The Orb of Cairado

Well this is a strange one. As you can probably guess from the cover, The Orb of Cairado is a book in Katherine Addison’s Goblin Emperor world. However, it is not a novel, and unlike the last three books it does not feature Thara Celehar. That’s just the start.

The book is a novella, and it starts with news of an airship crash. Many of you, I suspect, will have forgotten that. I had a vague recollection of what was going on, so I looked it up, and I was right. In The Goblin Emperor, Maia inherits the throne because his father and half-brothers die in an airship crash. This is the same event, returned to after four novels.

However, this is not a story about the royal family. Rather it is a story that happens because of the death of the pilot of the airship. It is a story about a disgraced academic called Ulcetha Zhorvena. Ulcetha’s friend Mara was the airship pilot. In Mara’s effects his widow finds a message for Ulcetha.

Backtrack a while (the book does this too). Ulcetha is in disgrace because he has been accused of stealing a valuable antique from the university where he worked. Although no one has any proof, he is the person of lowest social class who might have committed the theft, so he gets the blame. Because of this, Ulcetha is reduced to writing fake provenance notes for a dealer in fake antiquities.

However, thanks to the message from dead Mara, Ulcetha finds himself on the track of a far more valuable artefact, the fabled Orb of Cairado, a gem of incalculable value. This eventually leads to a D&D like quest through the lower levels of a destroyed palace, and to a murder of a fellow academic.

Spoilers ahead…

The ending of the story will, I suspect, annoy a few readers. Ulcetha solves a mystery and does the right thing, but this causes him further social disgrace and he ends up fleeing his home city. It is a long way from a happy ending. Jo Walton & Ada Palmer’s new book about speculative fiction, Trace Elements, talks quite a bit about the author-reader contract. This brief quote is relevant:

“…the author-reader contract promises that when a character the reader has become invested in exits the narrative for the last time there will be some sort of resolution which gives the character closure.”

Ulcetha is the main protagonist of the novella, and at the end he gets cast off into the wilderness.

However, I am not sure that it is the end. The story also involves another famous gem which comes into the possession of Ulcetha’s villainous employer. It is not clear how this happened. My guess is that there may be a second novella in the works that will tie up the various lose threads and result in a more satisfying outcome for the characters.

Or I could be wrong. Addison might just want to end the story on a less than happy note, rather like Mary Gentle did with the Golden Witchbreed duology. (Yes, I still remember that, it was painful.) That’s entirely her right. And it does at least shine a spotlight on the awful social politics of the world she has created. Class prejudice is a terrible thing, and we should learn to despise it. But my guess is that there is a follow-up novella on the way.

Title: The Orb of Cairado
By: Katherine Addison
Publisher: Solaris
Purchase links:
Amazon UK
Amazon US
Bookshop.org UK
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