The Killing Moon by N. K. Jemisin
418 pages
Published 2012
Read from November 1 to November 4
Rating: ★★★ out of 5
This book, when compared with Jemisin's debut novel The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, neatly represents maturation in the craft of a fantasy writer -- or at least a step in that general direction. Where Jemisin's Inheritance Trilogy relied upon first person narration and (for the most part) introduced readers to complicated fantasy exposition through the handy trick of an outsider's perspective, The Killing Moon tosses readers into the thick of things, starting in media res with third-person limited perspective as our characters react to events that occurred before the first page. It's an ambitious leap in storycraft. As an inadvertent side effect, alas, I didn't feel much investment in either the characters or the story for the first hundred or so pages.
Jemisin is a consummate worldbuilder, which I appreciate as a writer, but as a reader, I feel more ambivalent about that tendency. Especially in the early going, Moon suffers from too much attention to the cosmic details of its made-up world, much like Jemisin's The Kingdom of Gods. The exposition is doled out at a comfortable pace, rarely too much at once, but there is just so damn much of it to absorb that it becomes hard to care about the story. The book is, perhaps, richer for it in the long run, but it takes an unfortunate length of time (and book) to reach a balance between caring about the characters and knowing what the hell is going on. The ending is fairly predictable, but nonetheless moving.
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