For some years I’ve been a fan of Dr. Boli’s Celebrated Magazine, one of the oddest sites on the internet. Well, just look at it. The humor is the driest of the dry; the sort of thing you either get or you don’t. I don’t always get it, but I enjoy checking to see what’s new each day.
Dr. Boli writes books too. I’ve read and enjoyed a couple of them, so I figured I’d try his newest, The Emperor. It’s rather different from the others.
When I was in college, I encountered a couple of old novels (Samuel Johnson’s Rasselas comes to mind) in which older writer/philosophers told fantastic stories of princes in old times and distant lands as a means to comment on their own times and politics. The Emperor seemed like that kind of story to me at first, but I think I was wrong. Maybe.
The Emperor is a young man, orphaned as a boy, who has lived under the guidance of the Consul and the Tribune most of his life. The empire he rules seems to be Roman, in an alternate world where Rome never fell. The geography doesn’t match our world, but the Christian religion seems to be pretty much the same. They have been at war with an enemy for hundreds of years, and the Sultan (who worships Apollyon and dwells just across the strait) is their most faithful vassal.
The young Emperor is beginning to chafe at the many restrictions that hedge his life around. Every moment of his day is scheduled, every action choreographed. He is never alone. His future is determined – he will marry a princess who was sired by the Sultan expressly for that purpose, once she grows old enough. Any suggestion he makes that it might be a good idea to visit his domains or oversee the war is argued down. The Emperor, it is explained, needs to keep the Empire stable through performing his regular duties in the safety of the Palace.
His only escape (or so he thinks) is at night, when the orchestra that serenades him finally leaves – because he pretends to sleep – and he slips out a window to visit an ancient ruin. One night he gets lost and wanders into an unfamiliar part of the palace grounds. There he meets a young servant woman named Pulchrea, scrubbing a floor. The Emperor immediately falls in love with her, and the rest of the story involves him testing his strength of will against those of the Consul and the Tribune, in order to win the freedom to do what he really wants.
But only at the very end does he learn the Big Secret.
I’m not sure what to say about The Emperor. It started slow – the author indulged himself too long in setting the scene; his character’s constrained life and discontent could have been established much more efficiently. Modern readers won’t generally put up with too much stage-setting. The story was interesting once it finally got going. I’m not sure what to think of the ending.
I’m of two minds about The Emperor. You might try it out if it sounds interesting to you; it’s not expensive in Kindle format.