The Broken Kingdoms

N.K. Jemisin is fast becoming one of my favorite fantasy authors. Her books are rich, intense, and utterly unique. The Broken Kingdoms picks up the story after The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, but while the original cast make a few cameos, the bulk of the story is an entirely new set of characters. We follow Oree, a woman who is blind except where magic is concerned, and learn of her adventures in the land created by Yeine's ascension.

I think what I enjoy most about Jemisin's work is how she deals with relationships. She recognizes the complexity of caring for another being, both in a romantic and platonic sense. She isn't afraid to show relationships evolving, and even though she has a female and a male protagonist, the story never devolves into the trite “will they or won't they” storyline. In this sense, the book is even more intriguing than HTK.

I'm also a sucker for any story which takes the mystery out of faith. So much of religion in our world in based on “This is what I believe.” In Jemisin's world, Gods are a fact. There's one right there. It's how they interact and deal with the mortal world that makes it interesting. The stories are similar to Greek Myths in that, but their content is modern and fresh. I also like the way Jemisin subtly addresses issues of race and prejudice without ever feeling preachy, just honest. One of my favorite parts is when Lady Serymn first realizes Shiny is Itempas, and her first comment is "He's Maro." That's what you took from this, lady?.

The Inheritance Trilogy is so far right up there on my list of Fantasy favorites. I just ordered the third installment and can't wait to read it. If you like HTK, it definitely is worth continuing on to The Broken Kingdoms.

Gente, que livro foi esse? É o segundo da trilogia Legado, da autora N. K. Jemisin e eu já estava esperando algo surpreendente, dado o primeiro livro (Os Cem Mil Reinos), mas definitivamente não esperava essa PEDRADA que eu levei.

Sensacional, o livro acompanha Oree, uma garota cega, e sua relação com os deuses que estão sempre permeando a cidade em que ela vive. Após uma morte incomum e o encontro com um homem conhecido como “Shiny” a vida de Oree irá mudar para sempre.

Não tenho palavras para descrever esse livro, viu? Surpreendente mesmo, a construção das relações e dos personagens é fenomenal. Eu já sou fã de carteirinha da N. K. Jemisin, mas depois desse livro, meu amor por ela só aumentou. Meus divertidamente estavam fazendo a festa enquanto eu lia esse livro, conheci emoções que nem sequer sabia ser capaz de sentir.

Recomendo muito!

 This is the second book in N.K. Jemisin's ‘Inheritance Trilogy' and the fifth book I've read by Jemisin overall.  Going into it I was expecting to once again have Yeine as a protagonist with a focus on what her and Nahodoth had been up to since the end of The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms.     To my surprise, Jemisin took a totally different route, giving us a totally new POV and an almost entirely new set of characters.  The result is interesting.   Second acts in trilogies are always very hard to pull off as they don't have the sense of wonder that exists in a first act while also not having the satisfaction of a conclusion that third acts naturally contain.  Jemisin somewhat avoids this by giving us a lot of new world-building that didn't exist in the first book, making it feel somewhat similar to a first book.  The main problem I have is that some beats are repeated here.  I feel like Itempas is just a less interesting Nahadoth, which really hurts the story as Itempas is so crucial to this book's emotional beats.  Oree is a strong POV and a really interesting character to follow, but I don't feel quite as enamored with her as I did with Yeine.  The supporting characters here are strong but outside of Dateh (who is legitimately fantastic and the best part of the book) I don't think they live up to the Arameri from A Hundred Thousand Kingdoms.  When you add all that up, what you get is less of a sequel and more of a weaker version of its predecessor.    With that said, I still like this book.  Jemisin is still an amazing writer and her sheer talent does make this plot and these characters work.  There are a lot of concepts introduced here that are super interesting and Jemisin weaves them into her world seamlessly.  The scenes where Oree does magic are great and this book does add a darker tinge that works quite well.  A Hundred Thousand Kingdoms isn't a bright, fun book by any stretch, but it feels more like dusk compared to The Broken Kingdoms' night.      I am very interested to see how Jemisin concludes this trilogy with The Kingdom of Gods.  I felt like she saved the best for last with ‘The Broken Earth' trilogy, and I have faith she'll do so again here. 

