skygiants | (no subject)

Just from the preview in the back of the first book of the Inheritance Trilogy, I had a strong suspicion that I was going to like The Broken Kingdoms much better than The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms. Not that the The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms isn't a good book, but it's a book that relies very strongly on a central romance trope that doesn't do much for me. The Broken Kingdoms, on the other hand, is a.) much less about the romance and b.) about a world that is in the middle of coping with significant cultural change, which I love, and c.) has Oree, who is AWESOME.

But The Broken Kingdoms takes place ten years after The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms and also stands on its own, so probably I should review it that way instead of entirely in terms of the first book.

Oree, the narrator of the book, is a thoroughly pragmatic blind artist who makes her living selling tchotchkes to tourists who visit the capital city of Sky. (Which, I have to say, I kind of love as a profession for a fantasy-novel heroine.) She has a complicated relationship with her godling ex-boyfriend, and occasionally she regrets taking in Shiny, the immortal-but-otherwise-powerless homeless guy that she found in her muckbin - he keeps making a mess of the place by trying to kill himself, and it's really annoying - but at least Shiny's useful for housework, and otherwise life is pretty good until she stumbles over a dead godling in the alley across the way.

And then Oree's life gets very rapidly much more complicated, as all of a sudden all the changes that are happening in the world - new godlings coming out of the woodwork all over the place! New gods in charge, some of whom might in fact be thoroughly scary old gods! The monotheistic sect that has ruled the world for millenia finding itself in great confusion! - become very personally relevant to her.

In general, though I'm fairly ambivalent about some of the plot twists towards the end, I found this book much easier to connect with than The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms. I love Oree, and how her blindness is not a source of angst-fodder but just a fact of her life, and that she has friends and a job and a city that she loves before she gets pulled into the whole conspiracy of deities. I feel like I have a much stronger sense of her personality than I ever really did Yeine's. I also love that while Yeine spends the whole book very wary of the gods she's interacting with - and rightly so - Oree's attitude towards them is much more often "wow, you guys are just full of social fail," which I tend to find much more entertaining, and makes the power dynamics feel more balanced even if they aren't actually. It's a much more grounded book, I think (no pun intended, given the setting of the last one) and much less mythological in scope, which is not going to be preferable for everyone but is for me.

Also I think Lil the goddess of hunger is my favorite of the godlings of this universe so far, which may put me in the same category with

vivien529 and her Gentlemen. But she really is kind of adorable! And she never eats people without asking first.

ETA: Warning now for spoilers in comments.

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omg, Broken Kingdoms is out? WHY DID NO ONE TELL ME BROKEN KINGDOMS IS OUT? *hies self to the bookstore*

This was also my reaction when I found out!

I know! It's like, GUYS. PUBLICIZE. JEEZ.

also, I love your icon and want to have it for my own.

:D Thanks! If you want it, feel free to steal - I made it way back in my early icon-making days.

Don't mind if I do! *yoinks*

I completely agree about Oree. She was a much more sound protaganist than Yeine, and someone I found more likable, on the whole. I liked her dry sense of humor and her view on the gods in general. (Definitely on the social fail aspect, lol.)

I didn't quite understand Yeine's judgement at the end. I can understand Nahadoth being pissed off, but Yeine's addition to the punishment was 'you can come back earlier when you learn to love true.'

In this book, Shiny performed an act of self-sacrifice for the woman he loved, and is starting to become a better person. Which means, of course, kill the woman he loves and sabotage his ability to love forever? (I know they didn't end up doing that, but this was the master plan and they totally would have done it, too.) Also the fact that they were planning on fridging the woman that saved some of their children and the world and possibly their asses was pissing me off.

Way to go. She does dirty work for you and you won't even let her have a nice life with the dude she loves. She's going to die young to you anyway, Itempas will get to watch his mortal lover die, and then he'll feel some yummy pain. Can't you wait a paltry fifty years?

Yeah, and I also think the fact that Oree wasn't going into the book expecting to die makes it easier to identify with her off the bat - Yeine's situation makes for a great hook and a fascinating plot, but the Inevitable Doom hanging over everything does mean she has less time to meander around just being herself.

I'm sort of torn about Yeine's judgment, because on the one hand - yes, everything you said! On the other hand, I do like that we get to see Yeine-as-goddess making the same kind of inhuman, unfair and often cruel decisions about human life that are explicitly a hallmark of these deities; it really drives it home that she's not our human heroine anymore, and re-emphasizes the all-important point that even the 'mother' goddess is not at all a nice god. But back on the first hand, it really does seem kind of counterproductive!

Yeah, I never really saw Yeine as all that nice a person to begin with, but the judgment didn't make sense with what I saw of her in the end of the last book. Sieh, though, I did like through the book. I like how the godlings are about Itempas- bitter and totally full of wounded love. I wanted to see more of Shiny interacting with the godlings- any godling.

And Shiny and the homeless people fascinated me. The way they treated him made me wonder what he did for them while he was there. 'You are kind' seems to signify some kind of aid or assistance.

I find Sieh interesting, but I am alternately intrigued by and wary about the idea of a whole book from his perspective. I am afraid it might be too much Sieh for me! But we'll see.

I also am really intrigued by the hints of that dynamic - I wonder if Shiny went back there when he left at the end.

I am sure you will be shocked to know I found the first book easier to connect to, much as I love Oree.

I found myself torn in this book between Oree-as-normal human perspective and the whole 'what's going on with Itempas'. I do not like being torn on which thing I would like more of.

So.

Haha, I am TOTALLY shocked that you liked the first one better. *laughing* I think the difference between these two books may be the textbook definition between your type of preferred book and mine!

I was actually okay with as much Itempas stuff as we got; I find the humans generally more interesting than the gods (although, Lil! And whatever-his-name-was, the god of discards, whose fate I was very sad about since I kind of loved him for his two pages of screentime.) The last book had too much Nahadoth for me; this had approximately the right amount of Itempas.

The point where I actually was interested in more Itempas is when he was all 'THEY LEFT ME ALONE, how did I know they would not do it again????'

And that made me actually give a damn about his issues and want to see them explored. As Shiny - yeah, we had the right amount of Shiny.

(And yes. TEXTBOOK. It is sort of hysterical.)

Oh, yeah, I see that - I did actually find that part of his issues interesting, and way more sympathetic than I was expecting to (although obviously he is still a jerk.) I also thought it was cool how it was tied to the physical nature of light!

I'm wondering how much of him we'll get in the last book, which it seems from the preview and the hints in this one is going to be Sieh's Daddy Issues book.

(Not that either of us is ever predictable. <3 *giggling*)

*giggles*

Now I have to read this. I'll ship Lil/A Gentleman.

I SHIP IT. It would be adorable!