The Goblin Emperor, by Katherine Addison

[sophia_sol]

I don't even know how to encapsulate how much I love this book. I JUST LOVE IT SO MUCH. I remember when I read it the first time one of my early reactions was a deep certainty that this would be a book I would want to reread many times over the course of my life. I am getting started on that now! And gosh I love everything. I have so many feels about it all!

Looks like last time I read this book I didn't manage to write a particularly coherent review, and I'm afraid this time won't be any better. In fact I'm just going to end here. Urgh. WHAT ARE WORDS, HOW DO YOU SAY THINGS.

Comments

[genarti]

Yessssssss let's talk about this book! I read it recently and I LIKED IT LOTS AND LOTS.

[sophia_sol]

Yessss I would be very happy to talk about it with you! I'm just so pleased with everything this book chooses to be. What was your favourite part? Who was your favourite character? Wasn't Maia amazing? Did it also take you a while to get some of the terminology straight? Am I alone in thinking that Setheris and Csethiro's names are a little too similar? Do you also want to know more about that circle of ladies who are into learning things? ETC.

[genarti]

Oh god, I never did get most of the terminology straight, and I'm usually good with conlangs. Or the names, even, and ditto. Like, I could recognize them and differentiate them and I didn't generally get the terms or names confused with each other, but it was like they were whizzing past me -- I couldn't repeat most of them back for the life of me. Nocherehai...? Cse...something? I'M USUALLY GOOD AT THIS. (Setheris and Csethiro didn't throw me, but Csethiro and some of the other Cs names did. What was the name of the self-effacing issues-laden forensics guy? I feel like I got him and Csethiro confused sometimes too.)

I loved Maia and I loved Csethiro and honestly I loved basically everybody? Like. One of the things that sold me on reading this book was being told that it was a book about a main character who worked hard and constantly to be kind, and that there were other characters also working to be kind, and I am so glad for that rec because YES. YES I LOVED THAT SO HARD.

And also that I didn't feel the embarrassment/looming-disaster squick I often get with labyrinthine politics books. Like, Maia didn't know the people or the territory exactly, but he knew the formal registers, he knew the etiquette, he didn't break those fundamental rules unknowing, unlike a lot of SUDDENLY THEY WERE RULER stories where the person is just fumbling through on all levels. I trusted that Addison wasn't going to pull a sudden "actually he'd been messing this up horribly all along!" twist, you know? (Although I skimmed awkwardly through the meeting-with-the-opera-singer bit until I was sure how that was going to go.)

Also the ending bit with ACTUALLY YES WE ARE FRIENDS OKAY was so great. And the religious meditation stuff I liked a lot too.

Edit: SPEAKING OF NAME CONFUSIONS I spent this whole comment thinking Csethiro was Maia's awesome secretary, whose actual name I still can't remember, rather than Maia's awesome bluestocking fiancée. I love them both! I can't keep their names straight! But I love them both.

[sophia_sol]

It took me till like three quarters of the way through the book the first time around to figure out that nohecharei and edocharei were two different words for two different positions. Yeah. I don't know why the terminology in this book was so challenging to keep straight but it REALLY WAS.

Also the names, but like, I usually expect to get names confused when there's a large cast, which this book has. I think it's kind of unavoidable for a book like this to have a LOT of named characters, and patterns of naming conventions DO often mean that people have similar names (see also for example: for a lot of history like a third of all girls were named Mary in certain areas of Europe, or the recent naming trend of Jaden-Braden-Cayden-Aidan-etc). But it makes it hard to read.

Setheris and Csethiro, though, I commented on not because of trouble to reader (their names look different on the page!) but because of trouble to Maia. The names SOUND similar, and Maia's childhood abuser having a similar-sounding name to his new wife can't be a comfortable experience for him.

There certainly were a lot of names and terms beginning with "cs" though so I totally understand getting Csethiro and Csevet confused :P


One of the things that sold me on reading this book was being told that it was a book about a main character who worked hard and constantly to be kind, and that there were other characters also working to be kind, and I am so glad for that rec because YES. YES I LOVED THAT SO HARD.

YES! EXACTLYYYYYY. I love this about this book SO MUCH.

And the stuff about lack of embarrassment or looming sense of disaster was also really really great and something I appreciated. And the friendship stuff. And basically everything. *happy sigh*