Book Review: Of the Emperor's Kindness by Chaz Brenchley

A new and modern approach to fantasy of manners. 

Malance, as I like to say in these reviews, has a problem. One year into the job, she’s the ambassador of Verantha to the court of the Emperor of Feremandas, the older, larger and more stately of the two competing empires in this part of the world. Her problem is that Verantha does not physically exist in territory any longer and has not for years, it has been absorbed by the rising, burgeoning and grasping Empire of Clath. Clath is dead certain that Verantha is just now a province of their realm and Malance’s existence and role is a joke or worse an insult to Clath. It is fortunate, perhaps, that Malance has a balance of the Feremandas Emperor’s favor, and is in a relationship with his niece. But when refugees from her vanished homeland arrive, Clath’s response may put her at odds with their plans, a rather dangerous position to be.

This is the story of Of the Emperor’s Kindness by Chaz Brenchley, projected to be first in a series.

I am going to look at this book through the lens of a subgenre of fantasy that had risen, peaked and in these days where seemingly the majority of fantasy books published are either grimdark or romantasy¹. That subgenre is the fantasy of manners, or even mannerpunk. It was first recognized in the early 1990’s as a category by Donald G Keller, describing a spectrum of books from the 1980’s by authors like Steven Brust, Emma Bull, Kate Elliott, Ellen Kushner, Caroline Stevermer, and others.

Fantasy of manners is fantasy by way of, to use contemporary references, works like Downton Abbey, although at the time authors such as Dorothy Dunnett, Alexandre Dumas, Jane Austen, and Georgette Heyer were seen as inspiration and progenitors for this type of fiction. It’s fantasy where (generally) the supernatural elements are a light touch or even entirely non-existent, just taking place in a secondary world. The focus of these works is intensively social. While there can be action and adventure in these works and often are, that is not the propelling power of these novels.

Instead, fantasy of manners are social novels, focusing on social constraints, social relationships and conflicts, the growth and development of social contacts, and in general are relentlessly about the people, first and foremost. Fantasy of manners novels are, in my experience, either urban, or take place in tight social spaces (c.f. Downton Abbey or Bridgerton).The conflicts that erupt are not orcs coming over the barricade, it is the cut and thrust of words at a party, the scheming to bring peers on side for a petition or power play. To maneuver socially even as the threat of violence within the peers might erupt. But that violence and action is subordinate to the social conflicts and interactions.

All this is what fantasy of manners does. Fantasy of manners is a subgenre then that can be subtle, with the reader having to do legwork in picking up clues from context and deciphering what precisely is going on in the machinations and social maneuvers. It is a subgenre that you immerse yourself in a party, and try and figure out as you are reading the description of the party just who is aligned with whom, and what is happening even as it slowly unfolds.²

With all that in mind, let’s take a look at Of the Emperor’s Kindness. Our protagonist Malance is the ambassador of Verantha, and we see her go about her duties, such as they are. She’s the ambassador of a nation that no longer exists and so she has no official duties at the beginning save to attend court like the other ambassadors do. This is complicated by her relationship with the emperor’s niece, a force of nature of her own.

We remain steadfast within Malance’s point of view as events unfurl but the plot and subsequent series of events are relentlessly social in nature. There are clashes with Clath, of course, but it is the titular kindness of the Emperor that really kicks the ball rolling on the plot, as well as the arrival of the refugees. Malance, a young woman who never expected to be anything other than a dusty young ornament at court, is plunged into social conflicts, and perhaps, a rising conflict between the two great empires of Feremandas and Clath. There is plenty of backstory here and revealed worldbuilding. Clath is an up and coming empire, just about ready, or so they think, to start to possibly take on the older, established Feremandas. And Malance, as you guess, is right in the center of that.

Like fantasy of manners of prior years and authors, the plot is very much more of a skeleton for the social immersion that the novel provides the reader. We are put entirely into Malance’s life and circumstance. Like the novel’s progenitors, there is a lot of sensory detail that the reader is introduced to, from the foods of Verantha, to the look and feel of Malance’s house, to the opulence of the Emperor’s palace, and the feel of the city. This is, in fact, one of those books where you can get immersed into the world and worldbuilding and the characters, and that is what and who the book is for.

 
The book is not in line with the main contemporary strands in fantasy, which may be a hindrance for readers who have grown up on relentless grimdark action, or the widescreen of epic fantasy, or coming from the heights of urban fantasy, or have crossed the porous border of romance into fantasy by way of the growing field of romantasy. There is a relationship between Malance and Vivi, a queer loving one that goes through challenge and change as things unfold, but it’s not a romance or romantasy--the relationship is there at the beginning. It’s not epic fantasy either, with a widescreen canvas, we never really leave Feremandas City, really, at all.

