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Jun. 14th, 2015 12:28 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
skygiantsEveryone I knew who read The Goblin Emperor when it came out loved it so unilaterally that I felt like I could not read it until I'd also found someone who disliked it to provide an equal and opposite pressure of opinion. Thank you, gogollescent!
Now I have read The Goblin Emperor and feel capable of cheerfully embracing a middle ground. I don't quite ... think it's amazing, per se ... but it's very charming! Comfortable to read!
The Goblin Emperor is about how the sad, abused, exiled half-goblin fourth son of the Emperor of the Steampunk Elves accidentally becomes Emperor when the entire rest of his family is assassinated. Maia is a.) deeply unprepared for his position, b.) completely uneducated in politics, and c.) utterly and totally lacking in social skills, but he is at root a very nice person!
By fortunate coincidence, when he arrives at court, many of the first people he meets and becomes surrounded with are both nice and competent. They trust and appreciate Maia pretty much instantly for his obvious niceness, and are therefore willing to help him along until he can also approximate competence.
There's also a little bit of plot? Some of the book is dedicated to investigating the assassination attempt on Maia's family, but that's a relatively small portion. A few people also attempt to depose or assassinate Maia, but as none of them are either nice or competent, nobody cares and all their plots are unsuccessful.
If you like reading about nice people with assistance from competent people, you will probably enjoy this! I enjoyed it a lot too, and read it all in pretty much one gulp, though I didn't quite believe in it. I feel a little bit bad saying that the book feels too easy, because, like, obviously suddenly becoming Emperor of an enormous kingdom that you don't know anything about and don't know anybody is very difficult in any case! (Nakajima Yoko agrees wholeheartedly.) And the book takes its time exploring how difficult it is for an abused kid whose used to being attacked for expressing an opinion to be in a position where he has to HAVE OPINIONS AND EXPRESS THEM REGALLY AND IS NOT ALLOWED TO APOLOGIZE TO ANYBODY, and I do appreciate the time taken with that, that is hard enough in and of itself too!
But all the same, in the broader context of governing a country, it does feel a bit too easy. It's not that there aren't difficult decisions to be made, but they're all ... relatively easy difficult decisions? Good and trustworthy people helpfully appear to fill Maia in on information he lacks whenever he needs it, and are all swearing loyalty by about the middle of the book. The next-most-plausible candidate for Emperor is also conveniently a very nice person, and willing to trust and form a personal connection with Maia over the course of one conversation despite being indoctrinated with anti-Maia propaganda, so when the moment of decision comes for him, he's also very happy to make the right pro-Maia choice at significant personal cost. And the person who is the best political candidate for Maia to marry turns out to be nice and charmingly competent and an Unconventional Woman who enjoys swordfighting and willing to relax her guard and share this information with him after a single conversation, and two conversations later she's willing to challenge anyone who hurts him to a duel. I mean, obviously I like her! She's designed for me to like! I'm just saying this all happens quite fast, and without ... very many actual conversations ... so every time someone said something heartwarming about their deep loyalty to Maia, I regret that my first reaction, much like Maia's, was usually "That's nice! But, um, why?"
On the other hand, as far as the general tone of a book goes, I certainly find it much more enjoyable to read "everything turns out pretty well for nice people because they're generally nice" than "everything turns out horribly for nice people because the world is a CRUEL PLACE," as has been the tone of a significant portion of recent Serious Grimdark Political Fantasy. I suspect a lot of the affection for The Goblin Emperor is a reaction against that, and, like, I absolutely agree, I think the pendulum could definitely afford to swing back towards genuinely decent protagonists. And it also generally manages to avoid the Mercedes Lackey angst-porn territory, which, given my previous impressions of Katherine Addison's work as Sarah Monette, is pretty impressive. (I haven't actually read any of Sarah Monette's books on account of that impression, so I could be judging super unfairly here.) I do think there can also be a middle ground somewhere ... but the meantime, I will definitely take The Goblin Emperor! I just would also like a story of a genuinely nice person triumphing in a corrupt court that did a slightly better job convincing me it was actually possible without mild reality-warping powers.
gogollescent! Now I have read The Goblin Emperor and feel capable of cheerfully embracing a middle ground. I don't quite ... think it's amazing, per se ... but it's very charming! Comfortable to read!
