romances (an early collection of her work, from these stories come, barring Red Rose, White Rose) to be anything particularly remarkable; instead, its meditations on fame, on the enduring nature of Chinese folk opera, and the end of life as we know it were startlingly powerful and melancholic. By the time I reached the first novella, my hopes were high.
Aloeswood Incense: The First Brazier, five stars.
A young woman convinces her wealthy but scandalous aunt to fund her education. The implicit deal is that Weilong will be dressed up by her aunt, made to attend her parties, and will generally boost her social cachet. The story of being dragged into the power games and seedy life of the elite and coming off the worse for it is an old one, but here it's utterly engrossing. We see the evils of English colonial rule in Hong Kong paired off with the ailing mores of traditional Chinese society, crashing up against a fashionable Westernisation. Hearts are broken, reputations endangered, the young grapple with the old: this novella is everything literary fiction dreams of being.
'Jasmine Tea', four stars.
Today, Nie Chuanqing would be written as either an incel or a deeply repressed trans woman. Perhaps he's both. Either way, it's an intensely fragile masculinity explored in this story; a little uncomfortable to read, but compellingly done.
Love in a Fallen City, four stars.
A very confusing opening, with a panoply of characters referred to as Third Master, Third Mistress, Seventh Sister, and so on, but I gather this is a Chinese custom so I ought to give it a pass. Aside from Sixth Sister Bai Liusu, these characters soon drop out of the story, so it's really not so bad. Liusu, having divorced her abusive husband, now lives with her family, who have very little warmth for her, their disdain compounded by their financial hardships (as a point of reference, they retain their servants). She decides to remarry, and the novella is mostly about her attempts to secure not just the affections, but also the hand, of a well-off but somewhat fickle man, Fan Liuyuan. It feels not dissimilar to a Jane Austen, and I don't think that's entirely due to my ignorance: both this and, say, Pride and Prejudice are very much about women's economic insecurity in a male-dominated world, and their dependency on securing a good marriage. Love is far more cynical than Pride, though.
I don't know how it compares to the Chinese, but the English title is excellent, as fallen can refer either to a state of moral decay (making it an excellent name for the collection—it could easily be given to any of the stories), or a fallen city in the military sense. Eventually it is the 1941 fall of Hong Kong to the Japanese that breaks through social convention and fecklessness to bring about a lasting relationship between Liusu and Liuyuan—for a while. "They looked and saw each other, saw each other entirely. It was a mere moment of deep understanding, but it was enough to keep them happy together for a decade or so." The death of thousands brings about a sort of joy for the lucky couple, but in the end, Chang is far too good to close her story with a trite message about silver linings. This remains "a tale too desolate for words—oh! why go into it?"
The Golden Cangue, one star.
As the only part of the collection translated by Chang, I was looking forward to this one; unfortunately, despite having the shape of a good story, I found it very difficult to follow (at least partly due to my unfamiliarity with Chinese naming conventions, I'm sure). There were a few moments when the prose really worked, but for the most part it was unremarkable. Disappointing, but oodles of potential—overall an interesting piece, then, and a glowing commendation of Kingsbury's translation.
'Sealed Off', four stars.
"The military situation that creates this interlude is presented very obliquely; all that we know is that the authorities have shut down, or cordoned off, all or part of the city. The authorities, in this case, are probably the Japanese occupiers or (more likely) the Chinese puppet government that answered to them." (from Kingsbury's Notes) This is a really strong short story about the occupants of a tram that's been shut down on the street. They can't leave, but none of them are overly fussed about this. Whether or not they'll miss dinner seems to be their biggest concern. There's almost something apocalyptic about it, that life is continuing in its little ways while events with huge ramifications happen just out of view. It brings back memories of the pandemic, though of course, being shut in a tram with a group of strangers is the last thing you'd want under those circumstances. Two characters fall beautifully, passionately in love—but only for a moment. The tram moves on, and everything is left behind.