A key to novels like these, as you might imagine, is a sympathetic protagonist. I am pretty sure that a unsympathetic fantasy of manners protagonist could be written, but they would have to be so magnetically interesting as to overcome their repellent nature. Malance is much more in the traditional vein. We feel for her and her plight, seemingly the “last Veranthan” right away, and as the complications of the Emperor’s attentions, and the plotting and maneuvers around her rise, we feel for her and her situation. The author does a great job, using tight point of view, of keeping us in her head, and keeping her someone relatable for the reader. Malance grows into her strength and role as challenges mount, and while characters like Vivi threaten to overwhelm the narrative at points (to say nothing of the emperor), Malance rises to the challenge, on the strength of the writing.

While the subgenre of fantasy of manners may have peaked in the 1990s and the field has largely moved on to the aforementioned other subgenres, there has been and is relatively recent fantasy written that if not labeled as fantasy of manners, is certainly in the tradition--authors like Freya Marske (A Marvellous Light), the fantasy novellas of Aliette de Bodard, too, and the works of Stephanie Burgis. Also, too, the Glamourist Histories of Mary Robinette Kowal align with this book. Readers who enjoy those works are likely to enjoy Of The Emperor’s Kindness as well.

Does the novel innovate the fantasy of manners sub-genre? Like some of the more recent of the works listed above, it is more openly and boldly inclusive than what was readily publishable in the late 1980’s and into the 1990’s. Not just the Malance-Vivi relationship in specific, but in general the novel and the world it presents to the reader is queernorm through and through.

 
Readers who are looking for more action, more and more complicated plot (although to be fair, it is deceptively simple since we stay in Malance’s point of view) and more magic are not going to find favor with this book. This is a book for readers who do want to read paragraphs discussing the social implications of livery and colors worn, for readers who will be fascinated to see how Malance’s household has to adapt, change and grow after a series of gifts from the Emperor, and readers who will enthuse to see the social machinations at court and within Malance’s own household.

As for myself, having read and am still reading a swath of fantasy of manners, Of the Emperor’s Kindness brings a breath of new air to the subgenre, showing that it can still have a strong and major place in the empire of fantasy. While the ending of the novel does feel like a closing point and a place to exit this world if one should wish, I am curious enough about Malance and her world to want more.

--

Highlights:

• Unapologetic Fantasy of Manners
• Strong attention to immersive detail
• Engaging and well written protagonist

Reference: Brenchley, Chaz, Of the Emperor’s Kindness (Wizard Tower Press, 2025)

¹The thought of a romantasy grimdark book has just occurred to me. I am not sure such a book would quite be for me.
²Sculdun's Investiture party in Season 2 Episode 6 of Andor (What a Festive Evening) is where Andor approaches Fantasy of Manners, but in a Science fiction setting. In keeping with science fiction, A Civil Campaign by Lois M Bujold is entirely and completely SF fantasy of manners.

POSTED BY: Paul Weimer. Ubiquitous in Shadow, but I'm just this guy, you know? @princejvstin.

Review: Kalyna the Soothsayer by Elijah Kinch Spector

A frank portrayal of the cruelty of class inequality and the poisonous allure of belief in destiny

The world of Elijah Kinch Spector's debut novel Kalyna the Soothsayer isn't a nice one. The royals are more concerned with their banquets and opera galas than in protecting the commonfolk. What nominal justice there is cannot thwart the rule of whoever can hire the most mercenaries. The unstable regime of the Tetrarchia, a federation of four perpetually quarreling kingdoms not quite held together with spit and prayers, hasn't managed to overcome xenophobic prejudice. For Kalyna, the daughter of a penniless family of nomadic fortune-tellers, life is an unceasing barrage of persecution, neglect, abuse, and hunger. Generations of her ancestors have subsisted by using their divinatory powers to help ordinary people improve their sad fortunes a little, and that's the only trade Kalyna knows how to do.

Except Kalyna was born without magic. Unable to see the future, she gets her job done by gossip, hearsay, acute observation, and plain guile. She's a fraud, and her family's precarious livelihood depends on her keeping the pretense that she's an accurate clairvoyant. By paying close attention to the important details, connecting the dots, and making likely guesses, she awes her clientele with her ability to predict what is totally predictable, just unnoticed. So far, these sketchy methods have sufficed to put just enough food on the table for herself, her disabled father, and her violently hostile grandmother. But when a prince from the kingdom of Rotfelsen snatches her from her family and demands predictions of the nation's future, she has to quickly become even more resourceful and conniving to stay in business—and stay alive.