I think I enjoyed this book more than the first. I thought the blind protagonist added an interesting perspective to the story, and I just found myself more into the action than I did in book one.

There's a lingering feeling that this series is just short of being really special, but I can't pinpoint what's missing. Regardless, what's here is well-written and worth reading.

Friends are precious, powerful things—hard to earn, harder still to keep.

Didn't we all need someone to turn to sometimes?

He was never good at changing, bending. He broke instead. And he took all of us with him.

I think you care about a great many things, more than you want to. I think life still holds some potential for you.

Darkness can exist by itself. Light cannot.

It was a hard thing, sometimes, to live.

That was all magic was, really, in the end. Possibility.

If I like this book less than [b:The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms 6437061 The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms (The Inheritance Trilogy, #1) N.K. Jemisin https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1303143211s/6437061.jpg 6626657], in all honesty it is by a fraction of a star. The Broken Kingdoms is a little less focused than its predecessor – but there was more action, more twists. It also struck me as a little indecisive about what kind of story it intended to be. Also, I missed Naha, just a little bit.While the first book focused on the relationship between Yeine and the Nightlord, this one focused on the other side of this story's triumvirate of gods, Bright Itempas. The god of light and reason, now imprisoned in mortal form for his crimes against his siblings and children, somehow manages to gain the sympathy of a blind artist named Oree. Naturally, their convolution of naivete and latent magical abilities ends up causing all kinds of trouble. I like Oree, I like that she's passionate and trusting. I did wonder how many chapters were going to start with her waking up and stuff happening to her. Granted, Yeine was in a similar bind in The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, but I feel like she was a much more active decision maker. Nonetheless, Oree is an interesting take on the “girls afraid of themselves” trope, that even though she shows some trepidation and guilt about the destructive potential of her abilities, the fact that her magic is so closely tied to belief (in herself, and in her troubled faith) allows her to always think of it as something that is her own, not anyone else's.Reading about Itempas, or as Oree calls him, Shiny, reminds of the Son in Paradise Regain'd. Godly figures are by their nature absolute. It's like talking to a brick wall. Which is essentially what Oree has to go through, even as she and Shiny warm to each other he remains as resolute and impossible as ever. That's an extremely complicated task to pull off as a writer, to make someone with a mind of stone who is still sympathetic. (When people talk about John Milton being sympathetic to Lucifer in his epic poems, it's not because he philosophically sided with him, it's just an easier perspective to take as a writer, because Lucifer has much more in common with the reader than God does). Jemisin does it marvelously, in fact, I think this is a challenge she regularly takes on, as Shiny reminds me a little bit of Ehiru in [b:The Killing Moon 11774272 The Killing Moon (Dreamblood, #1) N.K. Jemisin https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1335835254s/11774272.jpg 14757893].The Broken Kingdoms manages to use certain tropes, and skip lightly over others. As much faith as I had in Jemisin, I was seriously worried that somehow Itempas' punishment would end by the end of the book, a mere ten years after his sentence was handed down for a crime that lasted for two thousand years. I need not have worried, however his story and Oree's definitely goes in an interesting direction. I was surprised at how into their relationship I was. Not as much as I was into Yeine and Nahadoth, but still they had their moments. Because these books are fundamentally relationship based, the point of view always trained inward, despite the political machinations or murder mysteries going on at the same time. If you don't love the characters, if you don't care about the things they care about, the story doesn't work. And I do love them, despite all their flaws.

