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labingiKatherine Addison's The Goblin Emperor was one of the books recced to me on DW recently, and I'm currently almost done with it. Let me start by saying that it was an excellent rec. It's everything I asked for, and it has completely served its purpose in diverting me from our real world; I have generally enjoyed reading it.
I don't especially warm to it as a novel, however, and I've been in an interesting and invigorating discussion of it withrocky41_7 on ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
books. I ended up pretty much writing meta I'd planned to write in the comments over there, so I'll post it here too.
Context:rocky41_7 has been rereading the book with a newfound appreciation and feeling of now understanding why it is so beloved. Reasons why - and I agree all those things are there and are good - include a truly good/well-intentioned hero, realistic politics, realistic supporting characters, and breaking fantasy conventions. I find the book lacking in character development and plot/character arcs, however. Below (with a few, fairly minor spoilers), I explain why with some reference points to other stories, which may contain some very light spoilers.
My Reply to rocky41-7's reply to my reply to their post.
Thanks for all your engagement with my rambly rants. Here's some more ramble in response. (I'm really enjoying this by the way - I've needed an outlet for book talk, thank you.)
Re. character development and arcs: You’re right in that everything you say is there is there; I just think it could have been there more effectively. I agree the characters read as real people. They just read as real people I don’t know. By analogy, I fully believe my neighbors who I see walking their dog are real people with complex lives, but I’m not privy to the details of their lives, so I don’t have a deep sense of connection to them.
As to arcs and psychological realism, I’ll give an example of the gap between where I perceive the narrative to be and where it could be. In the book, Maia has been offering friendliness to Beshelar and Cala, whom he likes, and there’s a moving bit where Cala tells him they can’t be friends, and Maia’s a bit stung/chastened and sort of thinks, “Oh, okay,” and withdraws, rapidly, if a bit sadly, readjusting his expectations to the fact that he’s never going to know these people he sees every day on familiar terms.
Here's one way this could have gone: Maia has grown up pretty much friendless. It makes sense that he would be hungry for friendship and that, with much the same external behavior we see, he builds up Beshelar and Cala in his head as people he thinks of as friends, starts to daydream about how they might be a close team as he spends years of his life with them. And then, in response to much the same behavior as in the book, Cala tells him they can’t be friends, and it pulls the rug out from under him because it removes the figures he’s already begun to emotionally rely on as a needy, lonely boy. But, good person and good emperor that he is, he sucks it up and (as in the book) accepts it at once, in the sense of taking dead seriously what Cala says and living by it. But it will be a much longer journey toward acceptance in the sense of the last stage of grief. He will have to go through a grieving process—all alone—of denial, some anger, etc., being pulled up by the realization that he’s been daydreaming again about conversations they might have and chastising himself for his foolishness. Over the course of time, he does adjust until this finally fades into his acceptance that he’ll just never be close to these people and he does start to take them for granted often as just part of the woodwork (as in the book), and, thus, he learns that sad, hard lesson. That’s what I’m missing when I say there’s a lack of character development and arc.
Re. Books to Rec for Comparison
I wish I had a good fantasy rec for you. I am terribly hard to please as a reader, which leads to a vicious cycle of not my reading very many newish works. (Side bar/plug: This is one reason I’m working on an advanced search tool for fiction, but it’s in the very early conceptual stages.)
I can offer some comparisons, but they virtually are all unfair, being to famous, old works. The exception is Winter’s Orbit, which I don’t exactly recommend; I think The Goblin Emperor is better, but I do think WO writes the psychological toll of abuse better, and its chief abuse victim is a Very Good Person. I have written commentary on it here. Rereading this, I see I complained about the writing of abuse here too though! (The post is locked because I didn’t want to send out public negativity about the author's hard work. Glad to give you access, but if you’d rather not, I’d be glad to cut and paste it for you in a PM. [EDIT: I'm not locking this one because I think it's not actually that negative about TGE.])
Okay, some unfair comparisons:
Dune – TGE makes me think of Dune in that it’s an adult book focused on an adolescent ruler who is amazing. Dune sells this to me where TGE doesn’t because Dune explains very clearly why Paul is amazing (eugenics, massive training from early life, etc.). Now, Maia is not meant to be amazing on the level of Paul, but I would have welcomed more discussion of why he is the way he is. To wit...
The Brothers Karamazov - Maia reminds me of no literary figure as much as Alyosha from TBK. They are both late teens who are essentially presented as “modern saints.” They are both, in my opinion, relatively static characters, as their saintly role model status somewhat demands. Both learn stuff and grow, but neither fundamentally shifts from insightful, empathetic, paragon of virtue. Now, comparison to Dostoevsky is utterly unfair. That acknowledged, Alyosha (whom I adore) works better for me for two reasons:
1) The book explains why he is as he is. He also has a wonderful mother who dies when he’s small. He also has a screwed up, abusive figure in his life (Dad), who has impacted him, but, in addition, he is raised by another family that is pretty normal and gives him a basis for psychological stability. Then as a teen, he connects with the Elder Zosima, who introduces him to the monastic life and higher flights of religious morality. This collection of forces, plus native personality, make sense for shaping him. With Maia, it feels to me like pieces are missing.
