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The Inheritance Trilogy: The Broken Kingdoms by N K Jemisin (view source)
Revision as of 13:16, 22 November 2010
, 13:16, 22 November 2010no edit summary
'''Please note – Major spoilers for [[The Hundred-Thousand Kingdoms (Inheritance Trilogy) by N K Jemisin|The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms]], the first book of the trilogy, are pretty much impossible to avoid here; read at your peril!'''
Ten years after the events of [[The Hundred-Thousand Kingdoms (Inheritance Trilogy) by N K Jemisin|The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms]], godlings are able to roam free and there are once again three gods – or are there? While people still worship bright Itempas, he was cast down by the Nightlord at the end of book one to wander the Earth, unable to die permanently but with no other powers unless he was protecting amortal. Oree, an artist who can see magic but is otherwise blind, has known godlings for years and has even been the lover of one of them, but has never met anyone quite like her new lodger Shiny. With godlings dying, something which hasn't happened for many years, can narrator Oree and Shiny find out what's going on before Nahadoth destroys the entire city of Shadow in revenge for his murdered children?
Jemisin quickly reveals to the reader, using the exact dialogue from the original book, that Shiny is actually Itempas, leaving us ahead of the narrator for a fair part of the novel – an interesting decision which pays off really well. Shiny is an incredibly strongly realized character and one of the really brilliant things about this follow-up is how it made me look back on Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, seeing some of the same characters from a completely different viewpoint to that of Yeine, who narrated that book. It's also interesting to note how some of the characters in that first novel have changed over the past ten years, and reading this one has made me resolve to reread it soon as I think it'll be even more enjoyable now.