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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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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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