Book review – The Emperor’s Soul

“It’s not imitating anything; it has become a better version of itself.“

The Emperor’s Soul is the best book from Sanderson that I’ve read so far, a truly extraordinary and beautiful piece of writing, with one of the most original ideas I’ve ever read in any book. Shai is a forger, and no ordinary one at that. She doesn’t just forge currency and artwork, but an object’s entire past, and so can forge anything from paintings to windows to walls to souls, even. When she is captured for swapping a work of art for a forgery, she is offered only one way to save her life: to forge a new soul for the Emperor.

We begin to appreciate questions around the nature of art. Are forgeries art if they’re beautiful, especially when there is such craft to it? Especially if the forgery is not directly done by one’s hands, but by using magic to alter the object’s history? The Emperor’s Soul manages to show us the beauty of the art of forgery, at the same time using the magic of forgery as part of the plot mechanics. It stunned me. For the first time since daemons in His Dark Materials, I wanted this magic to be real because it was beautiful, and that is a real credit to Sanderson’s brilliant writing.

We also explore the philosophy of humanity, because Shai is trying to forge a person’s soul, their personality and behaviour, their motives and beliefs. The book asks what makes us who we are, explores whether there is some innate essence about people or if a person is just the way they behave and what they remember. There is the famous thought experiment about whether a ship is the same after every piece of it has been removed and reconstituted, except in this case, we ask this about a person. But even better, this idea intersects with the idea of forgery as art, and in seeing Shai’s pride in her attempt to forge the Emperor’s soul, we get a glimpse of how beautiful people are, how very intricate and complex. I’ve never looked at people that way before, and it is a very unique point of view.

But of course, in all of this is everything else Sanderson offers: the consistent rules in his magic systems, the use of magic in a very exciting way to resolve the plot, and the beautiful race against time of a prison escape plot, where Shai not only has to forge the Emperor’s soul but work out how to escape, because she is sure she won’t really be allowed to live when her work is done. Obviously, I cannot tell you if she succeeds, since that would be a massive spoiler, but the short plot is kept brilliantly alive by this time limit, as well as the ingenious politicking and battle of wits between Shai and the people imprisoning her.

The Emperor’s Soul is short, it’s magical, it’s deep and it leaves a lasting impression. I would happily recommend it to anyone. A truly glorious read, and one of the best examples of why, when fantasy authors hit home, they tell the best stories in the world. We all need a bit of magic in our lives.