The Hands of the Emperor

What a way to start a new reading year (2023)! A complex and rich world and characters it would take someone far more hard-bitten than me not to adore and relish. Go read the blurbs for the essentials, I won't bother with them here. What matters are the relationships, Cliopher's relationship to his enormous, rambunctious and faraway family and Cliopher and his deepening friendship with His Radiancy, the Last Emperor (after a magical cataclysm). Isolation, loneliness, and the prejudices of an aristocracy that has lasted for thousands of years, affect Cliopher deeply while the Emperor too, struggles with the emptiness of being treated like a god. I love the way magic is handled -- somewhat remotely but with assurance. Really I can't do show more the book justice, but I enjoyed every word. ***** show less

“The world changes one person and one decision at a time. None of us know what decision, precisely, is the telling one.”

I have found a new author to love. How is this book even possible, and how does Victoria Goddard make it work?
Welcome to one thousand pages of…

- Humanity and hope, yet this is not a naïve book (not AT ALL).
- People who did not know they were friends, finding out that they are.
- People being very good at what they do, slowly changing a tyrannical system from within.
- Cliopher being himself, and I love this so much.
- Gorgeous details, from everyday simplicity to imperial spendour.
- Hints and tales of darker things, of a larger world, of catastrophes and deadly politics.
- Gentle humour.
- Assumptions we make about show more other people, the roles we stick them and ourselves in, family dynamics with love and resentment and old hurts so intertwined that there is not much distinction between them.
- Scenes and dialogues so emotionally intense I had to stop reading to recover.
- Meeting prejudice, bigotry and trying to reconcile the cultures you belong to.
- Not compromising with your dreams.
- A fantasy novel that seriously talks about universal income and ecology.
- The reader wanting to know even more about everything and everyone.
- Vangavaye-ve, which is beautiful, beautiful, beautiful - in every way imaginable.
- Coming home.

Am I doing the book justice? I have no idea, but at least I tried.

P.S. Don’t be put off by the page count. I mean it. It took me a week and a half to finish this (yes, I am a fast reader, but still…) and I thought the book was over much too quickly show less

I really cannot overstate how much I loved this book. It never occurred to me before that fantasy could mean wish-fulfillment in the realm of beautiful characters being extraordinarily good to each other and creating a just and satisfying government. Even better that it centers Pacific Islander culture in a way that brought me more than once to tears. Cliopher (Kip) Mdang is a wonder and a glory and a magnificent combination of idealistic justice-seeker and extraordinary bureaucrat who occasionally rages and rewards terrible behavior with very correct set-downs even as his goal is to center power on individuals rather than princes and institute universal income.

This book is like someone took the best parts of Terry Pratchett's show more fascination with government and economy and Locke Lamora's world building and The Goblin Emperor's softly beating heart and determined that it would really be better if all the main characters were people of color from strong Indigenous cultures and familiar with ritual magics. I'd try to pull in the kind of storytelling that The Name of The Wind made famous, but unlike Rothfuss, Goddard actually leaves the story in a settled and harmonious place. It is really heckin' long, though, be warned.

Thank you for giving me hope for the far future and something to look forward to in the near. show less

This is a book that shouldn't, by all the rules that govern what makes a book "work", be anywhere near as good as it is. Victoria Goddard has crafted a novel here that goes against every established convention of the genre: there's no war, vanishingly little violence, there's really very little plot on hand here at all. To sum it up, this book is 1000+ pages of filler.

Yet it does work, and works amazingly well. This novel is an absolute triumph that melds incredibly complex characters and deep undercurrents of good humor and comedy, and wraps them around a core of empathy and righteousness to create a perfect cocktail of a story for these times we live in. The core tenet of this novel - that good people doing work for no expectation of show more thanks or recognition can and do actually and tangibly make the world a better place - is sorely needed these days in a sea of media where every character must be "morally gray" in order to be interesting.

