Book Review | The Kingdom of Gods by N. K. Jemisin

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For two thousand years the Arameri family has ruled the world by enslaving the very gods that created mortalkind. Now the gods are free, and the Arameri's ruthless grip is slipping. Yet they are all that stands between peace and world-spanning, unending war.

Shahar, last scion of the family, must choose her loyalties. She yearns to trust Sieh, the godling she loves. Yet her duty as Arameri heir is to uphold the family's interests, even if that means using and destroying everyone she cares for.

As long-suppressed rage and terrible new magics consume the world, the Maelstrom - which even gods fear - is summoned forth. Shahar and Sieh: mortal and god, lovers and enemies. Can they stand together against the chaos that threatens the kingdom of gods?

***

The end is the beginning is the end in the vast concluding volume of N. K. Jemisin's Inheritance Trilogy, and how perfectly lovely it is to see this ambitious, if uneven romantic fantasy series come full circle.

But if a single shape could be said to define this story, it wouldn't, I assure you, be a circle. It'd be a triangle, with the requisite three points. One for each of The Three... remember them? Namely Nahadoth, the god of darkness and disorder; Bright Itempas, the god of light and law; and our own baby deity Yeine, which is to say the narrator of The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, born again at the end of that celebrated debut as - you will recall - the embodiment of the dead god Enefna.

This otherworldly holy trinity are not quite reunited at the outset of The Kingdom of Gods, which occurs some hundred years after the events chronicled in The Broken Kingdoms - in short the penance of the traitor Itempas, who walks now among men, disabused of his heavenly powers except insofar as he chooses to use them in service of some greater good - but they are closer to becoming one than they have been in millennia. Good news for all involved... except the Arameri: the ruling class of the Hundred Thousand Kingdoms who came to power centuries hence by binding Nahadoth - and his children - to their blood.

Of course now that Enefna has been restored, and Itempas cast out of Sky, the white city on the seat of the world tree, noble blood means nothing; or nothing good. "I was so used to thinking of the Arameri as powerful and numerous, but in fact they were dwindling. Dying." (p.145) With this fall from favour in mind, enter Sieh, the first child of the gods. The first child, full stop, so it is fitting that Sieh, the god of mischief, has taken on the form of a child since time immemorial, and also adopted the appropriate attitudes. He was the highlight of The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, and though his role in The Broken Kingdoms was regrettably reduced, in The Kingdom of Gods Sieh returns - and returns and returns! - as no less than our sole narrator.

It's a brave choice on the author's part, this foregrounding of a character you would think best served in small measures - and were he the same character, you'd be bang on - but then N. K. Jemisin has never seemed lacking in narrative ambition, and the Sieh she has us spend these 600-some pages with is both irrevocably changed in the early-going and altered little by little as time and The Kingdom of Gods toils on. Firstly he is made mortal, by some quirk of fate, and later rendered still more relatable, more like us, by love, the great leveller that has been both the bane of and a boon to this series.

The romantic aspects of this final volume function similarly. Sometimes they seem central to the emotional core of the story, indeed the series entire, but as often as not these preoccupations have felt superfluous; sex for the sake of some sex, and however exciting such scenes can be - though they can be excruciating, too - all the according angst errs on the truly tiresome. Particularly coming from a god, as in this case. But then "adolescence is all about making mistakes," (p.200) isn't it? And Sieh is finally growing up.

Thankfully The Kingdom of Gods has a lot of loose ends left to tie off, particularly after the leisurely interlude - the calm before the storm - that was The Broken Kingdoms. Thus there are many more meaningful threads in terms of character and narrative for Jemisin to address than the love life of a child older than time in the midst of a tryst of his own making. Indeed it's a testament to Jemisin's knack for storysmithing that this novel is as ordered and intelligible as it is, given all it must - and largely does - resolve.

Which is not to say the story's entirely over, as of this volume. In fact, after the last chapter, a coda seems to suggest a new beginning, and hot on the heels of the coda which concludes The Kingdom of Gods, lo and behold a deleted scene of sorts: a short story tellingly titled "Not the End."

And though I struggled with this series at the outset, with The Kingdom of Gods behind me now - a fitting, if familiar end to this award-winning trilogy - I kinda sorta hope it's not. 

***

The Kingdom of Gods

by N. K. Jemisin

UK & US Publication: October 2011, Orbit

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Book Review | The Broken Kingdoms by N. K. Jemisin

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In the city of Shadow, beneath the World Tree, alleyways shimmer with magic and godlings live hidden among mortalkind.

