The Hands of the Emperor
Wow. I usually reserve 5 stars for books that are "best literature of the decade". I'm not sure this novel quite qualifies. But I was so emotionally moved by the humanist story I feel compelled to praise it with how I was responding to it while reading. Here's the three things I really liked about the book.
The first and most important theme is the intimate friendships between men. Complex, deep, emotional love and bonding between colleagues who become each other's chosen family. And it's all men. Ordinarily I'd be criticizing a fantasy novel about the one gender perspective because it's often so lazy. But here the author is herself a woman and the writing is not typical dumb masculinity. Honestly it reminded me of gay-themed slash fiction or gay manga written by women, a sort of woman's gaze at male intimacy. Not that the relationships are romantic or sexual in this novel! But they have a depth you seldom get in genre fiction.
The second theme I liked was Kip's status as an outsider to the Imperial court. And then how he's caught between two worlds; too courtly for home, too Islander (and common) for the court. The author is specifically working from an imagined clash between a traditional Polynesian culture and a medieval European court and that works really well. I liked the invented Polynesian-like society, it comes off very strong with a rich detail of traditions and stories that give the narrative weight.
Finally I liked this book as a fantasy novel. Not a magic-and-dragons fantasy, there's very little of that. But rather the fantasy that one hyper-competent and diligent bureaucrat could reform an entire multi-world government and make life unambiguously better for everyone. It's completely unrealistic how Kip is successful at everything governmental he tries but it sure is satisfying fantasy.
Some minor complaints. It's very long. I don't think it's too long; the writing style is not succinct but I enjoyed reading every word. Structurally it's five volumes, each of which stands alone mostly as its own short novel. But the five build on each other to the crescendo of the final chapters so it's important they be read together.
My other complaint is the last volume dragged a bit, mostly because the central conflict between Kip and his family made no sense. It's all a comedy of errors where his family doesn't understand what his job is. And I like that tension in general, and I like how it built up and was resolved in this volume. But it got done a little to death here. Also his family visited Kip at work in the previous volume, hung out daily with the Emperor. Surely they would have figured out Kip's status and shared the gossip?
Those are small complaints and didn't really diminish my enjoyment of reading at all. Overall it's a really warm, entertaining, emotionally meaningful work of fantasy and character. It moved me.