A Hundred Thousand Reviews

Hey,

OK, I haven't reviewed 100,000 books, but I might if I keep reading them at the pace that I did for The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms by N.K. Jemisin. Usually I try and average about 100 pages a day when I'm reading something, but I just sat down in the early evening with this book and tore through it pretty much non-stop until I was done.

First, most important, point: Although the book claims to be the first book in "The Inheritance Trilogy", the book could easily be complete in and of itself. I mean, really, without that bit of text, I'd have no idea this was supposed to be part of a trilogy. I'm already on board for the next book just for that alone. I do have a small worry that this might suffer from the "there should only have been one" syndrome, but I can see how she might layer these stories together to form a long, if not closely linked, narrative.

Right, so let's talk about the book. Two thousand years ago, the gods had a war. The Sun god won and enslaved all the survivors. He gave control of them to his chosen family, the Arameri. Now, the Arameri all live in a floating city and while they technically are just "overseers" or "advisors", no one wants to piss off the guy who can whistle up the Goddess of War to raze their lands. So the family spends all their time in their floating cities drunk with power -- well, the full-bloods do, distant relatives are mere servants and there's a system of magical marks that determine who has seniority when ordering the gods around. Oh, and the gods are like wish spells so you have to be careful when you order them around or they'll do what you said.

OK, so we have Yeine, a "barbarian" woman from the Far North whose mother was actually set to inherit rulership of the world, but abdicated in favor of some minor princeling. Yeine had to struggle, but she bacame chieftan in her own time. Now her grandfather Dakarta has called her back to Sky to take her place among the royal family. Yeine hates the Arameri and everything they stand for and she believes they were the ones who killed her mother. So she's here partially because she wants revenge and partially because she wants to save her people. As Yiene gets introduced to Sky and the captive gods and the swirling intrigues, so are we and we're soon pulled deeper into the maze that Yiene must walk to answer the question "what do you want?".

The book has a number of strong themes running through it and lots of interesting little meditations on a wide range of topics. It's never direct and talky, it's always couched along the side and running beneath various conversations. There are a lot of interesting facets to the book and it's surprising when I think back about all the new ones I can tease out of it.

Because of the wide range of overlapping issues that the book deftly manages to combine, I think there's a lot of people on my friends list who will really get a kick out of this. So I recommend grabbing a copy, it's a very satisfying read.

later
Tom

A Hundred Thousand Reviews

Hey,

OK, I haven't reviewed 100,000 books, but I might if I keep reading them at the pace that I did for The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms by N.K. Jemisin. Usually I try and average about 100 pages a day when I'm reading something, but I just sat down in the early evening with this book and tore through it pretty much non-stop until I was done.

First, most important, point: Although the book claims to be the first book in "The Inheritance Trilogy", the book could easily be complete in and of itself. I mean, really, without that bit of text, I'd have no idea this was supposed to be part of a trilogy. I'm already on board for the next book just for that alone. I do have a small worry that this might suffer from the "there should only have been one" syndrome, but I can see how she might layer these stories together to form a long, if not closely linked, narrative.

Right, so let's talk about the book. Two thousand years ago, the gods had a war. The Sun god won and enslaved all the survivors. He gave control of them to his chosen family, the Arameri. Now, the Arameri all live in a floating city and while they technically are just "overseers" or "advisors", no one wants to piss off the guy who can whistle up the Goddess of War to raze their lands. So the family spends all their time in their floating cities drunk with power -- well, the full-bloods do, distant relatives are mere servants and there's a system of magical marks that determine who has seniority when ordering the gods around. Oh, and the gods are like wish spells so you have to be careful when you order them around or they'll do what you said.

OK, so we have Yeine, a "barbarian" woman from the Far North whose mother was actually set to inherit rulership of the world, but abdicated in favor of some minor princeling. Yeine had to struggle, but she bacame chieftan in her own time. Now her grandfather Dakarta has called her back to Sky to take her place among the royal family. Yeine hates the Arameri and everything they stand for and she believes they were the ones who killed her mother. So she's here partially because she wants revenge and partially because she wants to save her people. As Yiene gets introduced to Sky and the captive gods and the swirling intrigues, so are we and we're soon pulled deeper into the maze that Yiene must walk to answer the question "what do you want?".

The book has a number of strong themes running through it and lots of interesting little meditations on a wide range of topics. It's never direct and talky, it's always couched along the side and running beneath various conversations. There are a lot of interesting facets to the book and it's surprising when I think back about all the new ones I can tease out of it.

Because of the wide range of overlapping issues that the book deftly manages to combine, I think there's a lot of people on my friends list who will really get a kick out of this. So I recommend grabbing a copy, it's a very satisfying read.

later
Tom