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.
PUBLISHER: Underhill Books
YEAR: 2022
LENGTH: 740 pages
AGE: Adult
GENRE: Fantasy, Romance
RECOMMENDED: Highly
Queer Rep Summary: Gay/Achillean Main Character(s), Bi/Pan Main Character(s), Trans Minor Character(s).
THE HANDS OF THE EMPROR is a romance, undeniably, but more than that it is a story of intimacy, of bridging nearly insurmountable gaps to make things better for everyone involved. The Emperor cannot be touched by anyone, his existence is ritualized and sacred and so, so lonely. Instead of some impulsive disregard for the rules, during that impromptu holiday Cliopher realizes how lonely the Sun-on-Earth is, and the Sun-on-Earth, in turn, realizes that four of those closest to him might eventually be his friends and not just his officials. All of this, however, takes a very long time. Early one much of it is left implicit. Later on, as things change and other people demand answers, Cliopher begins explaining as necessary, putting together bits and pieces of his present and his past into a narrative that is impactful partly because it was ambiguous for so long.
Cliopher discusses time in terms of long spans of years, especially when traveling or anything related to The Fall. It leads to a distorted feeling, when I thought the characters were essentially human, then they turn out to have very long lifespans. Toward the end it's clear that Cliopher has been in Solara for at least a thousand years. Part of what I appreciate is that the specifics, in this instance, don’t matter and no one belabors the point. The length and structure of the book allows for several long sections, each of which could be their own novel or at least a novella, but they can circle back to things mentioned earlier without any sense of hurry. The story happens, allowing the reader to linger in a space that is as once intimate and disconnected. Cliopher does not pause to explain anything to the reader, but sometimes someone around him asks for the interplay of words and power to be more than subtle implications and he discourses while they attend.
I never felt lost, but I could dwell in each moment with Cliopher because of his focus on organizing and structuring things around him. Cliopher is the kind of person I try to be, efficient and organized but valuing impact over appearance. He finds problems and fixes them, trying to make things better and understanding that the first step is not just to find what’s “wrong” but to define what “better” would even mean in this particular context.
As the first book in the series, this felt like it already encompassed a trilogy's worth of story. It resolves many things and specifically leaves something for the next book to continue, as someone leaves for a long journey right at the end. It’s a fantasy not just in terms of the presence of magic, but in the idea that someone who actually has centuries to slowly work his way through the bureaucracy would use that power to make people’s lives better on a massive scale, and to set up structures which make it easier to do good than harm.
It's established early on that Cliopher is viewed by his (very large) family as the strange, ambitious one who left. They don't understand how he is important and doing important things, whereas he feels the weight of their disappointment every time he comes home and it is another brief vacation rather than a permanent return. At Court in Solara, Cliopher is viewed as an annoyance and his culture is seen as backward (when it's acknowledged at all), but because the story opens when he is in an important position and has been for some time (as The Hands of The Emperor), it's quite a ways into the story before the themes of diaspora and the loneliness of being viewed as simultaneously backward and exotic become explicit. He'd told his family he was a Secretary but they had no context to understand what that meant, or how influential he was in improving their lives along with the rest of the Empire.
If you like this you may like:
- The Grace of Kings by Ken Liu
- The Unwanted Prophet by Carolina Cruz
- Greenwode by J. Tullos Hennig
Graphic/Explicit CW for classism, racism.
Moderate CW for xenophobia, violence, cannibalism, death.
Minor CW for sexual content, genocide.
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