Oree Shoth, a blind artist, takes in a homeless man who glows like a living sun to her strange sight. However, this act of kindness is to engulf Oree in a nightmarish conspiracy. Someone, somehow, is murdering godlings, leaving their desecrated bodies all over the city.

Oree's peculiar guest is at the heart of it, his presence putting her in mortal danger - but is it him the killers want, or Oree? And is the earthly power of the Arameri king their ultimate goal, or have they set their sights on the Lord of Night himself?

***

I did not adore The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms in the manner many critics did. As a first novel, yes, it impressed in some respects, and I still stand in admiration of N. K. Jemisin's very elegant voice, but beyond that her award-winning debut was such a slight thing that I came away from it deeply uncertain of the sequel.

The Broken Kingdoms, thank the Gods, is no mere retread of its highly-held predecessor. In fact it turns on its head the equation that so surprised me about book one of The Inheritance Trilogy: where The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms was fantastical romance, up to and including the most cringe-worthy sex scene I've encountered in some time, The Broken Kingdoms is romantic fantasy, with a wider focus on the world, and a perspective that actively earns our empathy, rather than expects it.

It's better, all told; much better. But it's not perfect.

Ten years on from the events of The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, the Arameri - the ruling class of this sprawling continent, oriented around a vast tree whose branches crack the skies - still cling perilously to power, despite the source of their power having fallen, quite literally, from grace. Where once the Gods lived under sufferance, at the beck and call of Arameri fullbloods by dint of a falling-out between order and chaos - as embodied by Itempas and Nahadoth - Yeine's climactic ascendancy, to share body and soul with the dead God Enefna, has tipped the balance in the Darklord's favour.

So it is that Itempas, bringer of the Bright, around whom the predominant religion in the Hundred Thousand Kingdoms was ordered, was cast out of Sky, and the heavens entire. As the godling Madding explains: "Nahadoth wanted to kill him... after what he'd done. But the Three created this universe; if any one of them dies, it all ends. So he was sent here [to Shadow], where he can do the least damage... Maybe, somehow, he can get better. See the error of his ways. I don't know." (p.139)

Shadow is the shanty city built around the roots of the world tree, on which Sky sits. A decade ago, it was the closest most folks ever got to the Gods, but now, with Itempas made a mere man of, and Nahadoth and Yeine watching over the Hundred Thousand Kingdoms - and beyond! - godlings like Madding are everywhere. Some live like mortals, and take mortal lovers, reveling in the wonders of the world denied them for millennia. On Madding's arm - on it and off it, that is - we come, at last, to Oree Shoth, The Broken Kingdoms' substitute protagonist.

Oree is "a woman plagued by gods," (p.15) and she doesn't just mean Madding. Blind since birth, but able to see magic, some years ago she came to Shadow from Maroneh, a far-flung kingdom on its last legs, the better to see what magic there was to be seen. Of course it's everywhere, now, so Oree - an artist who makes ends meet selling trinkets to tourists - is not entirely surprised when she comes across a godling in a muckbin:

At first I saw only delicate lines of gold limn the shape of a man. Dewdrops of glimmering silver beaded along his flesh and then ran down it in rivulets, illuminating the texture of skin in smooth relief. I saw some of those rivulets move impossibly upward, igniting the filaments of his hair, the stern-carved lines of his face.

As I stood there, my hands damp with paint and my door standing open behind me, forgotten, I saw this glowing man draw a deep breath - which made him shimmer even more beautifully - and open eyes whose colour I would never be able to fully describe, even if I someday learn the words. The best I can do is compare it to things I do know: the heavy thickness of red gold, the smell of brass on a hot day, desire and pride.

Yet, as I stood there, transfixed by those eyes, I saw something else: pain. So much sorrow and grief and anger and guilt, and other emotions I could not name because when all was said and done, my life up to then had been relatively happy. There are some things one can understand only by experience, and there are some experiences no one wants to share. (pp.16-17)

Oree takes this heaven-sent creature into her home, calls him Shiny in lieu of a proper introduction - he doesn't speak at all, you see - and in so doing becomes embroiled in a conflict as old as time that will change her life forever after... that is if she still has a life left to live, by the end of The Broken Kingdoms.

Meanwhile, someone, or something, is murdering godlings, one by one. Which should be impossible. But then, what about this world is as it should be?

