2023/011: The Hands of the Emperor — Victoria Goddard

2023/011: The Hands of the Emperor — Victoria Goddard

“The soup was hot, I tell you.”
Cliopher smiled thinly at him. “It was hot because I know how to light a fire without magic, without matches, without anything but two sticks and a string. I lit the first fire in the Palace after the Fall of Astandalas—and I tell you, sir, I have not let it go out since.” [loc. 9901]

This was my first 5-star rating of the year: reading it was an utter and unmitigated pleasure, so much so that I almost immediately read it again. (This does not count as rereading. This is luxuriating.) The Hands of the Emperor, in print, is nearly a thousand pages long, and its protagonist is a middle-aged civil servant who wants to change the world and is trying to balance his career as the Last Emperor's secretary (and thus the second most powerful person in the world) with his family's casual dismissal of his achievements. The setting is a fantasy world, but there's little on-page magic (our protagonist Cliopher, Kip, is not a magic-user) and the focus is on government policy, and on family, friendship and fealty. And yes, it's a love story, though not a sexual one.

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