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This book defies genre conventions in a number of ways. It does feature a young man who turns out to be critically important to the future of a fantasy land. But the thing is that Maia, the eponymous Goblin Emperor is not special. In fact he is exceptional in his ordinariness.

The story is also strangely lacking in the usual fantasy elements. There are no epic battles, there's no clear villain for most of the book and events just sort of unfold at a sedate pace. It's really more of an exploration of character and setting than it is a story.

And yet it does what it does with such skill that anything it lacks is easily swept aside.

What's It All About?

Maia is the fourth son of the Emperor of the Elflands. He has lived most of his life in exile at a country estate, hidden away due to the embarrassment of his half elf, half goblin heritage. However the sudden death of the Emperor and his other sons thrusts a young, unprepared Maia into the role of Emperor.

Maia has to deal with court intrigues, his ignorant of court ways and come to grips with his miserable childhood, all while ruling the Elflands.

He's Just Like Me!

As I mentioned earlier Maia is a very ordinary person and that makes him and his behavior easy to understand. His mild personality and determination to do the right thing make him an underdog you cheer for even though he's technically the most powerful person in the book.

What Katherine Addison has done here is take the turmoil and doubt that most people go through in their teenage years and create an external counterpoint for it that adults can relate to.

Maia spends a lot of time berating himself for his inadequacies and if he was just a regular teenager, this would probably come across as self-indulgent and whiny (as teenagers do) but as someone shouldering an unasked for burden without proper training his doubts and missteps are much more appealing.

From beginning to end this book is a thorough and believable portrait of this honest young man. Other characters do not get nearly the same sort of depth in their treatment. Because the POV sticks firmly to Maia and because, as the book emphasises, his position as Emperor isolates him from other people we only get to see the other characters as they interact with him.

What's The Plot?

Well, there really isn't much of one beyond what I already told you. Things happen but there's no urgency to the events and Maia does not drive them . He's not completely passive but he primarily reacts to the things that happen around him.

Did You Like It?

Very much so. Maia is just an instantly likable and relatable character. Inhabiting his viewpoint draws you in and on through the book. You want him to succeed and be happy.

There is a mystery over his father's death but it is downplayed for most of the book, as are the attempted coups and similar moments which would be the dramatic center of other fantasy books.

Addison is more interested in how things affect Maia and how his sudden ascension will change the Elflands

Social Change

. Maia is, by the nature of his arrival on the throne and his upbringing, an agent of social change. It's not that he sets out to make great changes and throughout most of the book we are shown how limited he is despite being the ruler of the Elflands.

But Maia's worldview is very modern and inevitably his approach impacts the ruling bodies around him as they either resist or eagerly take advantage of the new opportunities that present themselves.

Which leads me on to one of my criticisms of the book. Addison has used world history to construct a very credible post-medieval society. What she doesn't really do is provide a good explanation in story for Maia's progressive attitudes. I can't see it as something he would have learned during his upbringing and his access to other points of view would have been extremely limited.

Stubbornly Noble

If Maia's progressive attitudes feel like a stretch, his naive attitude seems much more natural as does his drive to do the right thing. But he is noble to an almost superhuman level.

While he frequently berates himself for his failures, he never really seems to be tempted to do the wrong thing. He's nice to a fault. Combine that with the fact that the opposition to him is not given a strong presence in the book and you do come away with the feeling that everything goes his way.

And yet I'm going to give the novel a pass on that because the story really isn't about conflict, or at least not that sort of conflict. Instead it has the unfashionable and perhaps naively romantic message that if you do the right thing and treat people well, it will all work out.

Buy, Borrow or Skip

If you have any interest in fantasy at all then this one is a buy.

It's fair to say that Fated, the first book in Benedict Jacka's Alex Verus series had a lot in common with a certain Chicago based mage. It's a similarity that Jacka even acknowledges with an in story reference. I'm sure there are people who will dismiss the series as a cheap copy based just on a handful of familiar elements.

And that would be a shame because while it is hard not to make comparisons early on (raised by a dark mage... check!) Alex Verus is not Harry Dresden. Both his powers and his character are different. This is something that becomes increasingly obvious as the book progresses.

Those Similarities...

Okay the elephant in the book. Alex was apprenticed to a dark mage. There was an event during those years that resulted in people being killed or at least he thinks they were. Verus is very unpopular with the wizard's council. Oh and there's a troubled young female apprentice.

If you look at those elements in isolation and stripped of story specifics they do seem rather familiar. But that's the thing about stories, when you summarize generically enough they all start to seem a bit familiar. The details matter, the execution of the plot, the nature of the characters.

With this being the first book, it takes a while for those elements to build up and play out, but give it that time and you find yourself in a rather different world.

Powerful But No Action Hero

So one of the interesting things about Alex Verus is that while his skill as a diviner makes him very powerful, it doesn't equip him well for battle. As a result he favors running, hiding and above all planning.

Benedict Jacka has a lot of fun exploring the nature of Verus' powers and what they can enable him to do. In many ways Alex is extremely powerful and very dangerous. But, at the same time, when faced with a Battle Mage he is vulnerable.

