hands of the emperor by victoria goddard

To his surprise, the Emperor accepts the invitation, taking Cliopher and several other leading members of the court with him.

Then, tentatively, alarmed at his own daring, he suggests that the Emperor take a holiday. The Emperor is ringed with tabus, and Cliopher is not one to presume, and avoids any familiarity. He needs balance in his life.Īt the start of the novel, Cliopher has a distant relationship with the Emperor. Cliopher is proud of his accomplishments, but he is unmarried and sees few friends or family as he goes about his work. He rarely has time to return home, where everybody in his extended family knows him simply as Kip. He has become personal secretary to the Emperor, the manager of the imperial bureaucracy, and a byword for efficiency. Her main character, Cliopher Mdang, is the only member of his family to seek a career abroad. So what’s the alternative? In The Hands of the Emperor, a long self-published novel that is currently attracting widespread attention, Victoria Goddard offers one alternative: instead of external conflict, try internal conflict instead. Even more importantly, if you identify conflict with violence, you risk a crude and unsubtle story. Moreover, if you start with a sword fight or a chase, you create the additional problem of making readers care about a character they know nothing about. This assumption can quickly become a problem, because –let’s face it - many writers have no experience of violence. Too often, they are likely to see the word “conflict” and assume it means violence, especially in their opening hook. Writers often talk about conflict, but much of what they say is wrong.

Hands of the emperor by victoria goddard