I loved it just as much as the first in this series. Great plot, great world building, interesting characters...all around entertaining book. I like that we got to view the other side of this feud, and that we got to see this world from a commoner's perspective. In The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, Itempas is the antagonist, but in this book he becomes a very relatable character. Admittedly, I often found myself frustrated with him (and in the last book, I could not care less about the guy), but throughout this novel, I began to understand him. And now, I'm rooting for him. Like Yeine, I hope that the rift between Itempas and Nahadoth will mend...Anyways, I'm really excited to pick up the last, and final, book in this trilogy [b:The Kingdom of Gods 7923006 The Kingdom of Gods (The Inheritance Trilogy, #3) N.K. Jemisin https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1313690257s/7923006.jpg 11228805]. Five out of Five!!Oh, and I have to say, the covers for these novels are stunning. Love the artwork!

When I first got into mythology, one of the questions I asked myself was: what if the gods still walked amongst us? At the time I was only nine or ten, and the scope of my knowledge of any kind of mythology was limited to the Greek pantheon, and hence when I considered the question it mostly had to do with the possibility of Athena showing up on my doorstep and asking me to go on a quest on her behalf.

Since that time I have, of course, read about the mythologies of other countries, and have also had access to other novels that explore this concept - American Gods is the first one I read that explores this idea, and since then there have been a lot of urban fantasy novels that have tried to look at the idea of not just gods, but all kinds of mythological entities, living side-by-side with humans. The concept has even filtered down into young-adult novels, with Rick Riordan's Percy Jackson novels being a prime example. Fantasy has done this too, in its own way, but I have not encountered very many novels that play around with this idea.

Fantasy has, of course, played with this concept as well, perhaps for longer than even urban fantasy ever has, since there are many, many novels that hinge on the idea of the gods returning to the world, or the gods leaving the world. Such novels tend to explore the consequences of the gods' return, or their departure: what happens if the gods come back? What happens if they leave? How will humanity cope with them or without them?

These are some of the questions that N.K. Jemisin set out to answer in her Inheritance Trilogy series, which begins with The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms. It is the story of Yeine Darr, who is summoned to the city of Sky by her long-estranged grandfather. There she learns the darkest secret of the Arameri, the ruling family of almost the entire world, and from whom Yeine claims descent. At the end of the novel, she ascends to godhood after uniting the soul of the goddess Enefa which was planted within her before her birth by the very gods inhabiting Sky, in an attempt to free themselves from the control of the Arameri and of Itempas. After this, she imprisons Itempas in a mortal form, while she and the other gods go forth into the world, their influence and power returned to them at last.

The next novel, The Broken Kingdoms, starts ten years after the events of The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, with a whole new protagonist. This time it is Oree Shoth, an artist who might be considered blind by conventional standards, but is, in fact, capable of seeing magic - a skill she uses in her art. After leaving her native land of Nimaro in order to find a new life elsewhere, she finds herself in the city of Sky, which has since been radically transformed by the events of The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms. Where the city stood there now grows a giant tree called the World Tree (an event which occurred to mark Yeine's ascension to godhood and the return of the Gray Lady in the first novel), and is now known as “Shadow,” because most of it is under the shadow of the World Tree. But underneath its boughs walk not just humans, but godlings: minor gods who, having been locked away from the mortal realm since the Gods' War, have decided to walk amongst humans once again. They are familiar figures to Oree, who can see them though she can't see anyone or anything else because they are magical.

And then one day she finds a godling in the alley behind her house. Uncertain as to his identity, she takes him in anyway, and gives him the name “Shiny” when he refuses to give her his name. For several months they live together in relative peace, until Oree's world is shattered when she discovers a dead godling, and is sought out by the Itempan Order so that they might pin the murder on her after Nahadoth gives the city a deadline to discover the perpetrator of the crime. She then gets caught up in a plot involving the gods, Shiny - and her own, dangerous heritage.

One of the first things that the reader will note about this novel is the shift in tone in terms of writing. Jemisin's language is as beautiful as ever, but it has none of the dreaminess that existed in The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms. There is a solidity in it, a sort of down-to-earth feel that did not exist in the first novel. Oree speaks (since this is a first-person narrative) in a voice that is entirely familiar, and entirely comfortable - even her sarcasm is familiar. I suppose this can easily be attributed to the fact that Oree is a commoner and remains mortal at the end of the novel, whereas Yeine (the narrator of The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms) is technically noble and attains godhood at the end. This shift in tone and language does something to the pace of the novel, as well: the second novel seems to move at a quicker, snappier pace than the first, and deals with the plot in a more straightforward manner. There is still a lot of skipping back and forth between the past and lore and the present, as there was in The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, but The Broken Kingdoms has none of the fluid sliding from one to the other that there was in the first novel. Again, I say that this shift is not a bad thing; it's just different, and, I think, appropriate, given the differences between the two narrators.