Despite her finely honed talent for careful observation and deduction, Kalyna can't imagine the voracious whirlwind of intrigue, betrayal, hipocrisy, fanaticism, divided loyalties, and decadence she's been thrown into. She's barely prepared for the immensely rich and crafty schemers she's going to have to outwit, but they're no more prepared for the fierceness with which she's willing to oppose rabid nationalism and stand for the masses of low-born. The safety of the four kingdoms is now in the hands of a professional liar set against an entire aristocracy made of liars.

Kalyna the Soothsayer is clear-eyed about the effect that relentless oppression can have on otherwise decent people. This protagonist is still fundamentally well-intentioned, but the brutal harshness of life in the Tetrarchia has forced her to learn to play dirty. Although her conscience is torn by all the tactics of manipulation she's had to rely on to make a living, she can still effortlessly weave more and more lies each time. She doesn't hesitate to use her allies as tools, withhold crucial facts, ruin reputations, threaten, blackmail, and burn bridges to sustain the farce that she has prophetic visions. While she loves her father tenderly and feels sympathy for the plight of the poorest, she's had to navigate the world with a self-imposed indifference to the consequences of her deception.

What these intersecting conditions produce is a brilliantly constructed character, endlessly multilayered and relatably conflicted, with a scarred interior that nonetheless perseveres by sheer survival instinct. Kalyna's inner monologue is a delicious parade of sharp political commentary, pragmatic callousness, reluctant hope, internalized self-loathing, wounded desire, the driest sense of gallows humor, and a drive to independence made of the hardest bedrock. It's an engrossing experience to feel the author lure the reader into rooting for a shameless charlatan, and the key to this trick is in the push and pull of battling impulses in Kalyna's mind. In her impossible situation, she doesn't cease to wish there were a right thing to do, and much of the enjoyment of this novel comes from watching her rationalize which of all the wrong choices is the least catastrophic.

By placing a powerless person at a position of influence among ruthless masterminds, the author also offers a harsh critique of the inner workings of centralized power. The plot threads related to resurgent hyperpatriotism, national mythbuilding, and raw ambition couldn't be more resonant to today's readers. Despite its everyday complications, diverse government comes out victorious, but the story makes a forceful point about the delicate work needed to preserve a civic community built from the strength of the many.

In a setting shaped by magical lineages, ancient mysteries, forgotten world-shaking beasts, and secrets that sleep under the earth, the use of a completely ordinary human as the central focus of the narrative serves to highlight the value of mundane life. Pomp and glory and patriotic pride are mercilessly denounced as the ridiculous folly they are, a fraud more outrageous than Kalyna's daily machinations. Even more than the gift of seeing the coming events, it's fatally dangerous to trust those with absolute power with the gift of believing that fortune smiles upon them.

Nerd Coefficient: 8/10.

POSTED BY: Arturo Serrano, multiclass Trekkie/Whovian/Moonie/Miraculer, accumulating experience points for still more obsessions.

Reference: Kinch Spector, Elijah. Kalyna the Soothsayer [Erewhon, 2022].

Nanoreviews: The Witness for the Dead, The Worst of All Possible Worlds, The Liar of Red Valley

Addison, Katherine. The Witness for the Dead [Tor Books (US)/Solaris (UK), 2021]

The long awaited continuation of The Goblin Emperor takes place far away from Maia's court and almost all of the characters of the first book, taking place mostly in the distant small city of Amalo where Thara Celahar - the witness for the dead who uncovered the truth of the previous Emperor's death in the first book - has ended up working. Thara's situation, already challenging during the events of The Goblin Emperor, got even worse over the course of the book, but he has maintained his attitude towards upholding his profession. It's his Witnessing that leads him to take on a series of tasks in Amalo and its surrounding areas - most prominently, the death of an opera singer in mysterious circumstances - and through that, take us on an adventure as an audience through more of this intricate, fascinating world.

The Witness for the Dead is a very different book to its predecessor, although much of the DNA carries over. While Amalo is a significantly more provincial setting, the fundamental worldbuilding quirks - this is a world full of elves and goblins (who are apparently different races of the same species rather than completely different species) who express emotions through their ear position, have "good hair" if it's white and accepts intricate braids, and in the parts where the series has been set, look down on goblins as less than elves in a much closer corollary to human racism than most fantasy worlds create. Thara, too, is a similarity, as a protagonist fundamentally interested in doing the right thing, although his professional calling and the way it is portrayed, particularly when it comes to making difficult decisions, feels different to Maia. There are small details in the development Amalo, too, which make it feel convincingly like a provincial capital whose political elites are far enough from the centre for it to affect the way their political ambitions play out, without being fully disconnected from the emperor's reach.

