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The Hands of the Emperor by [Victoria Goddard]

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Victoria Goddard

The Hands of the Emperor Kindle Edition

by Victoria Goddard (Author) Format: Kindle Edition

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An impulsive word can start a war.
A timely word can stop one.
A simple act of friendship can change the course of history.

Cliopher Mdang is the personal secretary of the Last Emperor of Astandalas, the Lord of Rising Stars, the Lord Magus of Zunidh, the Sun-on-Earth, the god.
He has spent more time with the Emperor of Astandalas than any other person.
He has never once touched his lord.
He has never called him by name.
He has never initiated a conversation.

One day Cliopher invites the Sun-on-Earth home to the proverbially remote Vangavaye-ve for a holiday.

The mere invitation could have seen Cliopher executed for blasphemy.
The acceptance upends the world.

Print length

969 pages
Language

English
Publication date

8 Jan. 2019
File size

1422 KB
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Product details

ASIN ‏ : ‎ B07MC6PFGL
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Underhill Books (8 Jan. 2019)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
File size ‏ : ‎ 1422 KB
Simultaneous device usage ‏ : ‎ Unlimited
Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Print length ‏ : ‎ 969 pages

Best Sellers Rank: 24,665 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- 698 in Contemporary Fantasy (Kindle Store)
- 768 in Epic Fantasy (Kindle Store)
- 1,180 in Epic Fantasy (Books)

Customer reviews:
625 ratings

About the author

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Victoria Goddard

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Victoria Goddard is a fantasy novelist, gardener, and occasional academic. She has a PhD in Medieval Studies from the University of Toronto, walked across the length of England in 2013, and is currently a writer, cheesemonger, and gardener in the Canadian Maritimes.

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Customer reviews

5 star		82%
4 star		14%
3 star		3%
2 star		1%
1 star		1%

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D. Beecher

Lovely emotive and entertaining fantasy, feels like going on holidays.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 14 September 2021

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I'm sure the author is absolutely sick of this book being compared to the Goblin Emperor, and yes it is absolutely a different and original world. Instead of an Emperor at the start of his reign this is an Emperor nearing the end of his, exhausted and brittle from decades of responsibility and formality. But there is a brotherhood between the books, in their hopeful tone, in their depth of characterisation and in the examination of non-toxic masculinity. If you love the Goblin Emperor you'll probably love this book.

I love that this is a book about Male friendship. I love that this is a book about community, the frustrations as well as the comforts in that, the push and pull of migration for the sake of education and ambition. I love the stunning landscapes evoked. I love the stunning cultures evoked. I love that most of the main characters are coming up to retirement age.

There are a few minor plotholes that my critical voice tried to point out, only for all the other voices in my head to gang up on them and gag them. Perfectly happy to ignore those minor flaws because the rest of it is so lovely and enjoyable and immersive. Spent the rest of the week bingeing her stuff.

9 people found this helpful

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Book Lover

Politics, court intrigues and relationships - an absolutely wonderful read

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 6 December 2021

Verified Purchase

Where do I even start with this?

IF YOU LOVE THE GOBLIN EMPEROR AND NEED MORE POLITICS/ROMANCE/TANGLED INTRICACIES/COURT MANNERS IN YOUR LIFE, GET THIS BOOK.

This is also highly recommended for anyone who liked The Curse of Chalion or A Memory Called Empire, or wished GRRM’s stories were a bit less sprawling and murderous and just a bit nicer.

On the surface, this is a story about a Chancellor putting his head on the line to suggest that his Emperor, the Radiant and Illustrious One, might like to take a holiday.

(The Emperor does not Do holidays. Or emotions, really. Or anything beyond huge works of magic, overseeing court functions and occasionally wrangling committees.)

And the Emperor says yes.

The slight issue with this, of course, is they then have to navigate how that all works, when you’ve got a bunch of rituals (and some small issues like; if the Emperor touches anyone, it could mean death) and strictures and prohibitions and courtly ceremonies and… he just wants to go snorkelling?

This is a story about an Emperor going on holiday, and the friendships that come from that; and how those friendships change both the people involved, and change the world.

And underneath, there are some absolutely wonderful undercurrents. It’s a story about political change and how one person, in the right place, can move mountains. It’s a story about culture and self, and how to carry it with you, and what you give up when you leave or return. It’s a story about family and friends and assumptions and bias, and what we value, and learning to value others and ourselves. It’s a story about racism and prejudice and navigating cultural differences and change alongside personal and political change. And it’s a story about friendship, and love, and how connections make the world.

In short; it’s a book that I have read and re-read, alongside The Goblin Emperor. It’s absolutely huge (969 pages in print!) but also keeps the story very tightly told; it’s just long, rather than being complicated, and it never feels boring or slow. It’s about people, and it’s so sweet and good while also taking you on a rollercoaster of emotions – and all over the Empire in terms of cultural expectations! There are a wonderful set of characters, from the main quartet around the Emperor to Cliopher’s (very large) family, to the Princes and politicians, to the scholars, to those lost and gone but not forgotten. It’s a beautifully-told story, and is absolutely on my favourites list.

6 people found this helpful

Helpful

Beautiful, brilliant, multi-coloured vision of a workable utopia

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 16 November 2021

Verified Purchase

This is such a good book on so many levels. As others have said, it’s the perfect lockdown novel simply because it’ll leave you feeling as if you’ve been on holiday in the South Seas. And travelled a lot.
It’s a beautiful, literate, literary exploration of utterly whole, decent masculinity - the absolute inverse of the usual toxic masculinity paraded by almost every fantasy novel in print.
OK, there are some noted exceptions, but this is almost unique in that you can relax: there’s never going to be an occasion when power is misused/abused, where the bullies win, where the petty-minded idiots get their way and ruin the lives of our main protagonists. In this way, it’s diametrically opposed to The Goblin Emperor to which it seems to be being compared. I loved TGE, but it was a story of overt and devastating racism against a young man taking up the reins of power and his battle to create a decent court.
This is far more an exploration of what an intelligent man of integrity can do in ways that do not abuse power.
It’s also a really quite intriguing exploration of a different way of managing things. It doesn’t step out of the extractive capitalist paradigm - not quite - but it’s heading that way. We hear the arguments for and against universal basic income and see what happens when it’s applied. We see the sharp contrast between someone who comes from an indigenous culture 10,000 years old, where LaDonna Harris’s quartet of Relationship, Responsability, Reciprocity and Redistribution are active and alive, vs the places where hierarchies still hold and the web of life amongst those lower than the top have been shattered. We see the ways that life could be better - in this sense, it’s a utopian novel.
It’s also a glorious depiction of platonic love between two men. Given how rarely male authors manage to write the emotional depth of women in a way that’s remotely convincing (I could list on the fingers of one hand, the male authors whose women feel real), I’d really like to know what men feel about Cliopher Mdang - does he feel real? Do his relationships resonate? Do they feel plausible or is this how women would *like* men to be? That would be a fascinating topic of enquiry.

But in the meantime, this is a huge, vast, glorious panorama of a book. It made me laugh out loud. It made me weep. And I loved every sentence. Heading off to find everything else Victoria Goddard has written.

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