“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.
This is an unusual fantasy novel in that it's not about war, or conquest, or even colonialism (except inasmuch as the Empire was 'built on the blood of slaves, on the subjugation of conquered peoples, on stolen magic, and on the predication that the peace and prosperity enjoyed by most was worth the suffering of many': but Cliopher is steadily dismantling that system). There is a living god, the Emperor, but Cliopher intends to make it possible for him to retire. There was a magical apocalypse, the Fall, but that was a thousand years ago -- at least in Solaara, the Imperial capital: time flows differently there than it does in Cliopher's homeland, the Polynesian-inflected Vangavaye-ve. Instead of flamboyant folk heroes (though people still quote rebel poet Fitzroy Angursell, and tell tales of the Red Company) there are middle-aged people with proper jobs, museum curators and environmental health inspectors. There are feathered thunder-lizards (more of these, please!) and magical photocopiers, sky-ships and gates between worlds, mannerist manouevres, subtle nuances and cuts direct. And though this is not a novel about murder or war or daring heists, there is plenty of conflict: between Cliopher and his family, between Cliopher's career and his heritage (which matters a lot to him), between the role of Emperor and the man imprisoned by that role, between Cliopher Mdang -- 'personal secretary to the Lord of Rising Stars, Secretary in Chief of the Private Offices of the Lords of State, official head of the Imperial Bureaucratic Service, unofficial head of the world’s government, the Hands of the Emperor' -- and Cousin Kip, the one who left.
Imagine my delight on discovering that Goddard has written many other books set in the same milieu, with some characters appearing in multiple works. Though I have also had to reassure a friend that, as far as I can tell, The Hands of the Emperor and its direct sequel At the Feet of the Sun [review soon!], can be read as a single long work, without any need to read the shorter works or the other series. And indeed, having read At the Feet of the Sun, I'd say that The Hands of the Emperor stands alone: unless, like me, you fall in love with the characters and the setting ...
Fulfils the ‘sends me down a rabbithole’ rubric of the 52 books in 2023 challenge. Welcome to Victoria Goddard Binge-Read Week!
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