Rating: ★★★★☆

Genre: High Fantasy

Available On: Amazon

An imperial airship falls from the sky, killing an emperor, his heirs, and the entire future of a dynasty in one catastrophic moment. What remains is The Goblin Emperor by Katherine Addison (AKA Sarah Monette), a court-focused fantasy set in the Elflands, where power is exercised through titles, ceremony, and proximity rather than violence. In the aftermath of the crash, the Untheileneise Court is forced to elevate Maia Drazhar, a half-goblin son raised in exile and deliberately kept ignorant of court life, to the imperial throne. The novel unfolds almost entirely within palaces, council chambers, theatres, and formal audiences, following political manoeuvring, assassination attempts, and institutional resistance as Maia learns how governance actually functions inside an empire built on tradition, hierarchy, and quiet cruelty.

I found The Goblin Emperor to be a very refreshing, distinctly unique, and genuinely enjoyable read. Although I came to the end of it with no particular desire to rush off and read more by the author, I’m very glad I read this one. 

The Goblin Emperor is high fantasy in a manner I’ve never encountered before: understated, well-mannered, and largely uninterested in magic, swordplay, high-action drama, or even plot in the traditional sense. This is not an adventure tale, not a hero’s journey, not a quest. If you come to fantasy expecting movement, spectacle, and escalation, this book quietly refuses to provide them.

In many ways, it reminded me of reading Tolkien. The world itself fascinated me, but the endless listing of names rapidly grew tiresome and confusing. They all follow a peculiar naming convention created specifically for this world and are alarmingly similar. This issue was almost certainly exacerbated by the fact that I listened on Audible. The narrator was excellent, but many names sound so close to one another, and characters often have multiple forms of address, formal and informal, that it wasn’t always entirely clear who the main character was speaking to or thinking about at any given moment.

Which brings me to Maia.

The Titular (And Timid) Goblin Emperor

Maia is simultaneously an excellent and frustrating protagonist. He’s compelling in that we follow him closely and gain a thorough understanding of his personality and internal life. He’s consistent, quietly strong, heartbreakingly vulnerable, and extremely kind, considerate, caring, and compassionate. Sometimes to the point of being slightly insufferable.

Maia is the youngest son of an emperor forced into multiple political marriages that gave him little joy and innumerable children. All of those children die alongside their father at the very beginning of the book, save Maia and two daughters who are dismissed as irrelevant to the line of succession purely on the basis of being female. Maia himself is half-elven and half-goblin, which in theory is intriguing and refreshingly different, though in practice it often feels somewhat shallow and underexplored. After the death of his goblin mother, he was sent away from court and raised by a cruel, abusive guardian, Severus, who taught him nothing of court life or governance, assuming he would never be important enough to need to know. Severus resented both his exile from court and the responsibility of the boy thrust upon him.

Childhood trauma is a major component of Maia’s arc. He wrestles constantly with his own sense of inadequacy, his anxiety, and his profound loneliness, all while trying to rapidly learn the mechanisms of an extremely complex and politically volatile court, adjusting to a sudden and complete reversal of circumstance. The ‘plot’ of The Goblin Emperor is less a plot than a coming-of-age story in which things occasionally happen. 

That definitely won’t appeal to everyone, and it continues a theme I experienced at the start of the year following on from Lights Out and Caught Up both managing to be highly enjoyable without really having much of a plot.

The Book’s Odd Romantic Undercurrents

If you’re expecting spice, don’t even pick this up. There is zero to be found. And even less romance to be had in The Goblin Emperor than discernible action. That’s not a criticism. 

Not every book needs romance, this one certainly didn’t. 

But I was quietly perplexed by its handling of romance, or perhaps more accurately, the way it gestures toward it and then retreats. Early on, I genuinely had the sense that this might become a thoughtful LGBTQ+ representation story. Maia’s internal reactions to several male characters are notable: he observes their beauty, feels drawn to their companionship, and seems to experience something that reads very easily as attraction, even if he doesn’t name it as such. 

For a time, it felt as though the groundwork was being laid for something genuinely different.

I was disappointed, then, when a traditionally stunning female opera singer appeared and promptly turned his head. What had seemed poised to become a subtle story of Maia falling for one of his Nohecharei (the ever-present royal guards who never leave his side), while simultaneously navigating court politics and an inevitable arranged marriage, just…evaporated. 

Instead, it became clear that this closeness was meant to underscore the novel’s central loneliness rather than hint at romantic possibility.

In that context, the direction the book ultimately takes makes sense. Maia’s attraction to the opera singer feels intentionally superficial, a brief flare of yearning rather than a meaningful connection. His disengagement from his future wife, based largely on her lack of beauty and apparent disinterest in the marriage, is handled gently but predictably. In time, he begins to believe that some form of companionship might still be possible there, while also asserting, with surprising intensity, that it is perfectly acceptable for him to have friends.

Given that The Goblin Emperor is, at its core, a meditation on isolation, duty, and emotional restraint, this trajectory is hardly shocking. I didn’t come to the book expecting romantasy, or even a fantasy with a strong romantic subplot. Still, I couldn’t help feeling that Maia was perfectly poised to be genuinely different in his romantic inclinations, and instead the novel chose a far safer path. It’s not a failure so much as a missed opportunity that left me thoughtful rather than angry.

