The youngest, half-Goblin son of the forth wife of the Emperor Varenechibel IV¹; long ago exiled to a far corner of the empire. Until a freak airship accident² kills the Emperor and all of his early heirs.

Suddenly, Maia is thrust into a whole new life. A life of money and power; but also a life without privacy, a life that he has absolutely no idea how to deal with.

For better or for worse, The Goblin Emperor has surprisingly low stakes. This isn’t a book about the new emperor standing against invasion. It’s not about some world ending threat. It’s not really even about traitors trying to take the throne–although that one at least we get a bit of².

I actually really like it. It’s a ‘slice of life’ (a genre I’ve recently really started to love), where the life is that of a new Emperor. Who happens to be a (half-)Goblin.

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And now, after Wolverine: Old Man Logan in the apocalyptic future and Wolverine: Old Man Logan, Vol. 0: Warzones! in Battleworld, we’re finally back in the present–and, I assume, in the main universe?

Old Man Logan of course goes straight from shock to murder. If he’s in the past (from his own point of view), well then of course he’s going to have to fix the future.

Only…

What if this isn’t actually his past? What if it isn’t his future that he’s setting out to change?

It’s a neat idea, but a bit thin on execution. I would have rather him kick up a bit more trouble before starting to figure things out. Seeing an equally old Captain America (no idea what the story was there) was neat. But the real amusing part is the apart team up with Kate Bishop.

Not at all who I would have picked… but amusing!

So far, I’m not sure what to think. I really liked the world of Old Man Logan. Now we have Logan without that world. Bit of a bait and switch, but I suppose it has potential.

Onward!

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Mom had gotten better through the years at blending in and appearing at first glance like other mothers. But she still spent the equinox in the woods and the solstice at the sea. She still whispered old words over her teacups and I’d caught her muttering a curse as we passed the front door of our neighbor’s house more than once.

It’s a fascinating sort of book; dark and magical and a bit surreal. The more twisted aspects of ‘small town’ life, a murder mystery, and romance all in one.

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Oh, to have such potential.

Take the idea of a used bookstore in San Francisco. Give it an awesome name. Skinny, but three stories tall (and I imagine, open all the way up rather than having 3 actual floors). Add a mysterious ‘back’ section, where strange people come to ‘borrow’ strange books. Some sort of secret society? A merging of new* technologies–e-readers! search engines! OCR! book scanning!–and archaic–books! printing presses! actually; that’s about it…

It’s got the seeds of what should have been a great story!

I really do love the early setting of the book. It’s got a perfect magical feel to it. I really want to visit Mr. Penumbra’s!

But unfortunately, from there (and in my opinion), it goes somewhat off the rails. Everything feels too each. The characters are all a bit ’too much’. The technology (a big part of the book) all feels slightly off. The big reveal is … meh?

In any case, it’s an interesting premise stretched thin. Onward!

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Oh, that’s quite a story.

I think that I really like the Marvel stories that take place a bit further from our own world–gives them a chance to really change things up. And multiple universes lets you have characters you know and love–and brutally murder them. Always a good time.

Worth the read.

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“I knew about faeries. They didn’t,” she protested. She hated the faery inability to lie more and more as he spoke. It would be easier to lie and deny how painlessly she had become fey. It would be easier to say that she wasn’t adjusting to her new life far faster than she’d ever thought. It would be easier to say she was struggling. Because then he wouldn’t be doing this to me.

After Ink Exchange, I was worried. For the most part, Fragile Eternity brings it back.

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For every nine years, the fold from Beyond the Wall and over the hill set up their stalls, and for a day and a night the meadow played host to the Faerie market; and there was, for one day and one night in nine years, commerce between the nations.

I do love Neil Gaiman¹. He does weird/creepy/dark perfectly well. Stardust is a great example of exactly that.

It’s a dark fairy tale, a la the Brothers Grimm. A city on the border between Victorian England and Fairie. The contrast of worlds. An adventure full of princes and witches, woodland animals, magic, and of course: fairy tale love.

“So, having found a lady, could you not have come to her aid, or left her alone? Why drag her into your foolishness?"
“Love,” he explained.
She looked at him with eyes the blue of the sky. “I hope you choke on it,” she said, flatly.

It’s a great listen. A bit weird, since apparently it was also originally published in graphic novel format and is also supposed to be a great movie. Looks like I’m going to have to go through it a few more times.

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“Time,” he said solemnly, “is comparable to a river flowing under a layer of ice. It stretches us out like water weeds, from root to tip, from birth to death, curled around whatever rocks or snags happen to lie in our path; and no one can get out of the river because of the ice roof, and no one can turn back against the current for an instant.

Well that’s a fascinating read.

We have a magical mishap that blows holes in time, secret societies at each other’s throats, beggers’ guilds, poets, time traveling tourism, and body swapping shenanigans.

It’s certainly a longer read, yet even with the runtime I found myself wanting more in certain areas.

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What products did one use in Anglo-Saxon England? Beaver snot? A grudging four stars.

Unfortunately, I feel like “a grudging four stars” is about where this book ends up for me. Not bad, but given how much I’ve loved just about everything else Sanderson, it’s a bit lower.

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