This emphasis on thinking and planning over bulling your way through is quite refreshing. Alex' diviner powers make him challenging to write for too. His ability to see futures and thus anticipate what's happening has to be carefully limited to stop him becoming untouchable.

Not Good, But Not Evil

The black mages in Alex Verus' world aren't moustache twirling villains. In fact they don't consider themselves evil at all and a more accurate to say they subscribe to a form of social darwinism where power is what matters and might makes right.

There are several instances in this book where deals are struck with a black mage and the deal is honored. On the other side of things the so called white mages seem just as likely to lie, cheat or have people killed as the black mages. They just won't admit it publicly.

In this grey and muddied world, Alex Verus with his clear cut principles and reluctance to let anyone, even an enemy, die, stands out.

No Padding

This is a short book and it moves at a lightning pace. It won't take you long at all to read it. That's not a criticism, too many books these days are bloated beyond the length they need. Fated tells its story and it doesn't waste time doing it.

There's nothing missing from the story. Characters are introduced and explored; the plot moves efficiently from one set piece to the next. There's even enough time to throw in a few elements for future stories.

Who Is It For?

Do you like Urban Fantasy
Do you like the Dresden Files?
Did you prefer it when Harry wasn't uber powerful?
Check it out.

Did You Like It?

Yes I really enjoyed the book. While the early similarities to Dresden were a little distracting in the first chapter, but I enjoy this type of story and the fact that Verus can't just blast his way out of situations is appealing to me.

Buy, Borrow or Skip

This one's a buy. In fact I expect to pick up the other books in the series in the near future too.

GoodReads recommendation engine has been suggesting Alastair Reynold's Revelation Space to me for a couple of years now and it's not hard to see why, after all it's epic scaled science fiction written by a British author, and that is kind of my thing. Well it finally made it to the top of my to read pile and I'm glad it did. While it starts slow by the end it's gripping stuff.

So What's It All About?

Nine hundred thousand years ago, something annihilated the Amarantin civilization just as it was on the verge of discovering space flight. Now one scientist, Dan Sylveste, will stop at nothing to solve the Amarantin riddle before ancient history repeats itself. With no other resources at his disposal, Sylveste forges a dangerous alliance with the cyborg crew of the starship Nostalgia for Infinity. But as he closes in on the secret, a killer closes in on him. Because the Amarantin were destroyed for a reason — and if that reason is uncovered, the universe—and reality itself — could be irrecoverably altered…

Slow and Confusing Start

Revelation Space didn't get off to the best of starts. The early chapters were quite slow moving and the disparate characters and timelines made it hard to keep track of exactly who was where and why.

To make matters worse Dan Sylveste spends the first half of the book essentially reacting to things and in many cases the major events happen off-stage and are simply related to us.

There's a reason for that as it turns out, which is that those major events maybe aren't so major in the end, but we don't know that while we're reading so it's a bit off-putting that all the action seems to be happening elsewhere.

A Slowly Tightening Noose

Once the threads of the story come together though things change. The pace gradually increases, the number of characters and locations shrink and as this happens there's a palpable change in the level of tension and paranoia as this group of manipulative and frequently unlikable people find their options ever more limited.

It becomes clear that someone, or something is directing their actions and it seems that no matter what steps they take it always ends up in the best interests of the alien entity. The final sections of the book are a strange mix of Alien and 2001 as the group find themselves simultaneously hunted and exposed to alien artifacts beyond their understanding.

They're Not Very Nice Are They?

In truth they aren't a particularly nice bunch. The most compassionate of the viewpoint characters is after all a hired assassin and the point is made that some of them have developed themselves to the extent they are barely human, even the ordinary humans are strangely muted in their empathy.

One of the many topics that Reynolds touches on in the book is the notion of body augmentation and what that might do to people. In some cases it is relatively minor tweaks like Sylveste's electronic eyes, but at the extreme end there is the Captain who is slowly succumbing to a virus that has mutated his largely mechanical body.

What is Human?

Although he does not flat out ask the question, Reynolds certainly poses it. We are presented with body augmentation, artificial intelligence, the imposing of mind patterns on another's brain and even cloning is mentioned.

This is a society where certain fundamental understandings about what a human being is really no longer apply and that affects how people behave.

But What About?

There are a lot of dangling plot elements in Revelation Space. A lot of the stuff and some of the people we are focused on early in the book essentially fade into the background as the true scope of the peril becomes clear. Normally I might find that quite frustrating, but Reynolds handles it cleverly.

The tradeoff is that some of those early chapters are a bit of a slog, but if you can hang in there until you see the larger picture, it will pay off. And those dangling plots suddenly don't seem that important, not when you're dealing with something this grandiose and immediately life threatening.

Did You Like It?

Yes I really enjoyed it once the scope narrowed down to the ship and its small crew. From about half way on the tension just kept ratcheting up.

Buy, Borrow or Skip?

This one gets a buy from me.