2) Alyosha, like Maia, makes a weird protagonist as a largely static character, so weird that Dostoevsky has to tell us in a preface that he is the protagonist, lest we think it’s brothers Ivan or Dmitri, who have more typical arcs. The narrative works, I think, because of the interplay between the three of them and the fact that Ivan and Dmitri have clearer arcs allows for story movement with Alyosha as a foil, but he a very emotionally, morally powerful, memorable foil. Maia has to carry the whole book himself, which is a tall order for a largely static character.
3) More on writing Very Good People convincingly. Oh, I agree we need more of these. Utterly unfair comparison 3 is The Lord of the Rings. Tolkien can write cardboard characters with the best of them, but he can also write nuanced psychological realism when he wants to, which he does with Frodo, Sam, and Bilbo. I’ll pick on Frodo. Frodo is a Very Good Person from start to finish, but he’s complex and interesting. Here’s my take on why.
Frodo was shaped, I think, by having an intense trauma in his youth within the context of a loving, healthy, and secure family in a healthy, secure society. The trauma was his parents sudden death in a boating accident, compounded by his being an only child and the only Baggins in a sea of Brandybucks, which necessarily isolated him in his loss. However, it’s clear that his Brandybuck relations loved and accepted him, while the Shire itself is a stable society, well-balanced with nature, where even the poorest have food and shelter and the richest are not so rich as to be divided from daily interaction with the common people. Pre-War, there’s essentially no precarity, no real insecurity. And, of course, Frodo is then adopted by Bilbo, with whom he has a warm and close connection.
As a result of all this, he grows up to be a well-adjusted, mature person who is neither inflated in his sense of self nor self-flagellating, who is conscientious and compassionate, and who knows how to love and knows himself to be loved. And he also grows up at arm’s length from most hobbits (partly down to native introversion), slightly avoidant in his attachment patterns and agile in rapidly adjusting to having his whole world ripped out from under him (verging at times into a tendency toward hopelessness). I think the reasons he’s able to agree to exile himself from the Shire with the Ring within, like, a couple hours of talking to Gandalf are threefold: 1) his true conscientiousness and love for the Shire; 2) the agency of the Ring, which makes him inclined to stick with it; 3) that ability to rapidly accept radical loss, which he learned from the death of his parents. I could go on, but I’ll stop and say, this is a nuanced, psychologically realistic representation of a Very Good Person. Of course, I’ve had 45 years to think about Frodo, and not Maia, so I am certainly missing textual details.
I don't especially warm to it as a novel, however, and I've been in an interesting and invigorating discussion of it with
rocky41_7 on books. I ended up pretty much writing meta I'd planned to write in the comments over there, so I'll post it here too. Context:
rocky41_7 has been rereading the book with a newfound appreciation and feeling of now understanding why it is so beloved. Reasons why - and I agree all those things are there and are good - include a truly good/well-intentioned hero, realistic politics, realistic supporting characters, and breaking fantasy conventions. I find the book lacking in character development and plot/character arcs, however. Below (with a few, fairly minor spoilers), I explain why with some reference points to other stories, which may contain some very light spoilers.My Reply to rocky41-7's reply to my reply to their post.
Thanks for all your engagement with my rambly rants. Here's some more ramble in response. (I'm really enjoying this by the way - I've needed an outlet for book talk, thank you.)
Re. character development and arcs: You’re right in that everything you say is there is there; I just think it could have been there more effectively. I agree the characters read as real people. They just read as real people I don’t know. By analogy, I fully believe my neighbors who I see walking their dog are real people with complex lives, but I’m not privy to the details of their lives, so I don’t have a deep sense of connection to them.
As to arcs and psychological realism, I’ll give an example of the gap between where I perceive the narrative to be and where it could be. In the book, Maia has been offering friendliness to Beshelar and Cala, whom he likes, and there’s a moving bit where Cala tells him they can’t be friends, and Maia’s a bit stung/chastened and sort of thinks, “Oh, okay,” and withdraws, rapidly, if a bit sadly, readjusting his expectations to the fact that he’s never going to know these people he sees every day on familiar terms.
Here's one way this could have gone: Maia has grown up pretty much friendless. It makes sense that he would be hungry for friendship and that, with much the same external behavior we see, he builds up Beshelar and Cala in his head as people he thinks of as friends, starts to daydream about how they might be a close team as he spends years of his life with them. And then, in response to much the same behavior as in the book, Cala tells him they can’t be friends, and it pulls the rug out from under him because it removes the figures he’s already begun to emotionally rely on as a needy, lonely boy. But, good person and good emperor that he is, he sucks it up and (as in the book) accepts it at once, in the sense of taking dead seriously what Cala says and living by it. But it will be a much longer journey toward acceptance in the sense of the last stage of grief. He will have to go through a grieving process—all alone—of denial, some anger, etc., being pulled up by the realization that he’s been daydreaming again about conversations they might have and chastising himself for his foolishness. Over the course of time, he does adjust until this finally fades into his acceptance that he’ll just never be close to these people and he does start to take them for granted often as just part of the woodwork (as in the book), and, thus, he learns that sad, hard lesson. That’s what I’m missing when I say there’s a lack of character development and arc.
