{"id":1870,"date":"2014-06-17T11:00:30","date_gmt":"2014-06-17T15:00:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/?p=1870"},"modified":"2024-01-21T11:32:43","modified_gmt":"2024-01-21T16:32:43","slug":"jemisin-inheritance-trilogy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/2014\/06\/jemisin-inheritance-trilogy\/","title":{"rendered":"Jemisin, N.K.: (02-03) The Broken Kingdoms, The Kingdom of Gods<\/cite>"},"content":{"rendered":"

I was extremely enthused<\/a> about N.K. Jemisin’s The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms<\/cite> when I first read it, but only finished the trilogy recently.<\/p>\n

I actually read the sequel, The Broken Kingdoms<\/cite><\/strong>, fairly soon after it was published, but I never wrote it up. This book has a lot of really good things: I love the look at how the changes in The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms<\/cite> are affecting the lives of people on the ground (literally), the POV character Oree is great, and there’s some lovely creepy inventiveness in the fantastical elements. But I wasn’t convinced by an emotional development late in the book (only partly, I think, because it happened to involve a plot pattern that I am allergic to), and there’s some things that trouble me about the way the book treats Oree’s blindness (see lightreads<\/a> and the author<\/a>) and about a major spoiler (discussed obliquely, but still in spoiler terms, by sanguinity<\/a>). So a very mixed reaction.<\/p>\n

I actually beta-read the third book, The Kingdom of Gods<\/cite><\/strong>, and then took literally years to read the final version. Coming back to it after quite a while, again, there’s much to like: the narration, as before in this series; the continuing ramifications of events in the first two books; the way it comes to a very satisfying conclusion. But it’s a tough book for me to get a grip on, for two reasons. First, I find Sieh a difficult narrator: I can admire the craft of his narration while finding it emotionally difficult to experience events through his perspective. This is entirely appropriate—trickster, after all—but it still affected how I related to the book. Second, the balance of the book feels off: it covers much more time than the other two, and while I can’t swear that it’s actually juggling more plot elements, that’s the impression I came away with. <\/p>\n

You can read the first book by itself, and I still encourage people to. The rest of the series didn’t work as well for me, but that’s a high bar to clear. I don’t regret reading them, and I look forward to reading Jemisin’s other books—the Dreamblood duology (out now) and this summer’s The Fifth Season<\/cite>. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I was extremely enthused about N.K. Jemisin’s The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms when I first read it, but only finished the trilogy recently. I actually read the sequel, The Broken Kingdoms, fairly soon after it was published, but I never wrote it up. This book has a lot of really good things: I love the look … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Jemisin, N.K.: (02-03) The Broken Kingdoms, The Kingdom of Gods<\/cite>“<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48,90,15],"tags":[253],"class_list":["post-1870","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-inheritance-trilogy","category-sf-and-fantasy","tag-jemisin-n-k"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1870","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1870"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1870\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2451,"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1870\/revisions\/2451"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1870"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1870"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1870"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}