A review by blewballoon
The Goblin Emperor by Katherine Addison

challenging reflective tense slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.5

My boyfriend read this book to me at night to help me fall asleep, and it's great for that. If you need an example of a fantasy book with excessively convoluted names, this is the book for you. If want a painfully slow and dry story with a vague sense of political intrigue but nothing too intriguing, this book is an excellent choice. How much you enjoy this book will depend on how much you enjoy the main character. I personally thought he was.. fine? Not a bad person, but not an exceptional one either in the grand scheme of things. I was much more interested in his close staff, such as his personal assistant who arguably did the most, his rotating bodyguards, and even his royal dressers who picked out his clothes. (Notice how I'm avoiding using anyone's name because I have absolutely no hope of trying to spell them.) I think this book would have been vastly improved by having more perspectives, like the staff members I mentioned, and a female character perspective would have been great as well. The emperor arguably does the bare minimum in terms of treating women decently, at least from a modern viewpoint. I am glad this is a book where
"Good" people have good things happen to them and "bad" people don't get away with doing a lot of bad stuff for very long.
If this were a more pessimistic book, I think the snail's pace and difficult to grasp world-building would have been even harder to wade through. 
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