Submitted by Kopaka-Nuva t3_117gj59 in books
I made the mistake of reading The Emperor’s Soul shortly after reading Frankenstein. In some ways, they are surprisingly similar tales: both involve the artificial creation of what is effectively a new conscious being. Yet while Frankenstein unflinchingly explores the dubious morality of such an undertaking, The Emperor’s Soul largely ignores the issue.
In The Emperor’s Soul, a character named Shai must essentially create an artificial mind for a brain-dead emperor. She is instructed to make this artificial mind as close as possible to the man’s original mind, before the accident that left him brain-dead. At first, she complies, but gradually comes to realize that she can “improve” him by giving him a little extra moral fiber. She comes to view this as creating her life’s masterwork—an incomparable artistic achievement that will be her legacy. The book makes this its main theme—the connection between art and obsession, the drive to excel, and what have you. On the surface, this may seem all well and good, but when read in light of Frankenstein, it all becomes rather disturbing.
What gives anyone the right to create a new life-form? Shai is effectively playing God—under coercion at first, but over time, as she begins to view the project as an expression of her artistic skill, she leans into the part and takes it farther than anyone intended. She decides to make the titular emperor a better person, but who is she to say what’s better? She is accountable to no-one and nothing but herself. Even if she’s justified in trying to make him better than the original, the question remains whether she’s justified in creating a new mind at all. How would this new person, inhabiting the body of a similar but not mentally-identical person, react if he knew he was the creation of a human? What if there’s some unintended consequence, and he turns out to be a worse person than the original? Isn’t it also highly questionable to undertake such a morally-fraught endeavor entirely in secret, to preserve the illusion that the new emperor is the same as the old one? (The secrecy is mostly not Shai’s fault, but the narrative doesn’t dwell on the enormity of such a deception.) In light of all this, isn’t it incredibly prideful to view this project as a form of artistic expression, with little concern for the deeper metaphysical implications? Isn’t it, in fact, strikingly reminiscent of Dr. Frankenstein’s attitude at the beginning of his tale?
These are all important questions that are not nitpicks or minor incidental details. They are implicit in the very premise of the story, and to gloss over them is to share in the blind hubris of Dr. Frankenstein—the hubris that’s lead our species to seriously endanger itself countless times, especially in the past couple of centuries, by valuing technical achievement over morality. “Just because you can doesn’t mean you should,” as another similarly-themed story can tell you. If you’re going to play God, you’d damned well better think long and carefully about it first. Sanderson’s chosen theme of exploring the nature of artistry is a fine one, but he should have chosen a less-fraught premise to explore it with unless he was prepared to simultaneously explore at least some of the questions Mary Shelley raised two hundred years ago.
On a different but interesting (to me) note, there's something else that bothered me a bit about the novella: it’s sci-fi barely disguised as fantasy. Shai is essentially creating an AI. The magic system resembles computer programming in the way the final “product” must be built up to with a complex series of interrelated directives and failsafes. This is reinforced in the dialogue—there’s talk, for instance, of building “back doors into the emperor’s soul” and magical effects “not taking.” To many, this is a beloved feature of Sanderson’s writing, and I don’t mean to say it’s necessarily bad. But it doesn’t give me what I’m looking for from fantasy. Science fiction, tending more towards empiricism than fantasy, is more suited technical conversations about “mechanical” procedures.
As a final complaint, Sanderson is of course no master prose-stylist, but couldn’t he come up with better systems of nomenclature? Does he need silly apostrophes in his names? Do terms like “MaiPon and “reForging” need capital letters in the middle that forcibly call to mind brand names like FedEx and PlayStation? Of all the awkward PG-rated swear words he’s come up with, couldn’t he do any better than “Nights?” (Nights, that’s a limp swear-word.) I also dislike the way he tosses in little worldbuilding details that don’t matter and aren’t embedded in any kind of meaningful context—for example, early on he tells us that the stonework in a certain location was “after the Lamio style, with tall pillars of marble inlaid with reliefs.” This doesn’t really tell us enough specific about the Lamio style to let us envision it as anything other than generic columns with some kind of undefined reliefs. And styles of architecture have nothing to do with the plot, nor any of the character’s interests, nor even with the story’s symbolism, so why do we need to hear a made-up name for a thing we have no reason to care about? It’s supposed to add “immersion,” but it does so in a shallow way bereft of genuine meaning or interest.
To conclude, The Emperor’s Soul is not a bad story. It paints a reasonably compelling picture of a human soul, and its commentary on the artistic process is not without merit. However, I don’t think these elements are strong enough to outweigh Sanderson’s usual stylistic shortcomings and his myopic oversight of the philosophical implications of his story unless you’re already a fan.
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