Red Rose, White Rose, three stars.
If you like stereotypically literary work about people having affairs with each other, you'll love this. It's not my thing. Lots of stuff about 'this is what men are like, this is what women are like', and I've never cared for that, but I have to concede it's well done.
How to Disappear: Notes on Invisibility in a Time of Transparency by Akiko Busch
1.0
First read 01/2025
Shortly after I started, I jumped to the About the Author section at the back of the book, and was thoroughly unsurprised to see that Busch had been a magazine columnist for 20 years. This book has the feel of a newspaper opinion piece: drawing on whatever the writer's been reading this week, they prattle on for a little while without really having anything much to contribute. The chapters might be tolerable on their own, but together, it becomes a mind-numbing cycle of examples and adoration.
Busch doesn't really have a lot to say about invisibility, though she's clearly fascinated by it, so the fleeting accounts of work by philosophers and photographers, and stories of invisible ink or camouflaged fish, are invariably followed up by a few lines that can invariably be summarised as 'Pretty neat, huh?' When she really tries to get more out of the examples, she usually says something about "possibilities" and "modern living", but doesn't go into much depth on the implications of all this.
At no point does she consider that in order to talk about the invisible, it must be a visible invisible: we must see the camouflaged battleships in order to discuss their camouflage; we must know about the Icelandic Huldufólk in order to say that they are invisibly there. To be recognised as invisible is necessarily to be visible, and if there were such a thing as a true invisibility, we wouldn't be able to recognise it. For all the examples Busch brings in, it's a shame she hasn't included Freud and his work on the difficulty of consciously analysing something that we must be, by very definition, unconscious of.
Shortly after I started, I jumped to the About the Author section at the back of the book, and was thoroughly unsurprised to see that Busch had been a magazine columnist for 20 years. This book has the feel of a newspaper opinion piece: drawing on whatever the writer's been reading this week, they prattle on for a little while without really having anything much to contribute. The chapters might be tolerable on their own, but together, it becomes a mind-numbing cycle of examples and adoration.
Busch doesn't really have a lot to say about invisibility, though she's clearly fascinated by it, so the fleeting accounts of work by philosophers and photographers, and stories of invisible ink or camouflaged fish, are invariably followed up by a few lines that can invariably be summarised as 'Pretty neat, huh?' When she really tries to get more out of the examples, she usually says something about "possibilities" and "modern living", but doesn't go into much depth on the implications of all this.
At no point does she consider that in order to talk about the invisible, it must be a visible invisible: we must see the camouflaged battleships in order to discuss their camouflage; we must know about the Icelandic Huldufólk in order to say that they are invisibly there. To be recognised as invisible is necessarily to be visible, and if there were such a thing as a true invisibility, we wouldn't be able to recognise it. For all the examples Busch brings in, it's a shame she hasn't included Freud and his work on the difficulty of consciously analysing something that we must be, by very definition, unconscious of.
The One Who Eats Monsters by Casey Matthews
adventurous
dark
funny
fast-paced
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
First read 06/2023, reread 03/2024 & 01/2025
Almost as fun as the day I first read it. It's not Great Literature by a long shot, but it's got repressed lesbian mutual obsession, blood on the walls (and floors, and ceilings), absolutely cracking action, and very funny moments (some good enough that they still had me laughing out loud). It also has incomprehensible politics and a ridiculous habit of referring to Naomi as "the auburn-haired doe". Somehow this feels fitting for a book so inclined to disregard genre conventions.
We start off with a prologue that would work just as well to introduce a morally-grey antagonist as it does to introduce our protagonist, Ryn. The first chapter would be a very credible opening to an action novel. The international nuclear weapons smugglers then cease to be relevant to the plot, as the protagonist gets yanked off to school in America. Utterly absurd, but it's a paranormal YA romance, so I suppose she has to go to school to meet the love interest? Wrong. The love interest goes to a different school. They meet at the mall. This is the greatest book of all time. Being an immortal deity of vengeance, Ryn continues to go about her usual business i.e. murdering rapists. This is a world in which rapists seem to be lurking on the corner of every American street. Has Casey Matthews had her worldview grievously distorted by listening to too many true crime podcasts? Or are the slight alternative history elements that are hinted at in the background a tacit acknowledgement that, even without the supernatural aspects, this world is still patently ridiculous?
