The Hands of the Emperor
Cliopher Mdang is the most senior bureaucrat in the world, personal secretary to His Radiancy the Sun-on-Earth, an emperor whose person is sacred and whom no one is allowed to touch, address informally, or befriend. After decades of service, Cliopher does the unthinkable. He invites his boss home for a holiday in the islands of his far-off birthplace. The novel follows the long, slow consequences of that invitation, as the emperor and his secretary navigate friendship, reform, and the slow unwinding of a thousand-year imperial cult through the small, tender accumulations of a shared domestic life.
What you might want to know about The Hands of the Emperor
The questions readers send us most often, answered without spoilers.
A senior imperial bureaucrat invites his god-emperor boss home for a holiday in his island village, and a thousand-year imperial cult slowly comes undone.
The Hands of the Emperor was written by Victoria Goddard and published in 2019. It is one of the central novels in her Nine Worlds universe, which spans more than 30 books.
Victoria Goddard has written more than 30 connected Nine Worlds books across multiple sub-series. The Hands of the Emperor and its companion The Return of Fitzroy Angursell are widely cited entry points.
The Hands of the Emperor is 740 pages in standard print editions, though page counts vary slightly between hardcover, paperback, and large-print formats.
At an average reading pace of about 250 words per minute, The Hands of the Emperor takes most readers 11 to 16 hours to finish.
The Hands of the Emperor is a standalone novel by Victoria Goddard, not part of a series.
The Hands of the Emperor is available in hardcover, paperback, ebook, and audiobook formats from Amazon, Bookshop.org, ThriftBooks, and most major bookstores.