the hands of the emperor victoria goddard

I liked Beowulf just fine, but I absolutely cannot stand the form used here. I’m not averse to storytelling in verse, I loved Anne Carson’s translation of three Oresteia plays. I tried, I really did, the concept of a novel in verse seemed fantastic, but I underestimated my hatred of very plain free verse. Tags that apply: fantasy, female author, slow pacing, bureaucracy, politics, slice of life, non-western, utopia-ish, uplifting, older protagonist, selfpub, DNF, not a fan The Sign of the Dragon by Mary Soon LeeĭNF 19%. I was not really itching to pick it back up and besides, I’ve been told by people who liked it that some things that bothered me get worse in the second half. That, I think, was the main problem – what’s a cozy character-focused book where you don’t care about the protagonist? And being nearly 350k words, the percentage barely moves as you read. We are also shown quite forcefully and repeatedly how great and clever and flawless and always right he is, which doesn’t exactly endear me to a character.

Since Cliopher, or Kip, has already accomplished nearly everything there is to accomplish, there are no real challenges, no conflicts, no sense of tension whatsoever, even of the small interpersonal kind. The worldbuilding is incredibly intricate and I loved Kip’s complex relationship with his culture. And initially, it went just fine, feeling a lot like taking your late-game fully-leveled-up Stardew Valley character on a vacation to Ginger Island. A slow burn friendship between a god-emperor and his right hand man? Bureaucrat power fantasy? Yes. From everything I heard about it, this should have been just up my alley despite the length. Tags that apply: sci-fi, female author, LGBTQ+, slice of life, utopia-ish, religion, uplifting, novella, not a fan The Hands of the Emperor by Victoria Goddard (Lays of the Hearth-Fire #1)ĭNF 42%. It clearly resonates with a lot of people, which is fine, but as far as I go…nope. I suppose the worldbuilding is pretty cool as a post-industrial utopian society, but that’s all it really has going for it. It sort of reads like a self-help book, a genre I’ve always viewed with distaste. As much as I like slice of life, I find Mosscap annoying and the philosophy painfully trite and insipid.

It’s hard to put in words but they just don’t resonate with me the way Wayfarers does. I wasn’t quite sure what to think about A Psalm for the Wild-Built when I read it back in December 2021, but after reading the sequel, A Prayer for the Crown-Shy, and bouncing off hard, I made up my mind: I hate to be the party pooper, but I don’t like this series. With one popular series I found out I dislike and two DNFs I had high hopes for, this round-up of mini reviews happens to be unintentionally dedicated to those. Sometimes things don’t work out no matter how much you want to like a book, no matter how up your alley it sounds.

The hands of the emperor victoria goddard