The Broken Kingdoms
In the sequel to The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, NK Jemisin
deals with the fallout of that books climax in a rather surprising way.
The first book focused on the elite ruling class, the people in power
and the way they interacted with the gods. The second book shifts focus
to the working poor to examine how they've dealt with all this upheaval.
The first book ended with an extreme shift in power. A god who was thought dead was reborn. The captor and imprisoned gods switched places and the newly powerful god is out for vengeance. Balance hasn't been restored to the cosmos, but everyone has started down that path. The second book doesn't do anything to further shift power dynamics (I imagine that will wait for the final book), but it does start everyone down the path to healing.
All of this is narrated by a blind woman who can see the effects of magic. This ability helps her navigate the complicated world of the gods and their children, the godlings. She, of course, becomes ensnared in a power struggle involving the ruling Arameri class from the first book. But she herself is just trying to get by. Selling her artwork in an effort to keep food on her table and a roof over her head.
It was interesting to see this vastly different perspective of this world. In the first book, Yeine's privilege allowed her to be concerned with things of an epic nature: an impending war in her homeland, the politics of her murderous family, and the history of the gods. Oree, protagonist of the second book, is concerned with more mundane things. Eating, staying under the radar of the church, reconciling with her lover. She gets dragged into the gods' politics, but she'd rather be left alone to live out her life in peace.
It's hard to judge a series before finishing it, but I liked this book a lot better than I tend to like second books of trilogies. The shift in perspective helped a lot, I think. Instead of feeling like a bridge between the beginning and end of a series, as so many second installments tend to, it was a complete story with a satisfying ending of its own.
The first book ended with an extreme shift in power. A god who was thought dead was reborn. The captor and imprisoned gods switched places and the newly powerful god is out for vengeance. Balance hasn't been restored to the cosmos, but everyone has started down that path. The second book doesn't do anything to further shift power dynamics (I imagine that will wait for the final book), but it does start everyone down the path to healing.
All of this is narrated by a blind woman who can see the effects of magic. This ability helps her navigate the complicated world of the gods and their children, the godlings. She, of course, becomes ensnared in a power struggle involving the ruling Arameri class from the first book. But she herself is just trying to get by. Selling her artwork in an effort to keep food on her table and a roof over her head.
It was interesting to see this vastly different perspective of this world. In the first book, Yeine's privilege allowed her to be concerned with things of an epic nature: an impending war in her homeland, the politics of her murderous family, and the history of the gods. Oree, protagonist of the second book, is concerned with more mundane things. Eating, staying under the radar of the church, reconciling with her lover. She gets dragged into the gods' politics, but she'd rather be left alone to live out her life in peace.
It's hard to judge a series before finishing it, but I liked this book a lot better than I tend to like second books of trilogies. The shift in perspective helped a lot, I think. Instead of feeling like a bridge between the beginning and end of a series, as so many second installments tend to, it was a complete story with a satisfying ending of its own.
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