By now you're probably confused. That's all right; so was I. The problem wasn't just my misunderstanding - though that was part of it - but also history. Politics. The Arameri, and maybe the more powerful nobles and priests, probably know all this. I'm just an ordinary woman with no connections or status, and no power beyond a walking stick that makes an excellent club in a pinch. I had to figure everything out the hard way. (p.59)

The single greatest issue I raised with regards to The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms was its cipher of a central character, Yeine, and though she and Oree may seem of a similar sort, on the surface, certain crucial differences exist to differentiate The Broken Kingdoms' narrator from last time's lady-in-waiting. Whereas Yeine was summoned to the world tree, Oree comes of her own free will; and while Yeine took up in Sky upon her arrival, among the privileged and the decision-makers, Oree makes her humble home in Shadow, with the common man.

Both characters have an inheritance to come into, of course, but though Oree's eventual destiny is not so shattering as Yeine's, The Broken Kingdoms is in sum a better book than the first of this trilogy for its modesty, for its restraint in that respect... not least because the careful reader will have an easier time believing in Oree than Yeine, who seemed utterly unaffected by this strange new world, as new to her at the outset of The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms as it was to us.

So too is the fact of gods walking among us much more meaningful in The Broken Kingdoms, particularly given the ease with which Yeine fell into bed with Nahadoth in book one of The Inheritance Trilogy. Here, however, the reader inherits Oree's reverence for these mysterious, magical creatures, whose actions feel all the more extraordinary for her particular perspective.

And the world feels fuller, finally. You will recall that almost the entirety of The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms took place among the Arameri in Sky; an interesting enough setting in itself, if rather simplistic. Similarly, the events of The Broken Kingdoms occur almost exclusively in Shadow... the yin to Sky's yang, or vice versa. Thus Shadow gives welcome context to Sky, placing it - and us - more firmly in the world.

In The Broken Kingdoms, by upping the fantasy quotient of the larger narrative and simultaneously scaling back its more romantic aspects, and giving readers a less convenient, but more appropriate central character to invest in, N. K. Jemisin addresses many of the issues I had with The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms. It follows, then, that I appreciated this sequel a great deal more comprehensively than I did her debut.

But The Broken Kingdoms introduces a new problem to the tally, and it is a problem related to the thing I most admired about The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms: namely the beauty of Jemisin's voice. Which is to say, word for word, The Broken Kingdoms seems a less considered narrative than its predecessor... imprecise and occasionally clumsy where the author seemed so assured before. Still more damningly, though Oree is - as discussed - a character distinct from Yeine, their witty, flippant, passionate, first-person narrations are almost identical in form and tone, with little to distinguish one from the other.

The Broken Kingdoms is a solid, if stylistically indistinct sequel which improves on The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms in every other sense. Truth be told I came to it expecting more of the same, and though there's absolutely an element of that, it's the same but better; improved in every which way but the one. To wit, bring on The Kingdom of the Gods... which I'll be approaching with far higher hopes than I bore to The Broken Kingdoms. 

***

The Broken Kingdoms

by N. K. Jemisin

UK Publication: November 2010, Orbit

US Publication: September 2011, Orbit

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Book Review | The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms by N. K. Jemisin

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Yeine Darr is an outcast from the barbarian north. But when her mother dies under mysterious circumstances, she is summoned to the majestic city of Sky - a palace above the clouds where gods' and mortals' lives are intertwined.

There, to her shock, Yeine is named one of the potential heirs to the king. But the throne of the Hundred Thousand Kingdoms is not easily won, and Yeine is thrust into a vicious power struggle with a pair of cousins she never knew she had.

As she fights for her life, she draws ever closer to the secrets of her mother's death and her family's bloody history. But it's not just mortals who have secrets worth hiding and Yeine will learn how perilous the world can be when love and hate - and gods and mortals - are bound inseparably.

***

Our loved ones never truly leave us.

Even when they are lost to us, the memory of them remains; the memory above all else. And we inherit from our mothers and fathers and sisters and brothers more than memories: often they bequeath to us a bauble or a trinket or a sum of money. Sometimes more and sometimes less, but be it a lot or a little, invariably something is left.

Yeine's parents left her a legacy. A legacy that will rend the Hundred Thousand Kingdoms apart, from the heavens above to the darkest depths of this dying earth, as surely as it will set Yeine on a path pockmarked with revelations of love, and loss.