Anyway, the cops start investigating her antics, which in any other book would provide a story arc as they slowly close in on her, but here, in a truly implausible move,the soldier from chapter one is now a detective and immediately realises that Ryn's responsible. He's not too fussed though, because the guy totally deserved it. What is it about the 'hero who constantly murders rapists' thing that feels cheesy and ridiculous? It's not as though it isn't a deeply horrifying crime. It's not as though the book doesn't make them perfectly sinister. Maybe it's something about the desire for a purely bad person, in order that they can then be killed brutally with no moral qualms whatsoever; the inverse of that terrible scene in The Flash (2023) when Ezra Miller saved a bunch of babies. Who could possibly fail to root for a man who saves babies? They're so pure and innocent that surely their rescue must consitute a Truly Heroic Act! And so it stands to reason that the most honourable act of extreme and graphic violence should be directed against the most despised class of criminal. Unfortunately by taking things to such extremes, it becomes too obvious and verges on absurdity. It also means the book struggles to deal with anything more nuanced—the woman who hangs around with the big mean tattooed mafia rapists and enjoys their 'antics' gets off scot free, because if the protagonist mauled a woman, it wouldn't be quite so clear cut. It's not a very intersectional book.
This all sounds terribly negative. Please understand that I wouldn't read this book for a third time if I didn't love it, but I've settled comfortably into my affection and now I'm ready to start tearing it apart. Sometimes you have to go where the review takes you. Perhaps on my next reread I'll get very gushy.
And hoo boy, the politics! Naomi is firmly established as a paragon of goodness, and she's a socialist. But the person whose political opinions get the most space are those of her father, a "principled libertarian". The bad guys want him and his daughter dead:some delusionally believe he's the Antichrist, while some think that the solution to his pro-firearm policies is to hack up his daughter with a machete. Sure, they've been manipulated into it by nasty supernatural beings, but the roots of their feelings were already there. This principled libertarian is opposed to a bill about online surveillance for civil liberties reasons, but it's also acknowledged that the bill would make it easier for the police to track down bad guys (and this book is generally pretty enthusiastic about cops and American soldiers and their Great Noble Sacrifices). Now, the bill is supported by a secret ancient evil god, but there's a maybe-slightly-less-evil god who opposes it. And maybe the book just wants to add some action, but I don't think it's a coincidence that the Republican senator's daughter grabs his convenient handgun and starts shooting at the bad guy when he breaks into their house. Mind you, in a world where gods and monsters exist, and some beings are simply Better than others, guns cannot prevent crime by levelling the playing field, as gun rights activists like to argue. Ryn's constant rapist-murdering might be seen as a justification of vigilantism, but then her moral compass is as superhuman as the rest of her, so one could argue the point that only an honest-to-goodness deity could be trusted with that sort of power. The book definitely seems to have right wing leanings (I know Matthews does), but upon closer inspection, it's leaning in a whole lot of other directions as well. This, too, feels somehow fitting.
Anyway, the prose is not brilliant, but there's a definite sense that Matthews was trying. It comes through quite strongly in the elaborate similes. I appreciate the effort. There's something about the way the narration's focus jumps around in the first couple of chapters (perhaps I was too absorbed after that to notice) that I really liked. The characters are delightfully good fun. I think the last action scene makes everything a bit too big and loses its touch slightly, but all the rest are great. Ryn is a proper murdery monster and it really comes through. I'm already looking forward to next time.
