Bookish Thoughts

When you pick up a short story collection, you expect a mixed bag. Whether there are multiple authors or just one, the collection itself usually contains a few stories you love, a few you like, and a few that don't work for you. Disappointment is part of the expectation. But NK Jemisin is working on a different level, because every single story in this collection was excellent. They're all vastly different. Some take place in the past, some in the future. Some are set in this world, some in other worlds. Some lean towards fantasy, some towards science-fiction. But they're all incredible, and they build on each other thematically. The collection starts with "The Ones Who Stay and Fight", Jemisin's explicit reaction to LeGuin's famous parable "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas". Knowing this, I re-read LeGuin's story immediately before starting this collection. I'm glad I did, because really the whole collection seems to be a reaction ...

In the final installment of Jemisin's excellent Broken Earth  trilogy, Essun and Nassun are racing to put an end to the war that's been tearing their planet apart for millenia. They have very different goals, one wanting to save the world and start over and the other wanting to just end it all. They grapple with whether or not all this suffering is worth it. And meanwhile, Hoa takes us back to the beginning, and the part he played in starting this war. The ending was thrilling and incredible, with as much redemption as could be managed. Nassun and Essun don't really get a chance to repair their broken relationship, but there's a lovely moment of grace that suggests forgiveness is possible. That said, the ending was also somewhat creepy, as the frame story is finally revealed in full. It's teased from the very beginning - how many stories are written in the second person? Still, the reveal of exactly why Hoa was telling Essun this story was a bit of a shock. Thou...

In The Fifth Season , the world ends. In The Obelisk Gate , the characters figure out what they're going to do about it. The thing is that the world hasn't ended so much as changed. The constant refrain throughout the book is that the planet will be just fine. It's the future of humanity that's in question now. But the bulk of humanity is no more than innocent bystanders in a war that's been going on for millennia. A war that, we're told, has more than one side. A war for which this will be the final decisive battle. The scope expands in this book. The end of the last book revealed that this story is being told to Essun by Hoa, which sparked my biggest question and one that doesn't even come close to being answered in this installment. But it must be in the conclusion. It's such a specific and unique framing device that there has to be a reason for it. But instead of addressing that question, since Hoa and Essum both presumably know the answer to it, h...

My favorite thing about NK Jemisin is that she makes her readers work hard. She creates these fantastically rich worlds with intricate magic systems that inform complex societies. She builds up entire cultures, buttressed by new vocabulary and gods. And then she just throws you in the deep end and expects you to learn how to navigate it all. This works so well because she is a brilliant writer, expertly dropping hints throughout the narrative that help expand the world while the plot rushes forward. Her books take a little while to get invested in because they have such a steep learning curve. But it's always worth it. This is a rather long way of saying that I returned to the prologue at least four or five times while I was reading the rest of the book. The prologue is so incredibly dense that it took a long time to digest. I think the entire first book is actually contained in those first few pages, though it takes the entire book to make all of that clear. It was a treat to ...

The second book in NK Jemisin's Dreamblood  duology picks up ten years after the end of the first one. It follows a mostly new cast of characters, primarily the son of the deposed king and the first woman allowed to train as a priest. The characters from the first book do appear, though they are older and more cynical this time around. This book sets aside many of the questions of the previous book, notably the discussion around end of life care and assisted death. Instead it focuses on the way cultures change with time, how they deal and fail to deal when that change is imposed from the outside, and how they go about reclaiming themselves. This book is about a revolution. The people of Gujaareh have been under Kisuati rule for a decade now, in the wake of their corrupt prince's death. They have begun to chafe under that rule and are looking for a way to reclaim their city, even if it means returning to the system that so recently failed them. Jemisin is fantastic at crea...

This book was amazing. I shouldn't be surprised, since I've been hearing about NK Jemisin for years, and I really enjoyed The Inheritance Trilogy . But I had such a hard time finding this book and it's sequel that I was worried it had gone out of print. Which isn't always the best sign when a book's been out for less than five years. Then again, who knows how the book industry works and why stores decide to stock what they stock. Jemisin takes a slightly different approach to fantasy than I'm used to seeing. Most high fantasy, especially most popular high fantasy, draws it's inspiration from European history and mythology. At least in the United States. But Jemisin makes an effort to draw inspiration from different places in the world, and to be as respectful of those sources as possible (She actually has some great commentary about JK Rowling's recent foray into American Indian folklore). I'm sure there are other authors who do this, but very few...

In the final installment in her Inheritance Trilogy, NK Jemisin greatly increases the scope, focusing not on a single week or month, but encompassing an entire mortal lifetime. The changes that were set in motion in the first book finally reach their inevitable conclusion here, in a pretty stunning and thoughtful book. I found myself torn between wanting to race to the end and wanting to savor every sentence, which is a pretty rare thing. But there are some hard truths in here, about privilege and tradition and the human condition, that Jemisin does a spectacular job of highlighting. Unlike the previous two books, our narrator this time around is a god. And a trickster god, at that. It makes for a story that tends to jump through time and space rather unexpectedly, because the narrator can't really be bothered with time on a mortal scale. It also means that I spent a great deal of the book waiting for the other shoe to drop, because why would a trickster just tell ...

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 ...

NK Jemisin's debut novel The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms  is different from the majority of fantasy I've read lately. There's no grand adventure or epic battle.At it's heart, this book has more to do with family politics than anything else. Some millenia before this book begins, the three main gods got into a fight that escalated into a war. Ultimately one was killed, one was enslaved in human form, and the third took it upon himself to be the grand ruler of all. The world has been a little off-balance ever since, as exemplified by the cruel and twisted ruling family, the Arameri. But this story focuses on Yeine, newly named heir of the current ruler, Dekarta, despite the fact that her mother was disowned for marrying her father. She finds herself summoned to the capital city, where she must navigate not only her own family politics, but those of the gods who are kept as slaves. The story isn't entirely linear, which I usually love. It mostly works...