The result is a spellbinding and genuinely affecting drama.Īre we not men? We are-well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z (2006).Ī zombie apocalypse is one thing. There are powerful character studies and a plot full of small but deadly traps among which the sweet-natured, perplexed Maia must navigate. Addison patiently and tellingly paints in the backdrop, mingling steampunk elements and low-key magic with imperial intricacies. He treats servants as people and women as equals, an approach that wins him many admirers but also enrages the more traditional nobles. Gradually he finds ways to solve intractable problems. He comes to rely on Csevet, the courier who becomes his secretary, for information and advice and on his guards Cala and Beshelar, who are sworn to protect him.
Alone and friendless, bewildered by the complex politics and economics of the court-and soon informed that his father’s death was caused by sabotage, not accident-Maia finds the burden almost unsupportable. Armed only with his quick wits, empathy and natural humility, his first task is to face down the arrogant and contemptuous Lord Chancellor, Uleris Chavar, and insist that he be crowned before his father's funeral. Stunned and disconcerted, Maia must take his place as the rightful Emperor of the Elflands. But then a courier arrives with the news that his father and elder brothers have been killed in an airship crash. New fantasy from an author who, as Sarah Monette, wrote the Doctrine of Labyrinth series.Įighteen-year-old half-goblin Maia, the despised youngest son of the Emperor, lives in wretched circumstances, exiled from the Imperial Court and overseen by his brutal cousin, Setheris.
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