Almost as fun as the day I first read it. It's not Great Literature by a long shot, but it's got repressed lesbian mutual obsession, blood on the walls (and floors, and ceilings), absolutely cracking action, and very funny moments (some good enough that they still had me laughing out loud). It also has incomprehensible politics and a ridiculous habit of referring to Naomi as "the auburn-haired doe". Somehow this feels fitting for a book so inclined to disregard genre conventions.
We start off with a prologue that would work just as well to introduce a morally-grey antagonist as it does to introduce our protagonist, Ryn. The first chapter would be a very credible opening to an action novel. The international nuclear weapons smugglers then cease to be relevant to the plot, as the protagonist gets yanked off to school in America. Utterly absurd, but it's a paranormal YA romance, so I suppose she has to go to school to meet the love interest? Wrong. The love interest goes to a different school. They meet at the mall. This is the greatest book of all time. Being an immortal deity of vengeance, Ryn continues to go about her usual business i.e. murdering rapists. This is a world in which rapists seem to be lurking on the corner of every American street. Has Casey Matthews had her worldview grievously distorted by listening to too many true crime podcasts? Or are the slight alternative history elements that are hinted at in the background a tacit acknowledgement that, even without the supernatural aspects, this world is still patently ridiculous?
Anyway, the cops start investigating her antics, which in any other book would provide a story arc as they slowly close in on her, but here, in a truly implausible move,
This all sounds terribly negative. Please understand that I wouldn't read this book for a third time if I didn't love it, but I've settled comfortably into my affection and now I'm ready to start tearing it apart. Sometimes you have to go where the review takes you. Perhaps on my next reread I'll get very gushy.
And hoo boy, the politics! Naomi is firmly established as a paragon of goodness, and she's a socialist. But the person whose political opinions get the most space are those of her father, a "principled libertarian". The bad guys want him and his daughter dead:
Anyway, the prose is not brilliant, but there's a definite sense that Matthews was trying. It comes through quite strongly in the elaborate similes. I appreciate the effort. There's something about the way the narration's focus jumps around in the first couple of chapters (perhaps I was too absorbed after that to notice) that I really liked. The characters are delightfully good fun. I think the last action scene makes everything a bit too big and loses its touch slightly, but all the rest are great. Ryn is a proper murdery monster and it really comes through. I'm already looking forward to next time.
Poetry & Swearing Vol. 1 by Robert Florence
2.0
First read 01/2025
It got off to an inauspicious beginning with 'hello / I am the book you are holding / hold me close to your heart / read me and when you are done with the reading / read me again from the start'. Oh god, I wish he'd stop trying to rhyme. It's awful, and detracts from what might otherwise sometimes be rather good poems. The book's structured by the little introductory pieces that come before each poem. In some cases, the context drastically influences the reading of the poem and makes them much better (notably 'My Spaceship was Docked at the Royal'), but at other points the tendency to explain the poems weakens them. The quality varies wildly, from the Batman poem (so good that it made me buy the book), to a rather embarrassing piece about Kanye West. I'm left with the rather sour feeling that the book didn't live up to its excellent title.
It got off to an inauspicious beginning with 'hello / I am the book you are holding / hold me close to your heart / read me and when you are done with the reading / read me again from the start'. Oh god, I wish he'd stop trying to rhyme. It's awful, and detracts from what might otherwise sometimes be rather good poems. The book's structured by the little introductory pieces that come before each poem. In some cases, the context drastically influences the reading of the poem and makes them much better (notably 'My Spaceship was Docked at the Royal'), but at other points the tendency to explain the poems weakens them. The quality varies wildly, from the Batman poem (so good that it made me buy the book), to a rather embarrassing piece about Kanye West. I'm left with the rather sour feeling that the book didn't live up to its excellent title.
