The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms

I knew picking this one up was a good idea. Here I've been, coming down from the end of season three of Game of Thrones, craving a genre that I normally don't give a shit about, but not really up for George R.R. Martin's style. In comes Jemisin to the rescue, once again.

The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms is not exactly a rip-roaring heavily plotted adventure, but it's not slow either. It takes exactly the time and direction it needs. It's about a woman that's been set up for failure, for inevitable death. Whether its death in competition, in sacrifice, in ecstasy or by her own hand. Once Yeine enters Sky and is named one of three heirs to the throne, thrust into a competition in which she is totally out-gunned there is no way out of for her. What happens in the time she is given to despair, to cope, to plan, is a strange love story between gods in which the seeds are sewn to build a new world.

The conflict is a strange one. Yeine seems like the only sane person in a world of psychopaths, in a culture that breeds sadism and malevolence. The Arameri are so incredibly privileged, and so apparently bored of their privilege, that many of them get their rocks off by torturing and mutilating the less fortunate. You know, for funzies. Scimina, Yeine's cousin and fellow heir, is the worst example. She doesn't have a lot of depth, and aside from her extreme competitiveness and arrogance, she doesn't have much of a personality. I found her malignant nature rather boring after a while, and I think Yeine mirrored that. How frustrating it must be for someone like her, to be forced into this situation, being told by everyone she meets that she's not Arameri enough to get by, when there is absolutely no reason outside of survival than she'd want to be.

However, I never wished for more back story for Scimina or her brother, the drunk and mostly useless Relad. The story isn't about them. The Arameri are the slave masters, and if the weapons they've wielded for generations are backfiring on them, that's their own damn fault. The story keeps its attention tightly on Yeine, her people in the country of Darr where she was raised, and the enslaved gods who become her friends, and in one case her lover.

It's a gentle art dealing with characters who exist in infinities. A god of mischief who is older than time but in essence a child, the Nightlord who changes his face to suit his lovers but to consummate his love would mean certain death for most mortals. And then there's the goddess who is both alive and dead. Even the human characters possess complexities in their emotions that most writers wouldn't be able to juggle – the ability to love and hate at the same time, feel pity and jealousy, compassion and vengeful rage. So when the climax comes, the transformation that Yeine undergoes makes sense. Strenuous for her as a character perhaps, but effortless for the reader.

This didn't have the same high tension and plotting of the Dreamblood series that introduced me to Jemisin. What it did have was honest characters and emotional vulnerability. Also, there are moments that are crazy sexy (I mean what else are you going to do when everyone around you wants you dead, mope around or have amazing universe-bending god-sex?). And now I have a whole other series to get wrapped up in.