I'm about halfway done this book and still loving it. The characters on display here are some of the most deeply human I've ever read. The Emperor's deepening friendship with Cliopher and the rest of the crew is charming and realistic. None of us are Emperors of entire worlds, but it isn't hard to imagine the positions these characters find themselves in: on Cliopher's end, being so subordinate, so deeply below his Emperor, and still wanting nothing more than to be his friend. On the Emperor's end, being so far above everyone else, so deeply entrenched in the culture and rituals and magic of his position that everyone else forgets that there is a man beneath the Ten Thousand Titles.

Goddard has done a great job making this Emperor into a person, slowly revealing more and more of his true personality to Cliopher (and the reader). Traumatic events here at the halfway point of the book have made the Emperor more human than ever, and I'm very interested in seeing where it goes from here. It's hard to believe I'm only halfway done the book - it's already been twice the length of an ordinary novel - but I feel the same as I felt at the one quarter mark: despite being almost all filler, none of this book feels like filler.