2025 novella, fantasy in the world of The Goblin Emperor. Ulcetha is
a disgraced scholar, but when his best friend dies in the same airship
wreck that killed the Emperor, he finds he's been left a trail of
clues to one of the great lost treasures…
The segments are clearly signalled: following the trail and
recovering a stolen item, then using it to find the really big item,
and finally working out just what happened to the previous treasure
hunter (whose long-dead body turns up during the quest).But what is
important here is not the technicality of treasure-hunting, but that
Ulcetha (like all the protagonists in this series) suffers from a
conscience and wants to do what is right, even as it seems likely to
cost him what little position he has managed to regain since his
disgrace.
Which is not to say the technicality isn't good too: Ulcetha finds
himself having to break into a library without any of the skills or
equipment that a professional would have, and only adventure-stories
to guide him. Then there's a trip through an ancient maze, and finally
a worried consideration: why specifically was the key hidden there?
(That the key is the thing he was disgraced for, merely because of the
suspicion that he'd stolen it, is lagniappe.)
"Fun" isn't quite the right term, but it's very satisfying.
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