The Emperor's Soul
Elantris • Book 2
Narrated by Angela Lin
Why Listen to This Audiobook?
A master of door-stopper epics distilled everything he knows into four hours — and nothing feels missing.
- Great if you want: tight character study wrapped in inventive, philosophical magic
- Listening experience: cerebral and unhurried — feels more like a film than a novel
- Narration: Lin brings quiet precision to Shai's calculating, layered interiority
- Skip if: you need action or wide-scope worldbuilding to stay engaged
About This Audiobook
Shai is a Forger, a woman who can rewrite the history of objects and, with sufficient skill, of people, her power considered heresy by the empire that has condemned her to die. Given a single desperate chance at survival, she must use her gift to create a new soul for an emperor left brain-dead by assassins, crafting from historical records a personality authentic enough to fool those who knew him. The only problem: the councilor supervising her work is genuinely trying to understand whether what she does is art or abomination.
Angela Lin's narration of this Hugo Award-winning novella is precise and intelligent, matching the book's central theme by bringing the same care to each character's voice that Shai brings to each forgery. Her performance of the developing relationship between Shai and Gaotona captures the novel's intellectual core: two people with opposing values finding unexpected respect for each other across an unbridgeable divide. The two-hour length is ideal for a single listen.
