Unapologetic Reviews

I really wanted to like The Kingdom of Gods by N.K. Jemisin , but it was a major disappointment. Let me tell you why. The setting is the same as the previous books, mostly taking place in the capital city. The difference is that in this case the main character isn’t a mortal, but actually one of the godlings, Sieh . He is the oldest and the first. I was actually excited to read from his point of view, because I liked him a lot in the first book. It’s hard to talk about this book without spoiling the major plot point, but I’ll try. He meets two children by chance, a brother and sister, both Arameri . He meets them several times, at a few points in their lives, until an incident happens that changes his life forever. Now, you may think this is a start of a great adventure of self-discovery. Herein lies my problem with the story. Things do happen. Here and there. In between those sporadic events though are lots and lots and lots and … did I mention … a lot of thinking. And...

First of all, having read The Broken Kingdoms by N.K. Jemisin , I still don’t really get the title. I mean, if the title has the word “kingdoms” in it, you expect intrigue, politics, conflict, that sort of thing. I’m trying to decipher a hidden meaning, and at the edge of my thoughts there is something that I cannot grasp, but it eludes me. No wonder I had a hard time even remembering the title. This, however, didn’t mean that the book was bad, it just means that I think the title was a poor choice. I actually enjoyed this book, though perhaps not as much as the first one. The reason for it was the ending. It almost seemed like it had this steady pacing up until a point, when the author realised she was coming up on her word limit, and suddenly tied everything up into this neat little bow. It felt off, but you’ll have to read it to understand it. It was an okay ending, but it was still weird. Now onto the story itself. This is a sequel of a kind. You still get some of the o...

I’ve been in a reading slump these past weeks. I’ve started books, but I didn’t feel that I wanted to immerse myself in them. However, yesterday I wanted to read a bit in the bath, so I took out my wishlist on Goodreads , and had a look at what I had put on there. That’s when I decided to go for The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms by N.K. Jemisin . Yes, you read it right, this was yesterday. I couldn’t stop reading. At first, the story was a bit confusing. Of course, nowadays fantasy books don’t start out the way my LotR copy does, with 20 pages of explaining the world. You have to gradually learn what’s going on. This gives the reader the sense of discovery, of exploration, which can be a good thing. However, if not done well, it only gets very confusing for the first couple of chapters, and sometimes so much, it can get frustrating. This wasn’t the case here, though I was a bit confused in some places at first. The world itself in a way is kind of simple, but smart in that way. So...