Hashish: A Smuggler's Tale by Henry de Monfreid, Helen Buchanan Bell
Even after all his racism, he really had me going there! Up until the moment he said they had to be killed. It's almost like a practical joke, but it's a useful insight all the same. Anyway, the book is tremendously enjoyable, and if even half of it is true, then the so called realists have a lot to answer for.
adventurous
funny
informative
fast-paced
4.0
First read 01/2025
The blurb describes Henry de Monfreid as a "Nobleman, writer, adventurer and inspiration for the swashbuckling gun runner in the Adventures of Tintin". I think I should prefer to call him outrageously immoral, totally self-centred, and fantastically racist; that is to say, a fairly typical Frenchman.
It opens with the reminder that, as told in the previous volume of memoirs, a shipment of munitions that he had been smuggling had been seized, so the arms syndicate from whom he had acquired them on credit was not best pleased with him. This is more or less how George Lucas introduced Han Solo in Episode IV of Star Wars, and if Han Solo were an early-Twentieth Century Frenchman, he'd probably be a lot like de Monfreid. In fact, I wouldn't be at all surprised to learn that de Monfreid was an influence on George Macdonald Fraser's Flashman—they have that same scoundrelly feel to them, though Flashman doesn't have de Monfreid's passion for adventure. And what a passion it is! As much as he relishes the thought of making hearty profits from his eight cases of hashish, actually being an intrepid drug smuggler seems to excite him just as much, and indeed he admits that he often imagines himself as a cinema hero to spur on his failing courage. To set off his exploits, he often goes on philosophical tangents about the blighting of Nature by Man and Machinery, or the racial failings of Greeks and Egyptians. Some of these digressions have aged better than others, it is true, but much of the racism is so far removed from the sort that is prevalent today that the best response is simply to laugh at it.
Aside from the entertainment value, which is considerable, this book's greatest strength is in resurrecting a time long past. You can almost smell the tobacco smoke drifting from roadside cafés, or feel the grittiness of the pearls as you 'gift' them to corrupt officials. Marxists may also appreciate his commentary on English imperialism:
The blurb describes Henry de Monfreid as a "Nobleman, writer, adventurer and inspiration for the swashbuckling gun runner in the Adventures of Tintin". I think I should prefer to call him outrageously immoral, totally self-centred, and fantastically racist; that is to say, a fairly typical Frenchman.
It opens with the reminder that, as told in the previous volume of memoirs, a shipment of munitions that he had been smuggling had been seized, so the arms syndicate from whom he had acquired them on credit was not best pleased with him. This is more or less how George Lucas introduced Han Solo in Episode IV of Star Wars, and if Han Solo were an early-Twentieth Century Frenchman, he'd probably be a lot like de Monfreid. In fact, I wouldn't be at all surprised to learn that de Monfreid was an influence on George Macdonald Fraser's Flashman—they have that same scoundrelly feel to them, though Flashman doesn't have de Monfreid's passion for adventure. And what a passion it is! As much as he relishes the thought of making hearty profits from his eight cases of hashish, actually being an intrepid drug smuggler seems to excite him just as much, and indeed he admits that he often imagines himself as a cinema hero to spur on his failing courage. To set off his exploits, he often goes on philosophical tangents about the blighting of Nature by Man and Machinery, or the racial failings of Greeks and Egyptians. Some of these digressions have aged better than others, it is true, but much of the racism is so far removed from the sort that is prevalent today that the best response is simply to laugh at it.
Aside from the entertainment value, which is considerable, this book's greatest strength is in resurrecting a time long past. You can almost smell the tobacco smoke drifting from roadside cafés, or feel the grittiness of the pearls as you 'gift' them to corrupt officials. Marxists may also appreciate his commentary on English imperialism:
If the English are sowing drachmae in Greece, it is probably in order to reap pounds sterling elsewhere. They have probably some interest in preventing your country from producing hashish. The question of morality is only the classic excuse, most valuable as an argument, since it is unanswerable. These high principles did not prevent the English from methodically poisoning a magnificent race, the Red Indians, with alcohol in order to seize their country. The same clergymen who are today declaiming in America against the sale of intoxicating liquor lavished the deadly fire-water on the natives, accompanied, it is true, by Bibles and sermons. Their bodies were killed in the name of the Great Nation, but their souls were saved in the name of the Lord, so John Citizen’s conscience was clear. I’m only mentioning all this to indicate the importance which must be given to philanthropic movements on the part of governments. Anyhow, I don’t blame the English for killing the Red Indians as they did. Since they had to be killed, it was preferable to do it painlessly by selling death by the glass. You see how natural it is to suspect that the English have a commercial interest in stopping the Greeks from growing hemp. Hashish must exist in one of their colonies.
