The Goblin Emperor

This book should be boring. In all honesty, at first it kind of was. I am not one for political thrillers, and really that's who this book is geared towards. It has elves and goblins and airships and pneumatic tubes, but if you replaced those with feudal houses in Edo era Japan, ocean-going vessels, and printing presses, the story would not have to change much at all. The heart of this story is politics and all the rest is dressing.

That said, it is the kind of dressing a master baker spends hours crafting to look simple. Addison has created multiple, distinct cultures, religions, dialects, systems of government, and classes. She could have borrowed terminology from actual societies or just used more traditional terminology, but she doesn't. She worked hard to build this engaging panorama, and I think that's why I ended up feeling the story differently than I would if this were straight-up historical fiction.

The essential story is of a half-elf/half-goblin exiled child of an emperor suddenly and unexpectedly being thrust on the throne. He has no political acumen or alliances to speak of, but has no choice but to adjust, abdicate, or be assassinated. The first third of the book is really just following Maia to meetings, parties, and ceremonies. This really bored me at first, but then I started getting into it when things stopped playing out along the cliched lines. Admittedly, the bad characters get worse and the good characters get better, but it is still not a cliched rice to power by any means. By the end, I cared about the characters even if the pacing was a bit slow.

Addison has said she is not writing a sequel, but might return to the world for another novel. I hope she does because it would be wasteful not to keep exploring the multi-faceted cultures of which this book presents just the tip of the iceberg.