Hugo Nominations: Katherine Addison's The Goblin Emperor

As Constant Reader may recall, I like invented-world fantasies with lots of worldbuilding and history and complicated politics and cultural issues and yummy things like that. The Goblin Emperor is exactly this, and being so well-written and with such fascinating characters, I was immediately drawn into it and devoured it with delight. Sarah Monette, writing as Katherine Addison, has created something wonderful here.

It's a fish out of water court intrigue - protagonist Maia is the unloved and unregarded fourth son of the Emperor of the Elflands, the child of a political match between his father and a princess of Barizhan - the land of the goblins. Both mother and son were banished from court, and after his mother's early death, Maia is raised in a remote town by his resentful, out of favour kinsman who abuses him. Maia's life seems destined to be lonely and unpleasant, until a terrible accident - later found to be sabotage - takes the life of his father and three older brothers, leaving him the heir to the throne of Elfland.

Maia comes to the throne totally unprepared, with no knowledge of politics, the nation's concerns, the intricacies of court life, the duties of an emperor, the bureaucracy and endless paperwork that keeps an empire running. What he does have is a natural honesty, a desire to serve and do the best for his people, and a likable nature that eventually wins him a few key allies amidst a court that views him with disdain as a half-blood savage who does not deserve to rule.

It's the essential decency of the main character that sells the novel from the first page. The reader wants Maia to learn how to thread his way through the complexities of politics, the mechanics of government and the court intrigues, to come into his own and heal a land where divisions along lines of race, class and gender have resulted in a host of abuses, great and small, institutional and personal.

It's a complex and wonderful story, with much to enjoy, and much to think about.

Hugo Nominations: Jim Butcher's Skin Game

There's not a great deal to be remarked on about Jim Butcher's Skin Game. It's urban fantasy with lots of action, and a very complicated con/heist/doublecross plot that involves our wizardly hero Harry Dresden, assorted ancient and nasty enemies, his liege lady Mab, The Queen of Air and Darkness, Hades, God of the Underworld, and a plan to steal the Holy Grail from the most secure vault in the Harryverse.

I haven't read any of the previous Dresden Files novels, although I've sort of wanted to check out the series because I watched and enjoyed the short-lived TV show based on the character. So a lot of the backstory that presumably motivated the various good, evil, and ambiguously aligned characters was missing for me. And after 15 novels, there was a lot of history between most of the characters, as this seemed to be one of those novels that brings back all of your favourite guest stars to stir things up between them. I probably missed out on a lot that might have made the book more emotionally gratifying by being a complete stranger to the series, but that's one of the risks of nominating the 16th volume in a series for a major award.

Harry himself seems to be modeled after the classic film noir hard-boiled detective, except that as a first person POV narrator of that particular stripe, he's not really jaded enough, and he rambles on rather a lot.

As a casual read, Skin Game was reasonably enjoyable, and I still might go read a few of the earlier novels when I'm in the mood for frivolous magic and mayhem - but I must say that while reading this, I found myself comparing it with the Iron Druid series by Kevin Hearne, another urban fantasy with a male protagonist with which it shares certain types and tropes, and thinking that it did not quite measure up.