Even after all his racism, he really had me going there! Up until the moment he said they had to be killed. It's almost like a practical joke, but it's a useful insight all the same. Anyway, the book is tremendously enjoyable, and if even half of it is true, then the so called realists have a lot to answer for.
Min Zemerin's Plan by Katherine Addison
3.0
First read 01/2025
Very short, and enjoyable, but probably not of interest to anyone who hasn't read The Witness for the Dead. Available here.
Very short, and enjoyable, but probably not of interest to anyone who hasn't read The Witness for the Dead. Available here.
My Chronicles of Osreth reviews:
The Goblin Emperor
The Goblin Emperor
The Grief of Stones by Katherine Addison
2.0
First read 01/2025
Very little to say about this one. Once again, there were many character names in quick succession, and no glossary. None of the characters really jumped out at me; the plot was only passably enjoyable; the setting could have been drawn more strongly.
My Chronicles of Osreth reviews:
The Goblin Emperor
Very little to say about this one. Once again, there were many character names in quick succession, and no glossary. None of the characters really jumped out at me; the plot was only passably enjoyable; the setting could have been drawn more strongly.
My Chronicles of Osreth reviews:
The Goblin Emperor
Lora Selezh by Katherine Addison
3.0
First read 01/2025
Starting to think I'm getting pretty good at this reviewing thing, because I said that The Witness for the Dead would be better in third-person, and lo and behold, when we get third-person narration of his work, it improves. I would have liked more description of the world, but it is only a short story.
Starting to think I'm getting pretty good at this reviewing thing, because I said that The Witness for the Dead would be better in third-person, and lo and behold, when we get third-person narration of his work, it improves. I would have liked more description of the world, but it is only a short story.
My Chronicles of Osreth reviews:
The Goblin Emperor
The Goblin Emperor
The Witness for the Dead by Katherine Addison
mysterious
- Loveable characters? No
2.0
First read 01/2025
When I first read The Goblin Emperor, I borrowed it from my local libary, so for my reread I picked up a physical copy of my own. I made sure to get it in a nice edition, and ensured that I could get nice, matching editions of the sequels, if they were good. I do not think I will not be doing so.
The Goblin Emperor was rather sparse when it came to descriptions of characters or the environment, but it was almost exclusively set in the halls of the Untheileneise Court, and it had a hearty glossary to help me keep track of the many, many unfamiliar names. The Witness for the Dead is the first book to be set in the wider world of Osreth, and this lack of description really, really hurt. There are mentions of airships, and factories, and putting coins into the meter to turn on the gas hob, but without more details about what these things look like it's difficult to envision it all. And it doesn't even have a glossary! It really could have done with a glossary.
In some ways, it feels very much like a videogame. Thara Celehar's job has him returning to his office in the mornings to pick up newquests petitions for help, then he spends the afternoons tackling them. Some are small. Some seem small and spill out into plotlines of their own. He deals with various murders, trials, investigations, petty power squabbles... Something about the rhythm of it all feels very gamey. It doesn't help that he returns home each night and feeds the cats, and this is couched in almost the same language each time.
That's not a criticism, because it drives the point home effectively. Celehar is a miserable man, and his life is empty outside his work. Unfortunately, this means it's a little difficult to get to like him, and he's not interesting enough to really hold my attention without being likeable. He's depressed, and it doesn't make for an engaging book.
