book rec: The Kingdom of Gods

[psocoptera]

The Kingdom of Gods is the concluding book of the trilogy by N. K. Jemisin that began with The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, which I briefly reviewed here. This is an outstandingly good trilogy and The Kingdom of Gods lived up to my every hope for it. I devoured this book, unlike a lot of what I've read lately there was never a point where I had to push myself to keep reading it, from the very first page I wanted more more more. Jemisin is working in everything from the epic cosmic scale to very immediate personal detail and it's all in balance, I mean, it's just kick-ass storytelling. Things happened that I should have seen coming but never saw coming but were so right. Mythology, romance, political allegory! Fantasy novel of the year!

Comments

[jere7my.livejournal.com]

I liked a whole lot of things about Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, but had trouble swallowing the romance-novel clichés of Nahadoth. After I read "...no mere penis can fill a woman's body the way he filled mine"...well, I still haven't found my eyes, they rolled so far. Book 2 dropped a lot of the things I liked (like the spare, poetic prose) but kept the Mary-Sue romance angle. I thought I was going to finish the trilogy, but after I finished Broken Kingdoms I realized I didn't want to.

[psocoptera.livejournal.com]

Haha, I don't remember that line at all, I guess it's just not what stuck with me from the first book. Not surprising you didn't like 'em, though, do we have any overlap in our reading tastes? ::grin::

(BTW, thumbs down to your dismissal of Oree as a "Mary Sue", which is a problematic term to apply to an original character in an original work. Dunno if you've read the fanlore page on the term (http://fanlore.org/wiki/Mary_Sue) or this post here (http://thezoe-trope.blogspot.com/2011/08/you-can-stuff-your-mary-sue-where-sun.html), but you could. Also I will tell you (spoiler!) that the POV character for The Kingdom of Gods is male, which might change how the romance angle worked for you?)

[jere7my.livejournal.com]

(SPOILERS for the first two books below.)

I did really like the first book; I rolled my eyes at the "OMG he's dangerous and hawt and only our heroine can tame him" Team Edward-style abusive romance, but overall I thought it was very strong. I liked Jemisin's allegory of privilege, I liked her writing style, I thought she did a great job of setting up an intolerable situation that kept the reader turning pages. I expected to like the second, especially since an Amazon reviewer said the romance angle was toned down, and bought it the day I finished the first. But I found it muddled, with a very passive protagonist and none of the delicacy of the first. De gustibus.

I do know the history of the Mary Sue. It's really only the romance subplot in which Oree seems like one — the super-powerful godling with flashing eyes and long raven hair only has eyes for her, she's the only woman who can handle his magic astral sexytimes, no mere human male can satisfy her, etc. There are plot reasons for all that, of course, but it read like wish-fulfillment to me. Then the second book gave us a heroine with the same characteristics (fascinating to gods, too precious for human lovers), which made me start thinking it was a feature, not a bug.

[psocoptera.livejournal.com]

I have no problem with wish-fulfillment in fiction. Nor do I think it's inherently worse in romance than in action, adventure, etc.

(Also just to clarify re names, Oree was the protag of the second book, Yeine is the protag of the first book.)

[miraling.livejournal.com]

I'm so torn; I really enjoyed the first two books in audio form so I want to wait for an audiobook of the third, but I don't know if and when it will come out. Ack.