We need more LGBTQ+ rep in high fantasy. And fantasy in general.

An Odd Sort Of Fantasy

When I say this is high fantasy, I mean it only in the most literal sense: it is set in another world, populated by non-human species, where magic exists. Beyond that, it bears little resemblance to the type of high fantasy I’m accustomed to. Yes, there are elves and goblins and mentions of orcs. But aside from one genuinely interesting quirk (their ears twitch, raise, and lower to signal emotion and attitude), there’s little that meaningfully distinguishes these characters from humans. Their customs exist, but they’re rarely central to the plot or particularly impactful, arguably even less so than invented cultures and religions in more conventional fantasy.

There are gods. There is magic. There is worship. All of it is very shallowly explored. We’re given only the vaguest outline of what these elements look like in practice. In fact, across the entire novel, there is precisely one moment where I can say with certainty that magic is used. It happens extremely quickly, is barely commented on, and is frankly baffling. A character we had no prior indication was capable of magic suddenly casts a spell that kills another character, and no explanation is given. 

It’s so abrupt and underexplained that it almost feels like magic wandered in from a different book, realised it was in the wrong place, and quietly backed out of the room.

Compounding this tonal strangeness is the setting itself, which leans more steampunk than high fantasy. There are airships, messaging stations, steam-powered engines, and elaborate bridges. So yes, this is high fantasy, but it’s not high fantasy as I’ve ever experienced it before. 

And that, ultimately, is a very good thing.

Despite a main plot that only appears sporadically. And despite spending much of the book simply following Maia as he struggles to find his footing and carve out a place for himself at court, The Goblin Emperor is weirdly gripping. 

If you prefer high-octane adventure or have little patience for political intrigue, this book will likely feel like a slog. It is, however, a quiet masterpiece of political mechanisms and institutional power.

The writing itself is exquisite. Dense, yes, and thin on traditional description, but intensely focused on internal narration and dialogue. Somehow, despite that restraint, we still gain a clear and vivid sense of the world, even if the precise identities of the endless parade of titled characters tend to blur together. 

The relentless repetition of the epithet ‘Serenity’ didn’t help. But then Maia himself isn’t without his flaws.

The Problem With Maia

My primary frustration with the book, beyond the names, is Maia himself. While he is a beautifully written character, he is perhaps a little too good. Given how he was raised, how he was treated, and what he endures, he remains polite and kind to a fault. He barely raises his voice, ever, and continually seeks within himself the will to forgive those who have done terrible things to him. Or at least, if not forgive them, treat them fairly despite them never doing the same for him. 

Forgiveness and compassion are clearly the thematic core of the novel, so this makes sense on a conceptual level, but I would have found Maia more believable had he struggled harder to achieve this degree of grace. The temptations of power, the fear, and the genuine danger of court life never seem to push him quite far enough. 

In the end, it feels just a little too easy for him to persevere, be kind, and eventually see the court bend toward his way of thinking.

That flaw aside, The Goblin Emperor remains an intriguing, refreshing, and genuinely memorable book. It is not exciting in the conventional sense, but it is thoughtful, humane, and quietly compelling. I didn’t finish it desperate for more, but I did finish it satisfied, and that feels like exactly what this novel set out to do.

What The Goblin Emperor Is (and Isn’t)

Taken as a whole, The Goblin Emperor is a novel I admire more than I adore, and that feels like exactly the response it invites. It is not a book that grips you by the throat or leaves you desperate for more, but one that lingers quietly once it’s done. Its strengths are subtle, its pleasures restrained, and its ambitions pointed firmly inward rather than outward.

This is high fantasy that refuses spectacle. It replaces adventure with administration, heroics with humility, and battles with bureaucracy. For me, that was refreshing. I found its focus on political systems, personal integrity, and the slow, awkward process of learning how to wield power thoughtfully far more interesting than another quest narrative or world-ending threat. At the same time, I can easily see why this book leaves some readers cold. If you come to fantasy for momentum, magic, or dramatic escalation, The Goblin Emperor will feel slight, slow, and occasionally frustrating.

Maia himself encapsulates both the novel’s greatest strength and its most notable weakness. His kindness, compassion, and emotional openness are rare traits for a fantasy protagonist, and I found them quietly moving. Yet there were moments where that goodness felt a little too effortless, a little too unchallenged by the uglier realities of power. The novel asks us to believe that empathy can reshape institutions, and while I appreciate that idea deeply, I sometimes wished the cost of that empathy had been higher, messier, or more visibly earned.

The worldbuilding follows a similar pattern. It’s elegant and suggestive rather than expansive or immersive in a traditional sense. The non-human races, the gods, and the magic exist more as background texture than driving forces, and while that minimalism works thematically, it also leaves certain elements feeling underdeveloped. The result is a setting that feels coherent and believable, but not one that compelled me to explore further once the story ended.

Ultimately, I think The Goblin Emperor succeeds precisely because it knows what it wants to be and refuses to pretend otherwise. It is a quiet, introspective, politically minded fantasy about kindness as a form of strength, about surviving systems rather than conquering them, and about choosing decency in spaces that don’t reward it. I didn’t finish it hungry for sequels, but I did finish it impressed, thoughtful, and glad I’d taken the time to meet it on its own terms.

And honestly, that feels like a rare enough achievement on its own.