...one of Ulcetha's main tasks was writing fake provenances for the fake elven artefacts that came into Salathgarad's hands... It was a terrible use of second-class honors in history, but Ulcetha gritted his teeth and did it anyway because he was paid extremely well. He even came to find the work perversely interesting. [p. 8]
The events of The Goblin Emperor are triggered by the crash of an airship, which kills the emperor and all but one of his heirs. The Orb of Caraido tells the story of disgraced scholar Ulcetha Zhorvena, for whom the airship crash was a very personal tragedy: his best friend Mara was the pilot of the airship. From Mara, Ulcetha inherits a puzzle with a very academic twist that leads him back into the Department of History, from which he was expelled after being framed for the theft of the priceless Orish Veltavan. Working with historian Osmer Trenevar, Ulcetha discovers a murder, a secret love affair, and the possibility of clearing his name.
The Orb of Cairado is only about a hundred pages long, but there's a lot of plot in those pages. Ulcetha -- who likes trashy adventure novels, a taste which saves his life -- is vividly characterised, and he comes to look at his world and himself quite differently by the end of the story. I liked the backstabbing and politicking of the University, and Ulcetha's technique for gaining access to family archives: I'd happily read a whole novel about him, and it felt as though I had. The Goblin Emperor is a dense novel (I just checked the page count and was surprised to find it was under 500 pages!): The Orb of Cairado, though it has a simpler structure, is just as tightly woven. I find the Osreth books fascinating, not least because the author seldom explains much about anything. There is a weight of worldbuilding lurking beneath the surface.
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