Re. Books to Rec for Comparison
I wish I had a good fantasy rec for you. I am terribly hard to please as a reader, which leads to a vicious cycle of not my reading very many newish works. (Side bar/plug: This is one reason I’m working on an advanced search tool for fiction, but it’s in the very early conceptual stages.)
I can offer some comparisons, but they virtually are all unfair, being to famous, old works. The exception is Winter’s Orbit, which I don’t exactly recommend; I think The Goblin Emperor is better, but I do think WO writes the psychological toll of abuse better, and its chief abuse victim is a Very Good Person. I have written commentary on it here. Rereading this, I see I complained about the writing of abuse here too though! (The post is locked because I didn’t want to send out public negativity about the author's hard work. Glad to give you access, but if you’d rather not, I’d be glad to cut and paste it for you in a PM. [EDIT: I'm not locking this one because I think it's not actually that negative about TGE.])
Okay, some unfair comparisons:
Dune – TGE makes me think of Dune in that it’s an adult book focused on an adolescent ruler who is amazing. Dune sells this to me where TGE doesn’t because Dune explains very clearly why Paul is amazing (eugenics, massive training from early life, etc.). Now, Maia is not meant to be amazing on the level of Paul, but I would have welcomed more discussion of why he is the way he is. To wit...
The Brothers Karamazov - Maia reminds me of no literary figure as much as Alyosha from TBK. They are both late teens who are essentially presented as “modern saints.” They are both, in my opinion, relatively static characters, as their saintly role model status somewhat demands. Both learn stuff and grow, but neither fundamentally shifts from insightful, empathetic, paragon of virtue. Now, comparison to Dostoevsky is utterly unfair. That acknowledged, Alyosha (whom I adore) works better for me for two reasons:
1) The book explains why he is as he is. He also has a wonderful mother who dies when he’s small. He also has a screwed up, abusive figure in his life (Dad), who has impacted him, but, in addition, he is raised by another family that is pretty normal and gives him a basis for psychological stability. Then as a teen, he connects with the Elder Zosima, who introduces him to the monastic life and higher flights of religious morality. This collection of forces, plus native personality, make sense for shaping him. With Maia, it feels to me like pieces are missing.
2) Alyosha, like Maia, makes a weird protagonist as a largely static character, so weird that Dostoevsky has to tell us in a preface that he is the protagonist, lest we think it’s brothers Ivan or Dmitri, who have more typical arcs. The narrative works, I think, because of the interplay between the three of them and the fact that Ivan and Dmitri have clearer arcs allows for story movement with Alyosha as a foil, but he a very emotionally, morally powerful, memorable foil. Maia has to carry the whole book himself, which is a tall order for a largely static character.
3) More on writing Very Good People convincingly. Oh, I agree we need more of these. Utterly unfair comparison 3 is The Lord of the Rings. Tolkien can write cardboard characters with the best of them, but he can also write nuanced psychological realism when he wants to, which he does with Frodo, Sam, and Bilbo. I’ll pick on Frodo. Frodo is a Very Good Person from start to finish, but he’s complex and interesting. Here’s my take on why.
Frodo was shaped, I think, by having an intense trauma in his youth within the context of a loving, healthy, and secure family in a healthy, secure society. The trauma was his parents sudden death in a boating accident, compounded by his being an only child and the only Baggins in a sea of Brandybucks, which necessarily isolated him in his loss. However, it’s clear that his Brandybuck relations loved and accepted him, while the Shire itself is a stable society, well-balanced with nature, where even the poorest have food and shelter and the richest are not so rich as to be divided from daily interaction with the common people. Pre-War, there’s essentially no precarity, no real insecurity. And, of course, Frodo is then adopted by Bilbo, with whom he has a warm and close connection.
As a result of all this, he grows up to be a well-adjusted, mature person who is neither inflated in his sense of self nor self-flagellating, who is conscientious and compassionate, and who knows how to love and knows himself to be loved. And he also grows up at arm’s length from most hobbits (partly down to native introversion), slightly avoidant in his attachment patterns and agile in rapidly adjusting to having his whole world ripped out from under him (verging at times into a tendency toward hopelessness). I think the reasons he’s able to agree to exile himself from the Shire with the Ring within, like, a couple hours of talking to Gandalf are threefold: 1) his true conscientiousness and love for the Shire; 2) the agency of the Ring, which makes him inclined to stick with it; 3) that ability to rapidly accept radical loss, which he learned from the death of his parents. I could go on, but I’ll stop and say, this is a nuanced, psychologically realistic representation of a Very Good Person. Of course, I’ve had 45 years to think about Frodo, and not Maia, so I am certainly missing textual details.
no subject
Date: 2025-07-21 05:51 pm (UTC)(I wish I could say something about the Dune comparison, but it's been many years since I read it, and I disliked the recent movie so that colors my remembrances.)
no subject
Date: 2025-07-22 11:24 pm (UTC)It's been many years since I've read Dune too. I'm just flying on what I recall.