This book review was part of a podcast discussion.
Listen to the episode here.
It’s hard to write a review for a book so well-recognized as Katherine Addison’s The Goblin Emperor. She has contributed to the elevation of the genre with a fantasy novel that is not about blades or magic or monsters but is entirely internal to one character, a book that deliberately confronts abuse, sexism, racism, and the problematic justification of power.
Addison creates elves and goblins as separate but like peoples. From the reader’s perspective in the elflands, the pale elves are beautiful and the dark goblins are ugly. The elves’ principalities and inherited imperial seat are civilized and the goblins’ ruler over a web of alliances is barbaric. Elves’ customs are elegant and goblin culture is crude. It is the attitude of every colonial power and their descendant states wrapped in a palatable fantasy package, and it forces us to live though it with Maia, the unwanted fourth son of the elven emperor and a goblin by political marriage.
Thrust into the unimagined and undesired imperial seat by the simultaneous death of his father and three older brothers, Maia must recover from an abusive childhood (that only ended on his ascension to emperor) and navigate an imperial court that wasn’t prepared for and may never accept someone of his breeding—that is, color—on the throne. At the same time, he must reconcile his laudable morals with his half-sisters’ and aunts’ status as his property, now that he’s head of the household.
The Goblin Emperor does not flinch from its hard topics, but presenting them through Maia’s uncertain, sympathetic view makes them easier to read and all the more penetrative to the spirit. It is a subtle toxin that is pleasant to the taste and, when it reaches your heart, makes you more empathetic. This is a must read for everyone.
Seattle, WA
Sometimes, Peter Schaefer conceals a puzzle in his bio. Little do lovers of the cryptic know that Peter is an encryption system given life, a cipher grown so complex it attained consciousness, along with a love of games, books, and improv. Everyone who believes they meet Peter only meet its proxy, a husk employed only for its wit. Has anyone seen beyond www.paschaefer.com or www.shoelesspetegames.com in spite of his esoteric calculi? Sadly no. Not a single person, and not any group of people.
