Addison Summary

What we enjoyed about the “The Goblin Emperor”:

• Very limited place-wise, condensed
• Political intrigue the focus and not major fights à strongest point of the book#
• Main character, Maia, is the best, very likeable, thrown into a very hostile environment
• Maia just draws you in
• So much potential: young character who lacks knowledge, nobody expected him to become the emperor (smart to introduce the world to readers!)
• Smart book
• Protagonist who faces racism and adversity
• Philosophical stance of the character is convincing
• Quiet, timid, pondering protagonist à important for a leader
• Could relate to the character a lot
• World building huge focus on language: status, gender à elaborate, “unlike anything I’ve ever read before”
• Readers expected something big to happen but it didn’t
• Navigating a new role and expectations while under intense scrutiny and facing racism
• Witness for the Dead great
• Questioning people very relatable
• Racism in a fantasy setting very smartly set up
• Goblin tradition: heritage, memory, ancestry, religion
• Industrialisation, feminism touched upon too à smartly done
• Felt organic in terms of world-building and character plots
• Society felt very real, patriarchal setting contested but not extremely or unrealistically so
• Female bodyguard one of the best characters
• “It just calmed me down”, nice
• Friendship wonderfully depicted
• Bureaucracy / politics fascinating

What we discussed:

• Too many names (list at the beginning of the book helpful) à makes sense though (protagonist and reader confused)
• Audiobook hard to follow because of the names, audiobook not recommendable
• Magic system and religious system could’ve needed more detail (we want to know more!)
• Not enough fantasy almost à not enough magic
• The beginning was a bit meh
• Sad it’s a standalone novel
• Ending felt a bit rushed
• Ending too smooth? Too much summary?
• Pacing in the ending off à too easy? (Maia grows into his new role of course, but it felt very easy)

Ratings:

• Not finished yet: 3.5-4/5 ghost detectives “because I like the focus on language and that it’s limited to the city and not the whole world, but the amount of characters confused me”
• 4/5 stars: “so much in there that I really enjoyed but so difficult to get into at first”
• 5/5: “I’m not usually a high fantasy person […] but I really enjoyed reading it”, “I also want to finish it because I want to know how it ends”
• 5/5

Other books we talked about:

• “The Hanging Artist” Jon Steinhagen: Franz Kafka is a detective and has to solve a crime (“actually better than I thought it would be”), German title: “Kafka und der Tote am Seil”
• “Dune” by Frank Herbert: full cast audiobook very good; rereading it for the second time fascinating
• “Daisy Jones and the Six” audiobook + TV series really good