This gives us two reasons, then, why this book would have benefited mightily from third-person narration. It would have allowed for vastly more description (it's certainly possible to be light on detail and still do good high fantasy first-person—just look at Steven Brust—but Addison doesn't seem to have it down), and a bit more distance from Celehar's lifelessness would have allowed his character to come through without dragging down the tone of the book. The book is not wholly unenjoyable, but I really struggled to connect with it. On top of that, the white-elves-black-goblins thing is a clunky way to address race. Addison barely got away with it as a crude metaphor in The Goblin Emperor, but scaled up to the rest of the world, it feels hackneyed and borderline offensive. No doubt I'll reread The Goblin Emperor in the future, but I can't see myself returning to this.
When I first read The Goblin Emperor, I borrowed it from my local libary, so for my reread I picked up a physical copy of my own. I made sure to get it in a nice edition, and ensured that I could get nice, matching editions of the sequels, if they were good. I do not think I will not be doing so.
The Goblin Emperor was rather sparse when it came to descriptions of characters or the environment, but it was almost exclusively set in the halls of the Untheileneise Court, and it had a hearty glossary to help me keep track of the many, many unfamiliar names. The Witness for the Dead is the first book to be set in the wider world of Osreth, and this lack of description really, really hurt. There are mentions of airships, and factories, and putting coins into the meter to turn on the gas hob, but without more details about what these things look like it's difficult to envision it all. And it doesn't even have a glossary! It really could have done with a glossary.
In some ways, it feels very much like a videogame. Thara Celehar's job has him returning to his office in the mornings to pick up new
That's not a criticism, because it drives the point home effectively. Celehar is a miserable man, and his life is empty outside his work. Unfortunately, this means it's a little difficult to get to like him, and he's not interesting enough to really hold my attention without being likeable. He's depressed, and it doesn't make for an engaging book.
This gives us two reasons, then, why this book would have benefited mightily from third-person narration. It would have allowed for vastly more description (it's certainly possible to be light on detail and still do good high fantasy first-person—just look at Steven Brust—but Addison doesn't seem to have it down), and a bit more distance from Celehar's lifelessness would have allowed his character to come through without dragging down the tone of the book. The book is not wholly unenjoyable, but I really struggled to connect with it. On top of that, the white-elves-black-goblins thing is a clunky way to address race. Addison barely got away with it as a crude metaphor in The Goblin Emperor, but scaled up to the rest of the world, it feels hackneyed and borderline offensive. No doubt I'll reread The Goblin Emperor in the future, but I can't see myself returning to this.
My Chronicles of Osreth reviews:
The Goblin Emperor
The Goblin Emperor
The Goblin Emperor by Katherine Addison
emotional
hopeful
reflective
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
4.0
First read 05/2024, reread 01/2025
The first time I read The Goblin Emperor, I finished it in a day. I thought that, with this being a reread, I could take my time, get some work done. Unfortunately it's clocked in at under 24 hours and no work has been accomplished. Damn.
You could read it as a political fantasy, in the vein of stories like The Prisoner of Zenda, wherein a person of good character comes to a position of immense power and procedes to do an incredible job, much better than the person who was meant to hold that position. It is a dream of competent, caring political leadership. This, perhaps, is the fantasy element, more than the elves and the magics, and I daresay it is no coincidence that the ascension is usually the result of a rather improbable string of events. (TGE is towards the more plausible end, whena Duke's assassination plot is accelerated without his knowledge by one of the workers he's corrupted, whose own political convictions run counter to the Duke's. )
The book, more than anything else, is about Maia as a character and his development into a bold and confident ruler. Not that he reaches that point (nor should he, given the timescale of the book, which covers—I think—less than a year), but the groundwork has clearly been laid for a long and successful reign. If you tried to list off plot events, you'd struggle to come up with much, but Addison does such a tremendous job of overwhelming Maia with issues that need to be tended to that it feels a very busy book. Some of the most notable events come with no real lead-up, since efforts have been made to conceal them from Maia, and they don't come with as much drama as you'd expect from a novel of political intrigue; this is very much a book about the everyday business of ruling, not about alliances and assassinations.
