{"id":710,"date":"2015-06-28T22:24:24","date_gmt":"2015-06-28T19:24:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/suchwanderings.wordpress.com\/?p=710"},"modified":"2015-06-28T22:24:24","modified_gmt":"2015-06-28T19:24:24","slug":"sunday-recs-the-goblin-emperor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/snuu.kapsi.fi\/saranorja\/2015\/06\/28\/sunday-recs-the-goblin-emperor\/","title":{"rendered":"Sunday recs: The Goblin Emperor"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A novel for today&#8217;s Sunday recs:<\/p>\n<p>I just read <a href=\"http:\/\/www.katherineaddison.com\/\">Katherine Addison&#8217;s<\/a> novel <em>The Goblin Emperor<\/em> and was, quite frankly, blown away. I haven&#8217;t loved a novel this much in ages! It was the perfect escape amidst a very busy couple of weeks. I may or may not have uttered a &#8220;noooooo&#8221; when I realised the story was done and the rest was appendix-type stuff. <\/p>\n<p>Things that I especially loved: <\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>The main character, Maia. Ohhhh Maia! I love characters who strive to be good, and Maia really does. He is also just so endearing in his awkwardness. &lt;3<\/li>\n<li>The use of language! In addition to writing really compelling prose, Addison appealed to Linguist Me by having the elves&#8217; language (represented as English) include a distinction between formal and informal 1st and 2nd person pronouns. Such a lovely detail, and so revealing of their politeness culture. I especially enjoyed that at first the reader has to start figuring it out themself. Also: the &#8220;early modern English&#8221; features (thou\/thee, etc.) were all grammatically correct! This is especially awesome because so many people do weird shit with pseudo-Shakespearean language. In Addison&#8217;s hands it felt natural instead of stilted.<\/li>\n<li>It was so optimistic! And not in a saccharine way &#8211; just, people were decent, and the ending made me so happy.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>My only sorrow is that this is a standalone. I really hope Addison writes something else set in this world&#8230; I would&#8217;ve wanted to learn more especially about Maia&#8217;s betrothed. <\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s interesting that the novel seems to be classified as steampunk. I suppose it shouldn&#8217;t be so surprising to me &#8211; after all, TGE includes developing steam\/clockwork-powered machinery and revolution &#8211; but this book is just so different from any steampunk I&#8217;ve ever read. While reading I was just like &#8220;well this is a great high fantasy -esque novel with a post-medieval society, yay&#8221;. <\/p>\n<p>I do urge you to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/The-Goblin-Emperor-Katherine-Addison\/dp\/076532699X\/\">try out<\/a> <em>The Goblin Emperor<\/em> though, especially if you&#8217;re in the mood for optimistic fantasy! I read this as an ebook as part of my Hugo voting packet, but I ordered the paperback halfway through the book because I want to treasure this thing as a physical object as well. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A novel for today&#8217;s Sunday recs: I just read Katherine Addison&#8217;s novel The Goblin Emperor and was, quite frankly, blown away. I haven&#8217;t loved a novel this much in ages! It was the perfect escape amidst a very busy couple of weeks. I may or may not have uttered a &#8220;noooooo&#8221; when I realised the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[104,35,5],"tags":[105,168,31,169],"class_list":["post-710","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-discussion","category-review","tag-books-my-precious","tag-katherine-addison","tag-recs","tag-the-goblin-emperor"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/snuu.kapsi.fi\/saranorja\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/710","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/snuu.kapsi.fi\/saranorja\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/snuu.kapsi.fi\/saranorja\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/snuu.kapsi.fi\/saranorja\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/snuu.kapsi.fi\/saranorja\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=710"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/snuu.kapsi.fi\/saranorja\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/710\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/snuu.kapsi.fi\/saranorja\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=710"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/snuu.kapsi.fi\/saranorja\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=710"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/snuu.kapsi.fi\/saranorja\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=710"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}