That's not to say the characters here are not flawed. They are. The entire main cast of roughly a half-dozen is extraordinarily complex and deeply human. But the two main characters in particular develop a friendship so profound and wrapped up in the breaking of tradition and taboo that it's unlike anything I can recall in the genre. Two men who fundamentally want the same thing for contrasting reasons: Cliopher, the Emperor's secretary, the head of the government, who goes home to his islands and is just strange Cousin Kip who went away to the House of the Sun and is always too busy for his family. The Emperor, the Sun-on-Earth, a man made more of magic and ritual and tradition than he is of flesh and bone, so wrapped up in taboo that he can't even be touched.

Both of these men just want to be understood as human, as the men behind the titles and the work and the obligations. Goddard develops their friendship wonderfully, slowly, through bits and pieces of seemingly random events: visiting an art gallery, a bookshop, playing music on a balcony.

If you want a traditional fantasy novel with elves, world-destroying magic, armies and quests and the like, this isn't the book for you. But if you're looking for a deeply moving, optimistic character study about friendship and family and reconciling your identity with your work, your past with your present, your family and your culture with your obligations, all threaded through with good humor and some genuinely funny moments, there's a lot to love here. show less

What a pleasurable read! The style and substance aren't a bit showy, but the interest and involvement in Cliopher Mdang and his Islander background and his position as foremost civil servant of the realm never wane. A fantasy without strange lifeforms or huge upheavals—though there has been the past upheaval with which to deal. Gods and mages and the existence, though not visited, of other worlds are the realities of the background. I am in awe of the way in which this almost entirely individual-centered book, dealing with the revelation of achievement and character rather than the achieving or the development of character, kept me involved more than any novel in years.

Hopepunk in the guise of an epic fantasy. There’s court intrigue and magic and political machinations, but Cliopher, the power behind the throne, and the Emperor both want to create a better and more just society. There’s a lot of world to build, but the explication of the various characters, cultures, and political alliances is done organically, as Cliopher interacts with them or thinks about them. And it’s clear that there’s a lot more world to see. We become familiar with a few locales, we hear about several more, but there are also only glimpses of pieces of the nine worlds, and it’s still a mystery to me how some of these pieces fit together. I guess I’ll have to read more of the series to find out.

The first 50 pages or show more so were slow going, and I thought I was going to invoke my version of Pearl’s rule and abandon it after a few more pages, but I soon enough got caught up in the story and came to care about the characters, most of whom, other than the peripheral baddies, are endearing, in large part because of how they care about one another and about doing the right thing. It is indeed because of how lovable these characters become that I tore through the 700-plus pages, because, aside from many personal incidents, there is no one grand drama, no complex plot.

Past the midway point, the narrative gets rather bogged down with Cliopher self-righteously giving arrogant aristocrats and bigots their comeuppances. And then with Cliopher resenting that his family and friends don’t recognize and appreciate who he is and all he’s done. “Verily I say unto you, no prophet is accepted in his own country.” It is rather emotionally gratifying and comforting to see the good guys win time and time again, even if was starting to get a little old. But the ending brought a few tears to my eyes, and left me vested enough that I’ll probably read more of the series. If you loved Middle Earth but could do without all the quests and battles and really just wanted to know more about hobbits and wizards, you might like this book. show less

Cliopher Mdang -- known as "Kip" to his friends and family back home -- has toiled for years as the secretary to His Radiancy the last emperor of Astandalas, working to make the world a better place. Now, as his friends start to think of retirement, he starts to wonder if that might be an option for him, too -- but of course, he wouldn't dream of leaving His Radiancy. When Kip decides to venture into treasonous territory and suggest that the emperor might enjoy -- gasp! -- a vacation, he has no idea the changes he is setting into motion as the emperor starts to wonder if he, too, might eventually retire, and to think of how to find his successor.

I've read this book twice now and it was equally delightful both times. This is a cozy show more bureaucracy book with a large dose of Polynesian culture -- it's a weird mix but it works beautifully. Read if you like lovable characters working to improve their world and just being generally good. This book is self-published and it's chunky, and I think if it were traditionally published it would be cut down -- there is definitely some extra fluff and some repetition. But at the same time... I loved every minute of it and would be a little devastated if anything was cut. 5 stars. show less