The Goblin Emperor is about how the sad, abused, exiled half-goblin fourth son of the Emperor of the Steampunk Elves accidentally becomes Emperor when the entire rest of his family is assassinated. Maia is a.) deeply unprepared for his position, b.) completely uneducated in politics, and c.) utterly and totally lacking in social skills, but he is at root a very nice person!
By fortunate coincidence, when he arrives at court, many of the first people he meets and becomes surrounded with are both nice and competent. They trust and appreciate Maia pretty much instantly for his obvious niceness, and are therefore willing to help him along until he can also approximate competence.
There's also a little bit of plot? Some of the book is dedicated to investigating the assassination attempt on Maia's family, but that's a relatively small portion. A few people also attempt to depose or assassinate Maia, but as none of them are either nice or competent, nobody cares and all their plots are unsuccessful.
If you like reading about nice people with assistance from competent people, you will probably enjoy this! I enjoyed it a lot too, and read it all in pretty much one gulp, though I didn't quite believe in it. I feel a little bit bad saying that the book feels too easy, because, like, obviously suddenly becoming Emperor of an enormous kingdom that you don't know anything about and don't know anybody is very difficult in any case! (Nakajima Yoko agrees wholeheartedly.) And the book takes its time exploring how difficult it is for an abused kid whose used to being attacked for expressing an opinion to be in a position where he has to HAVE OPINIONS AND EXPRESS THEM REGALLY AND IS NOT ALLOWED TO APOLOGIZE TO ANYBODY, and I do appreciate the time taken with that, that is hard enough in and of itself too!
But all the same, in the broader context of governing a country, it does feel a bit too easy. It's not that there aren't difficult decisions to be made, but they're all ... relatively easy difficult decisions? Good and trustworthy people helpfully appear to fill Maia in on information he lacks whenever he needs it, and are all swearing loyalty by about the middle of the book. The next-most-plausible candidate for Emperor is also conveniently a very nice person, and willing to trust and form a personal connection with Maia over the course of one conversation despite being indoctrinated with anti-Maia propaganda, so when the moment of decision comes for him, he's also very happy to make the right pro-Maia choice at significant personal cost. And the person who is the best political candidate for Maia to marry turns out to be nice and charmingly competent and an Unconventional Woman who enjoys swordfighting and willing to relax her guard and share this information with him after a single conversation, and two conversations later she's willing to challenge anyone who hurts him to a duel. I mean, obviously I like her! She's designed for me to like! I'm just saying this all happens quite fast, and without ... very many actual conversations ... so every time someone said something heartwarming about their deep loyalty to Maia, I regret that my first reaction, much like Maia's, was usually "That's nice! But, um, why?"
On the other hand, as far as the general tone of a book goes, I certainly find it much more enjoyable to read "everything turns out pretty well for nice people because they're generally nice" than "everything turns out horribly for nice people because the world is a CRUEL PLACE," as has been the tone of a significant portion of recent Serious Grimdark Political Fantasy. I suspect a lot of the affection for The Goblin Emperor is a reaction against that, and, like, I absolutely agree, I think the pendulum could definitely afford to swing back towards genuinely decent protagonists. And it also generally manages to avoid the Mercedes Lackey angst-porn territory, which, given my previous impressions of Katherine Addison's work as Sarah Monette, is pretty impressive. (I haven't actually read any of Sarah Monette's books on account of that impression, so I could be judging super unfairly here.) I do think there can also be a middle ground somewhere ... but the meantime, I will definitely take The Goblin Emperor! I just would also like a story of a genuinely nice person triumphing in a corrupt court that did a slightly better job convincing me it was actually possible without mild reality-warping powers.
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Date: 2015-06-15 01:18 am (UTC)