The Goblin Emporer by Katherine Addison (4 stars)

I came to this novel because it was cited as a prime example of a new genre I realized I like: bureaucracy porn! Basically the literary equivalent of the west wing: people doing complex things with competence with no details spared.

It's that. Definitely that. The world building is very good, although it's fairly limited to politics and court intrigue. The main character Maia is deftly built, if a little too good and moral so that he tends toward being boring. There's a strong racist tension throughout the whole novel: the king's son that was never supposed to inherit the throne is a goblin, and goblins are black/grey, while the ruling class are elves who are white. Prejudice and othering are everywhere at court.

The names and linguistics are brutally complicated. There's a glossary and really complicated explanation at the start, but it's too hard to switch back and forth on the kindle, so I just picked up what I could with context. I'm still super confused about plural and singular and which one is formal/informal and what the significance is, oh well.

I found myself enjoying the fish-out-of-water fast learning Maia has to do to survive at court (quite literally, his life is on the line), despite the action sequences being few and far between. 

Things really heat up with the assassination attempts, but also cool off and are resolved far too quickly. The murder investigation necessarily happens off the page since the emperor has a whole kingdom to run. 

I think the book suffered significantly from the single POV. The witness for the dead would have been very interesting to run in parallel and would have provided significantly more action and a different perspective on the kingdom. Apparently something like this is coming out in a separate novel soon.

4 stars.

Where The Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens (4.5 stars)

Really enjoyed this one, but it asks you to suspend a lot of disbelief, like a lot. Some minor spoilers. You need to think it's plausible that:

• A girl can raise herself on her own in a marsh in NC for decades with no family, no money, and purely living off the land.
• She never has a medical or dental emergency or gets into trouble (apart from getting lost once) in the marsh on her own for that entire time.
• She can teach herself to read, write and educate herself to a university level in biology with some secondhand textbooks and a few afternoon lessons from a friend her own age, while still having to survive on no income. 
• She teaches herself to paint at a professional level, despite having no spare money for painting materials.
• She's very attractive despite said lack of dental hygiene, terrible nutrition, and living alone in a marsh for over a decade.

I managed to be mostly OK with all of that, but from reading other reviews quite a few people weren't. There's also a lot of people angry about the geography of where Asheville is in relation to the marshland, and the inconsistent character accents. If I was from NC I'd probably be a lot more bothered by that, but I didn't care.

You know there's something bad coming, but you don't know how much badness. Honestly I thought it was going to be even more horrible than it was, and it was going to end more sadly. Perhaps I have a cynical view of the world but I think a girl living completely alone in low income marshland in NC for 10+ years in the 1940s would have had an even scarier time than is pictured through the events here. It's super bleak when her brother leaves:

“Kya, ya be careful, hear. If anybody comes, don’t go in the house. They can get ya there. Run deep in the marsh, hide in the bushes. Always cover yo’ tracks; I learned ya how. And ya can hide from Pa, too.”

But it's still a great read. It's very pro-environment and deeply embedded in the marshland with its detailed descriptions. The marsh is more of a character than many of the humans. The writing is poetic and beautiful in many places:

Kya laid her hand upon the breathing, wet earth, and the marsh became her mother.

His dad had told him many times that the definition of a real man is one who cries without shame, reads poetry with his heart, feels opera in his soul, and does what’s necessary to defend a woman.

“It ain’t just that.” She spoke almost in a whisper. “I wadn’t aware that words could hold so much. I didn’t know a sentence could be so full.”

And I totally bawled my eyes out about the help and care from Jumpin and Mabel who were themselves in an incredibly precarious position as poor black folks in the south. Racism features prominently in their storyline.

She kept on buying gas and supplies from him but never accepted a handout from them again. And each time she came to his wharf, she saw her book propped up in the tiny window for all to see. As a father would have shown it.

Major spoilers...

The ending was definitely a surprise, but not in a good way. The author obviously set up Jumpin or Mabel to have killed Chase because he was forever going to be a threat to Kya. The fact that Kya could meticulously plan this whole caper despite never having caught a bus, stayed in a motel, or worn any sort of disguise before just seemed ridiculous. A thousand things could have gone wrong especially with her being extremely socially awkward and unworldly about everything apart from the marsh.

4.5 stars.