Wtf Conju is so lovable. Giving him and Kip a coworkers-to-friends slow burn with a little miscommunication trope thrown in slaps so hard. I shouldn’t have cheated and skipped to these novellas without having finished the first book, but god I’m even more excited to know them better as I go. ( )

https://tamaranth.blogspot.com/2024/01/2024010-game-of-courts-victoria-goddard.h... ( )

Nice to have some more background on Conju -- I do so enjoy the characters in this series, and it's a pleasure to have them more fleshed out. Not a lot happens, but it's a good vignette of the time after the fall and before things settled. ( )

Diving into this Nine Worlds novella was a pleasure! (This one is set before the events of The Hands of the Emperor and there is a crossover with Petty Treasons.) I really enjoyed Conju’s POV – I hadn’t quite connected with this character before, to be honest. It was unexpected and refreshing.

I am really impressed by how well Victoria Goddard creates distinct voices for her POV characters in all her books.

The beginning is mesmerising, with Conju sitting at his work table, thinking of his family that is gone forever. The old heartbreak mentioned in the other books is so vividly and achingly described here.

“let himself remember the bright summer mornings and the cozy winter afternoons, and all the whispered promises that would never be fulfilled.”

There is so much character growth in these 80 pages (too short!). After the magical apocalypse of the fall, Conju is broken, handling his trauma in predictable ways. But then there is the Emperor, who is… interesting. Might it not be a good idea for the Emperor to have “a stable core of people loyal to him”? Conju gains ambition because he wants to somehow help someone he admires from a distance. This is awesome. Dear book, can I hug you?

And I didn’t even know that I wanted a delightful, delicious story of Conju and Cliopher meeting and getting to know each other. Yet here it is, and it makes me happy. ( )

We connect with Conju, properly The Cavalier Conju enazo Argellian, at a low point after the Fall when he has ceased his post-Fall dissipations and is trying to find something useful to do with his life. Slowly the newly awake Emperor catches his imagination and his efforts take on direction. Once he has found a place with the Emperor the next upheaval is the new secretary who, from what he hears, is not at all the sort of person of whom Conju would approve. But the Emperor is becoming more present, so Conju must know more. ( )