The Broken Kingdoms
Jul. 22nd, 2013 10:55![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
starladyJemisin, N.K. The Broken Kingdoms. New York: Orbit Books, 2010.
It would be misleading to describe this book as a "sequel" because it is clearly intended to stand alone, but it is unquestionably a follow-up to Jemisin's debut The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, which I quite liked. Taking place ten years after the events of that book, The Broken Kingdoms follows the travails of Oree Shoth, a blind artist who makes her living in the city at the roots of the sky-tree. Oree has her own peculiar kind of magic, and she also has an undying surly mortal dude who she brings into her house after finding him on the trash heap. Needless to say, Things Happen.
It took me two years to finish this book because I skimmed to the end in a desperate frenzy when I first got it and then I…put it down for two years. It is compulsively readable, and on the whole I enjoyed it a lot. I really enjoy the way that Jemisin wears her anime influences on her sleeve (I can't express how anime the idea of a city in tree roots is, and Jemisin actually mentions the anime she got the image from in the back), in things like character design and setting and also…some quality of the worldbuilding. I was less into Oree qua Oree than Yeine, though I appreciated the flipped perspective of someone whose people ancestrally worshipped Itempas willingly, partly also because the magical blindness thing was the kind of thing I side-eyed. (I also sort of gave the side-eye to the ending, but then, there's multiple reasons that I don't read romance novels.) I did like that the events from the prior book continue to reverberate, and that several characters from last time had small but important parts to play.
All in all, it's no surprise to me that Jemisin's star only keeps rising in the field, because her books are pretty awesome--inventive, gripping reads with female POC characters and lots of interesting worldbuilding. I'm looking forward to the rest of her books!
It would be misleading to describe this book as a "sequel" because it is clearly intended to stand alone, but it is unquestionably a follow-up to Jemisin's debut The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, which I quite liked. Taking place ten years after the events of that book, The Broken Kingdoms follows the travails of Oree Shoth, a blind artist who makes her living in the city at the roots of the sky-tree. Oree has her own peculiar kind of magic, and she also has an undying surly mortal dude who she brings into her house after finding him on the trash heap. Needless to say, Things Happen.
It took me two years to finish this book because I skimmed to the end in a desperate frenzy when I first got it and then I…put it down for two years. It is compulsively readable, and on the whole I enjoyed it a lot. I really enjoy the way that Jemisin wears her anime influences on her sleeve (I can't express how anime the idea of a city in tree roots is, and Jemisin actually mentions the anime she got the image from in the back), in things like character design and setting and also…some quality of the worldbuilding. I was less into Oree qua Oree than Yeine, though I appreciated the flipped perspective of someone whose people ancestrally worshipped Itempas willingly, partly also because the magical blindness thing was the kind of thing I side-eyed. (I also sort of gave the side-eye to the ending, but then, there's multiple reasons that I don't read romance novels.) I did like that the events from the prior book continue to reverberate, and that several characters from last time had small but important parts to play.
All in all, it's no surprise to me that Jemisin's star only keeps rising in the field, because her books are pretty awesome--inventive, gripping reads with female POC characters and lots of interesting worldbuilding. I'm looking forward to the rest of her books!
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Date: 2013-07-23 14:17 (UTC)I want to read something of Jemisin's in some other storyline, though.
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Date: 2013-07-24 01:06 (UTC)