Since one of the major themes (perhaps the biggest) has to do with the distance between the emperor and those who serve him, it doesn't allow any of the other characters to take up a lot of space. But in a way, the whole thrust of the book is about encouraging Maia to look through the layers of protocol and tradition to see the very real affection that people have for him and each other. The book is inviting us to look at the intriguing little character sketches and fill in details about what they're like, what they're thinking and feeling. It's a very elegant mode of storytelling. Csethiro Ceredin takes up only about a page of the novel, if you put all her little moments together, and yet I like her an awful lot.
And there are a lot of fleeting characters, with names usually preceded by the honorific ([Dach']Os)Min/Mer(rem), to denote gender and degree of rank and marriage status (if female). Fortunately the book opens with a guide to pronunciation and significance, followed by a twelve page glossary. Standard fantasy novel shenanigans. No map, though, as the book is almost entirely situated within the walls of the Untheileneise Court. The linguistic elements are deftly executed, but not spectacular.
Is it designed to tug on the heartstrings? Very much so. Is it sweet and good-natured to the point of excess? Also true. Does it seem to have acquired a special place in my heart? Looks that way. I can't quite bring myself to give it that coveted five star rating, but no doubt I'll be reading it again.
The first time I read The Goblin Emperor, I finished it in a day. I thought that, with this being a reread, I could take my time, get some work done. Unfortunately it's clocked in at under 24 hours and no work has been accomplished. Damn.
You could read it as a political fantasy, in the vein of stories like The Prisoner of Zenda, wherein a person of good character comes to a position of immense power and procedes to do an incredible job, much better than the person who was meant to hold that position. It is a dream of competent, caring political leadership. This, perhaps, is the fantasy element, more than the elves and the magics, and I daresay it is no coincidence that the ascension is usually the result of a rather improbable string of events. (TGE is towards the more plausible end, when
The book, more than anything else, is about Maia as a character and his development into a bold and confident ruler. Not that he reaches that point (nor should he, given the timescale of the book, which covers—I think—less than a year), but the groundwork has clearly been laid for a long and successful reign. If you tried to list off plot events, you'd struggle to come up with much, but Addison does such a tremendous job of overwhelming Maia with issues that need to be tended to that it feels a very busy book. Some of the most notable events come with no real lead-up, since efforts have been made to conceal them from Maia, and they don't come with as much drama as you'd expect from a novel of political intrigue; this is very much a book about the everyday business of ruling, not about alliances and assassinations.
Since one of the major themes (perhaps the biggest) has to do with the distance between the emperor and those who serve him, it doesn't allow any of the other characters to take up a lot of space. But in a way, the whole thrust of the book is about encouraging Maia to look through the layers of protocol and tradition to see the very real affection that people have for him and each other. The book is inviting us to look at the intriguing little character sketches and fill in details about what they're like, what they're thinking and feeling. It's a very elegant mode of storytelling. Csethiro Ceredin takes up only about a page of the novel, if you put all her little moments together, and yet I like her an awful lot.
And there are a lot of fleeting characters, with names usually preceded by the honorific ([Dach']Os)Min/Mer(rem), to denote gender and degree of rank and marriage status (if female). Fortunately the book opens with a guide to pronunciation and significance, followed by a twelve page glossary. Standard fantasy novel shenanigans. No map, though, as the book is almost entirely situated within the walls of the Untheileneise Court. The linguistic elements are deftly executed, but not spectacular.
Is it designed to tug on the heartstrings? Very much so. Is it sweet and good-natured to the point of excess? Also true. Does it seem to have acquired a special place in my heart? Looks that way. I can't quite bring myself to give it that coveted five star rating, but no doubt I'll be reading it again.
My Chronicles of Osreth reviews:
The Goblin Emperor
The Goblin Emperor