And now that I speak of the characters, I must say that Jemisin has once again done very well in her writing of Oree and Shiny. Though Yeine and Oree are nothing alike, they are still both enjoyable characters: their voices are a pleasure to read, they are both strong in their own way, and are capable of doing what they must for the good of the world, even if it means sacrificing something they hold dear. I must, however, profess a bit more preference for Oree as a character - not because she's in any way better than Yeine, but only because I like her wit and sarcasm more. Yeine is more aloof than Oree, and while I can appreciate that, I like how Jemisin has written Oree as more affable and approachable than Yeine ever was.

As for Shiny, that is an interesting thing as well. Readers of the first novel will almost immediately recognize Shiny as Itempas, originally the chief god of the Hundred Thousand Kingdoms until the concluding events of the first novel saw him cast down and punished to a mortal form by Yeine. I really enjoyed the way Jemisin wrote his character: broken and still healing, proud but learning humility. in truth, after I figured out who he was I was entirely prepared to hate him, but Jemisin gradually builds his character in such a manner that it is difficult to well and truly hate him - he is no less a villain, of course, but he is at least a sympathetic villain, one whom the reader would like to see reformed and, perhaps eventually, happy.His relationship with Oree is particularly fascinating, and more interesting to me than the relationship between Nahadoth and Yeine in The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms. My partiality to the Oree-Itempas relationship might be because of my bias towards Oree, but I think it's also because their dynamics are more complex than the Yeine-Nahadoth relationship. There is a certain fatalistic attraction between Yeine and Nahadoth, which, while interesting, I have seen explored in a great many other books (though to be truthful, very few write it as well as Jemisin does). Oree and Itempas, on the other hand, have to learn to love each other, which I think is truer to what love ought to be: a learning process, where one learns to love the other for everything they are, and everything they are not. I also liked the fact that they do not get the typical happy ending (which is what Yeine and Nahadoth got), since I did not truly think Oree and Itempas would live happily ever after - that would simply have not rung true to everything that had happened in the novel. Some authors might have attempted to bend the ending to make it a happy one, but I appreciate the fact that Jemisin does not. It is not an entirely sad ending, to be sure, but it's not entirely happy either - just the right amount of bittersweet to make it a satisfying ending to the novel.

Overall, The Broken Kingdoms is an excellent continuation of Jemisin's trilogy. It does not suffer from “middle book syndrome” in the same way that other second books in trilogies do, but it does have a smaller scope than the first novel. There are far fewer political games in this one, too, focusing as it does more on the interpersonal relationships between characters and the mystery of Oree's own origins. Some might hold this as a mark against the novel, but I find it a lovely change of pace from the tension and danger of the first novel. It is nice to settle into a novel that is primarily about its characters and how they relate to one another, though the ramifications of those relationships are obviously going to come to fruition in the third novel.

Wasn't as good as the first, but still absorbing. The author has really conjured up a strange and wonderfully unique universe.

Wow. I did not expect this. While I really liked book one, there were a few things that botherd me. This was pretty close to perfection. Oree is an incredibly compelling narrator, I fell in love with the characters (especially the ones where I least expected it) and the plot took me by surprise several times. Mostly though, I adored this for its originality. I can't remember reading anything like this, and in such beautiful language. And the ending was bittersweet perfection!
Read my full review over at the SFF Book Review

4 1/2 stars

The Broken Kingdoms had everything I loved about the first book in this trilogy ??? an absorbing story, an intriguing setting and world mythology, and a likable narrator with a compelling voice. I cannot wait for the third book (especially since it is Sieh's book!).

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