The Broken Kingdoms by N. K. Jemisin
398 pages
Published 2010
Read from March 13 to March 17
Rating: ★★★ out of 5
After finishing the first book of the Inheritance Trilogy, The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, I was eager to continue -- or at least "optimistic" about continuing -- into the next part of the series. As sometimes happens, however, other books got in the way, and only now have I gotten around to the second title. The first half or so of The Broken Kingdoms was a pleasant surprise, obviating my concerns about what would drive the further narrative of Yeine, now one of the Three central gods of the cosmos, by introducing a wholly new narrator with her own role in the continuing saga. It didn't even bother me that much that Broken Kingdoms introduced a very similar plot twist (the narrator who believed she was merely an unimportant mortal from a backwater kingdom secretly possesses vast powers, only now unlocked!) at almost the same moment in the story (roughly one hundred pages in) as Hundred Thousand did. Jemisin is skilled at creating appealing everywoman narrators and making you care about them, and even if the narrative device used by Oree here wasn't as compelling as Yeine's in Hundred Thousand, the cityscape of newly magical Shadow at the root of the worldtree more than made up for it -- at first.
Then, about the halfway point, Broken hits a skid with an extended "You probably wondered why I brought you here, Mr. Bond" info-dump from vaguely defined villains, and never fully recovers. Largely, I blame the villains, which are as archetypal and sketched-in as the scheming royal family in Hundred Thousand, but sadly lacking in verve or memorable presence. The Big Bad here, who seeks to kill off the gods and (briefly) appears to Oree as a god whose essence is mortality, has a name that's an anagram of Death -- that's the level we're operating at here.
There's still plenty to like in this series, and I'm looking forward to the final volume, same as before. The minor "godlings" are an entertaining lot, and I'm excited to see more of them, now that (spoilers) they've been released from the city of Shadow. But Broken doesn't quite live up to its own potential.
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