The Goblin Emperor

Hatte sehr viel Spaß beim Lesen. Vor allem zu erfahren, welche Unterschiede, Schwerpunkte und Sitten das Leben in der obersten Klasse hat. Auch der rote Faden und die Storyline hat mir sehr gefallen. Schade finde ich nur, dass das Buch kein direktes Sequel hat.

Now, I went into this book naked of expectations. It was suggested to me on audible and I thought: "Oh well, I mean, you're out of options right now and this sounds like house-cleaning-white-noise so let's do that." Holy shit was I on for a beautiful ride. You follow Maia, who accidentally, shockingly, and disconcertingly becomes the emperor of a steampunk sort of society within a barely constitutional empire. It is hard to tell the level of technology, as air ships are rather common and factories are as well, but you don't hear much about anything else. Here he has to grapple with not having been educated in the ways of the court and politics, being afraid of being taken advantage of and slowly learning the ways to tell it. Maia is a very introverted person and he wasn't blessed with eloquency upon birth, in addition to that his upbringing didn't help to remedy the fact or equip him with any sort of ways to compensate. He suffers from the sort of anxiety that one expects and a big fat version of imposter syndrome, which I know all too well. Within that cocoon of 'I'm unworthy' he also, however, cleverly, realises that he is still the best choice for this country, as the other option would be civil war and insecurity. Thanks to his intellect he is caught between a rock and a hard place. He tries to make it work. And you root for him. And every step of the way, every baby step, is deserved. Every mistake is learned from, every fear is dealt with, every plot dissolved. It is very, _very_ satisfying. I can only recommend it. Gush over. Get it.