soph (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
sophia_sol) wrote2014-08-24 08:59 pm
sophia_sol) wrote2014-08-24 08:59 pm
The Goblin Emperor, by Katherine Addison
Oh crap I have to find words to talk about this book, don't I. My problem: I stayed up till 2 am the other night finishing it so I collapsed into bed with feelings and then when I woke up the next morning I could no longer remember any of my specific thoughts. WHOOPS. Well, let me try.
First of all: I LOVE THIS BOOK. And it is extremely Sophia-bait, being a book about a good person trying to do good in a situation where he is in very much over his head, but by dint of a) being a good person and b) finding other good people to trust and care about, he forges ahead. Also fantasy politics. (Why am I into fictional politics? We just don't know.)
I will admit to getting somewhat lost in places with all the names and titles and terminology. For example: I had edocharei and nohecharei confused with each other for entirely too long before I realised they were TWO DIFFERENT WORDS for TWO DIFFERENT ROLES. But awww Maia's edocharei are super adorable and competent in the background, and aaaaaaahhhhhhh the importance of Maia's not-quite-friendship relationship with his nohecharei and how that's an important throughline in the book aaaahhh I'm so into it.
I feel like this is a book that will be easier for me to read on like the fifth reread or something when I'll have properly internalized all the names and relationships and so forth. But it was also very good as it was too.
I loved that the revolutionary dude who was the one who caused the sabotage of the airship had really good points even while being wrong. Because YEAH killing off the emperor and the emperor's first three sons in order to allow the half-goblin embarrassment to become the emperor has caused MASSIVE CHANGES FOR THE BETTER in the empire! The revolutionary dude does a cost-benefit analysis of the number of people who will die in the crash versus the number of people who die from the emperor not caring about the common people, and acts on the results of his calculations. It reminds me of thought problems from my informal logic course in first-year university: is it more wrong to kill people directly than to allow people to die from your inaction? At what point do the scales tip such that it is right to kill people if it means you keep other people from dying? Does that scale ever tip? These are hard questions and the versions that come up in logic class are pretty unbelievable, but here's a real-world (...for given definitions of "real") example and the revolutionary dude acts according to what he thinks is right. And Maia disagrees, and so do I, but....I still see the revolutionary dude's point and understand why he made the choice he did.
Moving on! I really love that the choice Maia makes over and over and over again is to trust people, and to reach out to people, and to care about people, and that's not the wrong choice. What a good-hearted book! I love it, and I love all the many people Maia's built up by the end of the book as being people he cares about to varying degrees, people he depends on, people he respects - there's so many great people in this book.
I...agh, idk, I'm pretty sure there's a bunch more stuff worth talking about in this book, but the morality logic problem and the interrelationships of people are the things that really stuck with me so that's what you're getting.
In conclusion: what a good book, I'm so glad it got talked up by so many different people on the internet so that I heard about it and realized that this was a book I needed to read.
First of all: I LOVE THIS BOOK. And it is extremely Sophia-bait, being a book about a good person trying to do good in a situation where he is in very much over his head, but by dint of a) being a good person and b) finding other good people to trust and care about, he forges ahead. Also fantasy politics. (Why am I into fictional politics? We just don't know.)
I will admit to getting somewhat lost in places with all the names and titles and terminology. For example: I had edocharei and nohecharei confused with each other for entirely too long before I realised they were TWO DIFFERENT WORDS for TWO DIFFERENT ROLES. But awww Maia's edocharei are super adorable and competent in the background, and aaaaaaahhhhhhh the importance of Maia's not-quite-friendship relationship with his nohecharei and how that's an important throughline in the book aaaahhh I'm so into it.
I feel like this is a book that will be easier for me to read on like the fifth reread or something when I'll have properly internalized all the names and relationships and so forth. But it was also very good as it was too.
I loved that the revolutionary dude who was the one who caused the sabotage of the airship had really good points even while being wrong. Because YEAH killing off the emperor and the emperor's first three sons in order to allow the half-goblin embarrassment to become the emperor has caused MASSIVE CHANGES FOR THE BETTER in the empire! The revolutionary dude does a cost-benefit analysis of the number of people who will die in the crash versus the number of people who die from the emperor not caring about the common people, and acts on the results of his calculations. It reminds me of thought problems from my informal logic course in first-year university: is it more wrong to kill people directly than to allow people to die from your inaction? At what point do the scales tip such that it is right to kill people if it means you keep other people from dying? Does that scale ever tip? These are hard questions and the versions that come up in logic class are pretty unbelievable, but here's a real-world (...for given definitions of "real") example and the revolutionary dude acts according to what he thinks is right. And Maia disagrees, and so do I, but....I still see the revolutionary dude's point and understand why he made the choice he did.
Moving on! I really love that the choice Maia makes over and over and over again is to trust people, and to reach out to people, and to care about people, and that's not the wrong choice. What a good-hearted book! I love it, and I love all the many people Maia's built up by the end of the book as being people he cares about to varying degrees, people he depends on, people he respects - there's so many great people in this book.
I...agh, idk, I'm pretty sure there's a bunch more stuff worth talking about in this book, but the morality logic problem and the interrelationships of people are the things that really stuck with me so that's what you're getting.
In conclusion: what a good book, I'm so glad it got talked up by so many different people on the internet so that I heard about it and realized that this was a book I needed to read.