Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ

It is said that Samuel Richardson, after being hectored by readers and critics following the runaway success of his novel Clarissa (a success, one gathers from reading period chatter, due in large part to his witty villain Lovelace before his inevitable and lugubrious end), promised he would write about a good man.

So he gave the world Sir Charles Grandison, who was so firmly aware enough of his perfection that he converses lengthily to all and sundry between the busyness of kidnappings, abductions, defeating villains, etc. It’s interesting to me when reading reader reactions to these early novels that women seemed to enjoy Sir Charles more than men. Jane Austen, who had a very sharp eye for character in reality as well as in fiction, loved the novel so much she adapted it into a play.

I’m going to come back to that as I try to feel my way through my reactions, but first: The Goblin Emperor’s Maia is, from the beginning, to the end, a good person. We the reader can see that—the first sign comes early on when, on being thrust summarily aboard an airship after discovering he is now the emperor of the elves, he takes the time to look into the faces of the crew. But he doesn’t see himself as good. He is aware of his shortcomings, and his inward struggle is as profound as the outward struggle against the many forces arrayed against him.

At the start, the unwanted half-goblin fourth son is now emperor.

Previous to this, Maia survived ten years of his cousin’s brutal guardianship, and before that, eight years of his gentle, spiritual mother’s loving influence. Maia is utterly unprepared for any life, really: the little he was allowed to learn was beaten into him by Setheris, who made certain Maia had an understanding of the exigencies of law, and of court.

Maia’s first piece of luck is the probity of the courier who brought the news, Scevet (view spoiler)[One of my few, and mild, quibbles is that I would have liked to see a bit more development here. Scevet is almost too conveniently the dedicated guide, with no apparent life of his own. (hide spoiler)]. Maia relies on Scevet to help him navigate the dangers of a court that actively as well as covertly does not want Maia as emperor.

And so he must get himself crowned, get the dead buried, the cause of the accident investigated, and all the while deal with the inexorable press of responsibilities expected of an emperor.

Kings

I like stories about kings. Kings are, well, kings. Sometimes I get tired of democratic pearl-clutching about adolescent fantasy and its preoccupation with kings. Guess what, there are kings in all forms in all literature. Human beings don’t do anything without their hierarchies. I’m less interested in reading about cubicle bosses or alphas at high school or arrogant pundits on the literary scene than I am in stories in which the trappings are colorful, and grace and style are part of the equation. There’s a better chance of that kind of story with kings.

But I lose interest fast if the kings don’t actually do any kinging. The weight of empire, the contradictions (the lack of privacy, and private time), the unending negotiation between balance and inertia, chaos and progress, those are some of the aspects I like about royal stories, and this one has got it right. Even the levels of language are not overlooked, or the several handwritings. These geeky details for the history buff give the world dimension.

Worldbuilding

This world is less magical than steam run. There are elves and goblins. The elves are Tolkien-pale, with beautiful hair and light eyes, but these are not Tolkien’s elves. They not only have pointed ears (stepping around the passionate sixties discussions of whether JRRT’s elves actually had pointed ears or not), but they are rather like dog or cat ears: they move, often reflecting emotions as well as responding to directional sound.

These elves were not Tolkien’s elves, nor were they the emotionally adolescent prettyboy elves of many eighties fantasies. They aren’t “elfpunk.� There is almost no music in this elfland, no particular emphasis on the natural world: if anything, the elves in their complicated stone edifices hearken back to Tolkien’s dwarves. As far as I could tell there is little euphony in their words or names, long as they are: the long names with their syllabic and prefix patterns instead suggest a long and complicated history. The elves seem to live human spans of life, and of course can breed with other races.

Their world evokes the late nineteenth century, undergoing technological and cultural change. Women in all the cultures seem to be bound to childbirth, at least at the upper levels of various societies. Wealth is based on the suffering of the poor working long hours in mines.

Maia sees no problem with women realizing their desires outside of cultural mandated babymaker. I think I would have looked askance at that—seen it as preaching to the choir—except that Maia’s own emotional makeup, as powerless victim of abuse, is his motivation for empathetic action and compassion. “We were not seen as worth educating either,� that is perhaps the quintessential comment of the nineteenth century female gaze; it represents anyone marginalized, which was, in the west, basically everyone who wasn’t a white heterosexual landowning male.

With reference to what I said above about Sir Charles, I think there could be an interesting wider discussion of male/female narrative gazes spinning off from this book, but I can see that this review is already long, so I think that that discussion will have to take place elsewhere.

Suffice it to say that the book begins slowly, as the weight of responsibility threatens to crush Maia, who already knows what it is to be crushed: as he begins to push back, things happen. The gradual acceleration of the pace left me suddenly at the end. The story resolves, but oh, was I disappointed to discover that there isn’t more, just because I want to spend more time in that world, and with those people.