Review of KING OF XANADU
KING OF XANADU is a short story rendered in gorgeous prose, just grandiose enough to impress upon the reader the magnificence and pomposity of Xanadu without ever becoming too fatiguing to read.
Lovely Xanadu is in a precarious position. Because it is so fabulously wealthy and stunningly functional, the ruling elite are decadent. The king (that’s you) has no experience dealing with… you know… rulership, beyond ceremonial duties like blessing the crops and harassing the soldiers. And for those same reasons, no one has ever really had to care very much about this king’s woeful incompetence. Precarious indeed. It’s a good thing there won’t be any kind of crisis to test the king’s responsiveness, right?
While it was in many ways a pleasure to read, I confess that KING OF XANADU is not what I hoped it would be. I was waiting for the “make decisions that will lead this terrible king to rise to the occasion, win at least some kind of pyrrhic victory, and end the story having grown as a character and developed the virtues he once lacked” plotline to kick in. Instead I got “gawk at this gratuitous train wreck as your character becomes ever more self-sabotaging and deranged no matter what you do, inexorably dooming himself and his kingdom to the dustbin of history.”
It isn’t a game you play, so much as an artful disaster that happens to you.