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I finished The Kingdom of Gods by N.K. Jemisin (the 3rd book in her Inheritance trilogy) on the last day of 2020.  

What an epic story.  As the name implies, this story has a lot of focus on the gods in her fantasy series, though she also weaves a story of complicated political intrigue between mortals here.

Though this is very firmly an epic fantasy, it has moments that have a very...sci-fi flavor to me, which is something I appreciate as someone who's both an avid sci-fi and fantasy fan.    

I really appreciate that even the most threatening character in the story who does the most harm does not act only out of evil and cruelty, and none of the protagonists are made out to be purely good or benevolent characters.  

While I would absolutely recommend these stories, I'd also caution that there's a lot of potentially triggering and upsetting content in them, as they don't shy away from unpleasantness or moral complexity, so I would keep that in mind.  A lot of things that I might find upsetting in other stories didn't bother me so much in this one, but that doesn't mean someone else would feel the same since how and when and why people are upset by certain things can be very dependent on the specifics of not only how the material is handled in a work, but on their own individual experiences in life.  

Anyway, I also learned after I finished that story that there were more stories set in the same universe, so now I'm going to go looking for those!

unspeakablehorror: (Default)
I need to train myself not to mix up bestselling author N.K. Jemisin's last name with astronaut Mae Jemison's last name.  I was wondering why that one internet search for Jemisin was bringing up a certain astronaut instead (it was because I actually typed 'Jemison' of course).  Maybe I should imagine the last vowels in their names as a pen and a planet respectively to help me remember.
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I really relish the political aspect of The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms.  This is probably my favorite approach to politics I've seen in a fantasy or sci-fi thus far. N. K. Jemisin is an incredibly thoughtful writer.  I hear this is one of her earliest works, too, so I'm looking forward to reading The Broken Earth trilogy as well.  The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms is very much a feel of fantasy with a bit of sci-fi thrown in (so far), whereas what I know of The Broken Earth trilogy suggests it leans more heavily on the sci-fi component but that there's still a fantasy element as well.  
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I started reading The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms today.  I always like to read a little bit of a book just to get a feel for it.  Well, I'm on Chapter 6 now, page 58.  This story is off to a good start!

There's a lot of action and a lot of politics and it's already making some wonderfully incisive social commentary.  Really looking forward to seeing where this goes!

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