With intricate worldbuilding and cinnamon roll protagonist in place, The Witness for the Dead has an easy recipe for success, and it uses those elements to solid effect. My favourite parts of the book by far are those involving the mystery at the opera company, as Thara uncovers the mystery behind the death of Arvenean Shelsin, a mid-soprano whose behaviour quickly turns up plenty of reasons for someone to dislike her. Thara's scenes at the opera, and particularly his dynamic with Pel-Thenhior, its composer, feel tight and engaging. So too do the other cases Thara takes on - a disputed inheritance, a ghoul sighting in a neighbouring town, a marital poisoning that threatens to be the latest in a series - although none bring the vibrancy of supporting characters that the opera does. Where Witness for the Dead struggles is in interweaving all of these strands together into something that maintains tension and engagement throughout. The mid section, in particular, I found it harder to stay engaged (because there's no opera bits, are you seeing a theme here). In a book that didn't have such a high bar to live up to, this might not have been worthy of note, but it is worth setting expectations that Witness for the Dead doesn't quite hit the same magic as its predecessor, nor did it leave me with quite the same feeling of warm, fuzzy, heartwarming hope as I got from the end of The Goblin Emperor. For what it does do, though, this is a really enjoyable book, in a world that I'd read more from in a heartbeat.

Rating: 7/10

White, Alex. The Worst of All Possible Worlds [Orbit, 2021]

One of the best parts of long-haul storytelling, something that book series and TV shows have the opportunity to do that their more self-contained counterparts often don't, is the ability to play out character relationships over the long haul. Sometimes that's a relatively static process, trying to maintain a roughly consistent dynamic within a set of characters while balancing the stories on top of it. Sometimes, it makes space for lots of big reversals and redemptions and splinter arcs which keep the drama levels high while enabling the characters to react to events as they happen. And sometimes, you get a crew or a found family that just gets cosier and more enjoyable to spend time with the longer a series goes on. That's how I feel about Alex White's trilogy-ending The Worst of All Possible Worlds, which brings the adventures of Nilah, Boots, Orna and the crew of the Capricious to a close in an adventure that's fast paced, high stakes and full of character moments that I really enjoyed (the wedding being a particular highlight, because who doesn't enjoy a good spaceship wedding?)

The other great thing about this series - covered in my longer reviews of its two predecessors - is how seamlessly it blends magic into a fighty shooty space opera. Almost everyone in the Salvagers universe has some kind of magic power (and not having magic is a significant disability in a world where a lot of technology is built around it, as Boots can attest) but the way these range from small abilities like being able to keep things clean, right up to control over space and time, makes the things involving people who can do the latter legitimately terrifying and unpleasant for everyone whose powers are more modest. Even more than its predecessors, The Worst of All Possible Worlds seems to lean in to an "age of arcanum gone to space" feel, particularly given the quest objective in this one (which I won't spoil if you haven't picked up the series yet).

The Salvagers series might not be as flashily extraordinary as some of its peers on the space opera shelf, but it more than holds its own as an adventure that blends space opera with fantasy tropes. The Worst of All Possible Worlds really sticks the landing for these characters too, and I'm very glad I stuck it out for the full trilogy.

Rating: 7/10

Goodwater, Walter. The Liar of Red Valley [Solaris, 2021]

Is the American Gothic genre supposed to be this much fun to read? I feel weird saying it, and yet that's the first thing I think about Walter Goodwater's fast-paced small-town novel, in which the residents of Red Valley apparently maintain the most petty, small-town mindset in the face of bizarre rules and events which govern their home. After the sudden death of her mother, Sadie inherits the title of the Liar of Red Valley, a woman responsible for keeping people's darkest secrets so that they don't have to live with their reality (for a price, of course). The only problem is that Sadie's mother never really prepared her for her role, or taught her what it means to be part of the magical fabric that keeps Red Valley - and its mysterious King - in balance.

The Liar of Red Valley is effective in its creepiness - the recurring presence of the Laughing Boys, young men who invite demons to live in their skulls for the high it brings, is a particular highlight - but because Sadie is such a resourceful protagonist (albeit one with an isolated, complicated past), it never feels like it wallows in that creepiness. Instead, the story is pacey and fast-moving, introducing us to a range of weird and wonderful characters on the fringes of Red Valley's society and putting her on a path to figure out, you know, the town's whole deal, and whether the folk who don't fit in to the population's narrow view of respectability can do anything to build a community there. The result is - oh no, I'm going to say it again - a great deal of fun, which seems odd for a "chilling" Gothic but I enjoyed the hell out of reading this book and that's what's important here.

Rating: 8/10

Posted by: Adri, Nerds of a Feather co-editor, is a semi-aquatic migratory mammal most often found in the UK. She has many opinions about SFF books, and is also partial to gaming, baking, interacting with dogs, and Asian-style karaoke. Find her on Twitter at @adrijjy