Following the death of her mother - a fullblood Arameri cast out of the capital because of her love for a man from Darr, a distant barbarian domain where two decades and one daughter later someone finally killed Kinneth - Yeine is obliged to travel to Sky, a city sunk into the firmament of the heavens where the Gods are said to walk. There, for the first time in her life, she meets her grandfather: Lord Dekarta, the ailing ruler of all that the eye can see, not to mention all that it cannot.

Dekarta is not kind to Yeine, nor does it seem he is in the least happy to see her, despite his storybook love for her mother, yet he bids the girl compete with her two cousins, Scimina and Relad, in a game of thrones: the winner of which brutal maneuvering will inherit not just a chair, but the whole of the Hundred Thousand Kingdoms. And to lose is to die - a fact that preoccupies Yeine for almost the entirety of N. K. Jemisin's award-winning debut, with very little variance.

..all I could think of was death. I was not yet twenty years old, I had never been in love. I had not mastered the nine forms of the knife. I had never - gods. I had never really lived, beyond the legacies left to me by my parents: ennu, and Arameri. It seemed almost incomprehensible that I was doomed, and yet I was. (p.209)

Needless to say Yeine has no taste for the transparent politics of the Arameri, a noble race - a single bloodline - which has all the world under its thumb; all the world, and all but one of the deities who had a hand in its creation... because it is true that Gods walk among men along the pearlescent streets of Sky. They, too, are slaves to the Arameri. And they take a particular interest in Yeine.

Of the three pet Gods the Arameri keep, Sieh, who appears as a boy and scoots about Sky on a small sun, is easily the most interesting. Yeine's feelings for Sieh are almost maternal, so it follows, I suppose, that her feelings for Sieh's father, Nahadoth - such a straightforward tortured soul archetype as to surprise a reader - are like those of a woman in lust, or love.

Make no mistake, as I did: The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms is primarily paranormal romance, but set against an alluring high fantasy backdrop rather than the urban environs of most such fiction. Nor is N. K. Jemisin's first novel - volume one of the Inheritance trilogy, aptly titled - nearly so complex as I imagine it must sound. Indeed, The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms is in real need of nuance.

Sieh alone rises above the tiresome angst of the entire: a trickster God, born of an impossible commingling of order and chaos, older than the world, and yet he chooses to be as a child in every aspect. Why? Out of love, or obedience? Well, that'd be telling, and there's really precious little else to be told besides, so let's leave it at that.

Yeine, alas, lacks intrigue, and agency. New to Sky and the Arameri, but for her murdered mother, she is a made-to-order conduit through which the author is able to first construct and latterly explore, if only tentatively, the Kay Kenyon-esque setting of The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms. As a simple cipher Yeine serves her purpose perfectly; as a girl on the cusp of adulthood with a history or opinions of her own, however, I had a hard time believing in her. She comes from a faraway land where women have dominance over men, where the Gods are but a whispered rumour, where she has been respected, and feared, and admired... yet though we spend the entirety of this admittedly modest narrative in her company, and hers alone, she hardly remarks on the differences between one life and another.

In terms of character, then, I fear The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms is something of a disappointment: hollow, uncomplicated, and once-removed from the real meat of these people, in this pristine place.

But you know what? It's not all bad. Actually, otherwise, the first book of the Inheritance trilogy is surprisingly engaging. Its world "of whispered myth and half-forgotten legend" (p.253) is neat, though somewhat derivative - namely of The Entire and the Rose, as aforementioned - and very nicely put together, if a little too easy-does-it... but there's two more books to take care of that, and I'd expect no less. The politicking, meanwhile, is entertaining, and not remotely overbearing; in this case the linearity of Jemisin's debut works in its favour.

Above all else, however, I was in awe of the effortless elegance of the author's prose. Particularly for a debut, The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms is very well written indeed, reminding this reader of Daniel Abraham's marvelous first flush, and just as I can overlook bad writing if there's a good story to be had, I can forgive a beautiful wordsmith an absence of character, as in this case. The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms would have been a markedly more remarkable experience had its narrative not been robbed of meaning by Yeine's tepid perspective, but nevertheless, with this debut - an uncomplicated hybrid of high fantasy and paranormal romance - N. K. Jemisin has certainly made her voice heard.

And it's a voice I'd hear more of, whatever my qualms.

***

The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms

by N. K. Jemisin

UK Publication: February 2010, Orbit

US Publication: October 2010, Orbit

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