In a world where goblins and elves make up the world and even intermarry, this is a court-intrigue fantasy and a murder mystery in which the outcast half-goblin fourth son of the Emperor suddenly finds himself heir to the empire after an airship accident. Rushed from an isolated backwater to the middle of court intrigue and assassination plots, Maia has to figure out how to gain allies, govern an empire, investigate his father's highly suspicious death, and deal with more than a few elf noble families who are very less than happy to see a half goblin now on the throne.

If you like political scheming and court intrigue then you'll probably like this. If you like grim fantasy and war and battles then probably not; none of these here. Maia is a surprisingly optimistic 18 year old emperor and almost unbelievably so; the plot read a little bit like a fairy tale where the youngest prince or princess who stops to be kind to the beggar woman or the commoners is rewarded in the end for simply being a good person. It was fine up to a point but I think got a little heavy handed by the end, OR, the author should have made a specific point of Maia making this a deliberate choice, rather than just wandering through being generally A Good Person without much reason why he'd choose to be that way.

The language was both beautiful and frustrating. Beautiful, because the author has paid a lot of attention to creating rules of speech between the formal and informal (we are pleased vs I am pleased) as well as the use of archaic English forms (thee, thou, etc) to create layers of formality and meaning. And listening (because I got this on audiobook) to an author who can actually use the archaic forms correctly rather than butchering them was a real pleasure. It's not often I read anyone using the archaic "an" (meaning "if") correctly. It was also frustrating however as the author got a little too carried away with invented names and titles until during some of the grand events it was a word soup and incredibly difficult to remember who and what was which as the polysyllabic names and titles flew freely. A little flavour is good; this was way too much. I gather the printed book had an appendix which would have helped but that was not an option in the audiobook and I won't even try to spell any of the other characters names or titles or any of the places or building names.

Overall it was a fairly gentle-paced book, following Maia who didn't really go anywhere, and who spent the whole time just dealing with plotting and politics and the murder mystery. If that's your thing, it was well-written and a beautiful world, and I'd read a sequel if there is one. But if that's not your thing you'll probably find it very slow.

Editing to add: there's obviously a lot of anti-goblin racism in this book, and there are constant references throughout to the darkness of goblin skin compared to the whiteness of elf skin. The emperor's formal dress colour appeared to be white as well. With all the frequent references to skin tone and anti-goblin prejudice it was a bit odd that this never actually seemed to go anywhere or to develop into an actual clear message about racism. On the other hand, women's rights did seem to get a more clear defense, and there were also some positively described gay and lesbian characters although this world did seem to have some degree of prejudice against homosexuality, though it seemed pretty mild.