A little night reading

After finishing up The Watchmaker of Filigree Street last night, I picked up N.K. Jemisin's first book in The Inheritance trilogy, The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms. I'm working my way through my TBR pile, and this was a gift from a friend.

​It's a different sub-genre for me. I haven't read straight-up Fantasy in longer than I can remember. My usual reading choices tend to be in the Urban Fantasy or Science Fiction vein.

Perhaps that's why I found the twists and turns of world building at the beginning difficult to follow. The genealogical information piled on top of new names and unfamiliar places and language are more than I'm used to. That said, I'm glad I made the effort to step outside my comfort zone.

​The lush world building and luminescent writing are lovingly draped around the shoulders of a massively fast-paced and energetic plot. The barely of-age heroine, Yeine Darr, is courageous and true to herself in the the face of conniving and cunning rivals. At a time when her mother has just died, Yeine is called away from home to relatives whose power politics and sadistic thirst for bloodshed could rival machinations in GoT. Okay, perhaps I'm exaggerating a bit there. Nothing could rival that family dynamic. Let's just say it's a close second in an abundance of characters ripe with potential for perpetrating treachery and betrayal.

I dislike describing plots. You can get the blurb from the back of the book, and anything else I'm likely to tell you isn't going to do anything but spoiler the book for you. I like, therefore, to keep my public posts on books to my more general impressions and tastes. I may not, for instance, have yet acquired a taste for swaths of complex world building, but I can see where I could. Jemisin has me intrigued enough to pick up more.

This is a short post because I'm only about 100 pages in, but I wanted to preserve my initial thoughts and impressions anyway.Feel free to drop your thoughts about The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms below. I'd love to see them!

Until then, happy reading and stay gr8!

~K8

These are my musings on a book I'm reading. They are not meant to be a formal critique or review. If you use my link to buy the book, Amazon gives me a kickback for a cup of tea. This would make me happy. I like tea. However, I won't lie about my personal experience with a book to trick you into buying it. That would make me unhappy...and defeat the purpose of tea. Also, if you have a local bookseller, please consider supporting them rather than me or Amazon. We will survive. Your local bookseller might not.