The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms.
Feb. 25th, 2010 20:26![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
starladyThis post is dedicated to inkstone. Happy Birthday!
Jemisin, N.K. The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms. New York: Orbit Books, 2010.
This book has been tearing up DW recently, and I was lucky enough to have the author herself describe the plot to me in New York last May, so my anticipation was quite high. And, all in all, I wasn't disappointed, which is great in and of itself.
To get right to it, 100K Kingdoms takes place in a world that is ruled by a global empire which rose in the wake of a war between gods two millennia prior, in which one of the Three was killed, the other enslaved, and the third left to reign supreme, alone. That god gave dominion over his vanquished brother and his brother's children to the Arameri family, who rule the world and the empire. The book follows Yeine, whose mother was the sole and unchallenged heir to the empire until she left (and was disinherited and disowned) to marry Yeine's father, the obscure ruler of a barbarian kingdom. In the wake of Yeine's mother's murder, Yeine herself, an outsider in every way, from her skin color to her very outlook on life, is summoned to the capital of Sky to fill her mother's place by becoming one of her grandfather's three declared heirs. Of course, only one will survive, and Yeine's attempts to discover who instigated her mother's death and why are immediately intertwined with the intrigues of the Enefadeh, the Arameri's enslaved god and godlets; they have their own agenda, and it dovetails with Yeine's only to a certain point.
As you might imagine, this book is rife with intrigue and politicking--and to be even more up my personal alley, almost all the intrigue and politicking is intra-familial, because all the humans who live in the palace of Sky are members of the Arameri family, and all the gods are related to each other. I really liked the juxtaposition between the human and divine families, and I especially liked the treatment of the gods themselves--though they are shackled into quasi-mortal bodies, they remain unsettlingly unhuman, and their relations with each other are far more complex than human relations could ever be. In particular, Nahadoth, the god of night (and the one of the Three who was enslaved rather than murdered) is a titanically complex figure; his relationships with his siblings and his children could be described as incestuous, but it almost feels weird to me to use that term to describe these characters, who so clearly aren't human--which is a tribute to Jemisin's characterization of them.
I also really liked that the book is structured around absent women, instead of ignoring them--Yeine's murdered mother Kinneth and the murdered member of the Three, Enefa, the goddess of life and of death. I did spend the middle third of the book being reminded in one respect of the anime Sousei no Aquarion, but that sensation faded as the story moved along. And I really liked the denouement, which I would not hesitate to describe as unconventional.
So, to sum up: a gutsy heroine of color, a divine OT3, a great book by a great female author of color, why aren't you reading it yet?
inkstone. Happy Birthday!Jemisin, N.K. The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms. New York: Orbit Books, 2010.
This book has been tearing up DW recently, and I was lucky enough to have the author herself describe the plot to me in New York last May, so my anticipation was quite high. And, all in all, I wasn't disappointed, which is great in and of itself.
To get right to it, 100K Kingdoms takes place in a world that is ruled by a global empire which rose in the wake of a war between gods two millennia prior, in which one of the Three was killed, the other enslaved, and the third left to reign supreme, alone. That god gave dominion over his vanquished brother and his brother's children to the Arameri family, who rule the world and the empire. The book follows Yeine, whose mother was the sole and unchallenged heir to the empire until she left (and was disinherited and disowned) to marry Yeine's father, the obscure ruler of a barbarian kingdom. In the wake of Yeine's mother's murder, Yeine herself, an outsider in every way, from her skin color to her very outlook on life, is summoned to the capital of Sky to fill her mother's place by becoming one of her grandfather's three declared heirs. Of course, only one will survive, and Yeine's attempts to discover who instigated her mother's death and why are immediately intertwined with the intrigues of the Enefadeh, the Arameri's enslaved god and godlets; they have their own agenda, and it dovetails with Yeine's only to a certain point.
As you might imagine, this book is rife with intrigue and politicking--and to be even more up my personal alley, almost all the intrigue and politicking is intra-familial, because all the humans who live in the palace of Sky are members of the Arameri family, and all the gods are related to each other. I really liked the juxtaposition between the human and divine families, and I especially liked the treatment of the gods themselves--though they are shackled into quasi-mortal bodies, they remain unsettlingly unhuman, and their relations with each other are far more complex than human relations could ever be. In particular, Nahadoth, the god of night (and the one of the Three who was enslaved rather than murdered) is a titanically complex figure; his relationships with his siblings and his children could be described as incestuous, but it almost feels weird to me to use that term to describe these characters, who so clearly aren't human--which is a tribute to Jemisin's characterization of them.
I also really liked that the book is structured around absent women, instead of ignoring them--Yeine's murdered mother Kinneth and the murdered member of the Three, Enefa, the goddess of life and of death. I did spend the middle third of the book being reminded in one respect of the anime Sousei no Aquarion, but that sensation faded as the story moved along. And I really liked the denouement, which I would not hesitate to describe as unconventional.
So, to sum up: a gutsy heroine of color, a divine OT3, a great book by a great female author of color, why aren't you reading it yet?
