The Hands of the Emperor is a difficult book to review. Not only does its expansive 969-pages leave a lot of content to pick apart, but my feelings on the book are swirling and contradictory. The Hands of the Emperor reaches highs higher than any book I’ve read this year. Victoria Goddard’s approach to worldbuilding and character writing electrified the epic fantasy loving part of my brain I had long thought dormant. However, the structure of this book was often tedious to plod through. The book contains masterful moving writing, but also often felt amateurish in its approach.

The Hands of the Emperor follows Cliopher Mdang, a man who has dedicated his life to public service and has spent decades as the secretary to the Emperor of Zunidh, functioning as the head of the government. In the twilight of his career he is faced with the choice to return home from the far away capital and settle into the comforts of his family or to further commit himself as leader of Zunidh, fully seize his ambitions and radically change the world for the better. 

Throughout the book Victoria Goddard takes her readers across her intricately built world through the eyes of Cliopher. We learn about his homeland, Vangavaye-ve, an isolated island in the remote Wild Seas. Here we fully unpack Cliopher’s deep and pure love for his homeland and culture and see the ways that love has been tested by both bigoted, classist royals in the capital and by his reproachful and judgemental family. 

I adored the way Goddard explored the pains of being trapped between two cultures and the warring desires for home, family and comfort and reaching for ambitions nobody in your life can quite understand. From what I can tell Goddard is a white Canadian (please tell me otherwise if I’m wrong) but she navigates the painful social reality of being the lone outsider and representation of your culture with an accuracy and specificity that was deeply relatable. So many moments in this novel rung painfully true, from Cliopher’s resignation to his name consistently being mispronounced by everyone around him, to the joy of hearing someone passingly mention your home when violently homesick, to the hurt of rejection when you finally come home and are marked as too different from your past self. It's all just beautifully rendered. 

Another element of the novel I adored was Cliopher’s relationship to his boss best friend and God Emperor, Artorin 'Tor' Damara. The Emperor is a deeply fascinating character throughout the novel. With him we sift through the painful consequences of dehumanization as a man elevated to godhood. The most striking moments in the novel were the Emperor’s cries for the people closest to him to see him as a person. To love him as a man, not a god. Goddard beautifully realizes Artorin’s aching pain and pleas for his humanity to be recognized. Goddard’s worldbuilding in regards to the magical social protocol that rules Tor’s life was brilliantly crafted. The Emperor can’t do things as minor as eat fresh fruit and life altering as making eye and being touched. Goddard masterfully crafts a gilded cage that slowly chips away at Tor’s soul with a specific eye for unique detail that brings that pain to life. 

But where there are high highs with The Hands of the Emperor the are frustrating lows. This book is very long, and in some ways I loved the spiralling endlessness of the novel. I love these characters, so spending time with them was never truly a burden. But, plainly, the novel was repetitive. Plot points like Cliopher’s family not understanding or respecting his career were beaten to death so thoroughly it was mind-bending that even in the eleventh hour it still seemed no one in his life understood him or his position. 

I was also disappointed in the ways Goddard approached writing a political fantasy. Ostensibly the plot of this book is Cliopher reforming the Imperial government into a socialist utopia. In practice, however, Goddard completely glosses over the political landscape of the world. Don’t get me wrong Goddard lavishes the reader in information, we learn many facts about the government and the history of Zunidh. But the politics of this world are never the plot engine of the story. This made the world, despite its abundance of detail, feel incredibly simplistic. The most complex this book gets in terms of its politics is showing us a few meetings with political leaders that quickly end with Cliopher getting his way. Every potential problem is easily resolved within a chapter. There’s no true conflict or stakes. 

When I read a political fantasy I want to see protagonists get their hands dirty, make sacrifices and compromise. I want to see the workings of their ingenuity. I want to see them face consequences for their actions. I want to see the messy ways dominos can fall. I want their efforts to be hard won. And this book has none of that. Cliopher wants universal basic income, government housing, and to deemphasize the aristocracy and he gets it without any (on page) trouble. I'm sorry, but that's just boring to read. 

But despite what I would consider major stumbling blocks for The Hand of the Emperor, I still loved the story intimately. It all comes down to Victoria Goddard's excellent character writing. No matter how frustrated I was by the repetitive, basic plot of the novel I was always pulled through by my absolute adoration for Cliopher and the Emperor. I might be too early to predict but I could see myself falling completely in love with the entire Lays of the Hearth Fire series and the Nine Realms world as a whole.