The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms

Location & Checkout Length	Call Number	Checkout Length	Item Status
Downtown 2nd Floor 4-week checkout	Fantasy / Jemisin, N. K.	4-week checkout	Due 05-20-2024
Pittsfield Adult Books 4-week checkout	Adult Book / Fiction / Fantasy / Jemisin, N. K	4-week checkout	Due 05-10-2024
Traverwood Adult Books 4-week checkout	Adult Book / Fiction / Fantasy / Jemisin, N. K	4-week checkout	Due 05-11-2024
Westgate Adult Books 4-week checkout	Adult Book / Fiction / Fantasy / Jemisin, N. K	4-week checkout	Due 04-30-2024

Includes "Extras": interview with the author (p 417-421). Also includes excerpt of The Broken Kingdoms, book two of the Inheritance trilogy, by N.K. Jemisin (p.423-427).
Yeine Darr is an outcast from the barbarian north. But when her mother dies under mysterious circumstances, she is summoned to the majestic city of Sky. There, to her shock, Yeine is named an heiress to the king. But the throne of the Hundred Thousand Kingdoms is not easily won, and Yeine is thrust into a vicious power struggle with cousins she never knew she had. As she fights for her life, she draws ever closer to the secrets of her mother's death and her family's bloody history.--Book cover.

REVIEWS & SUMMARIES

Library Journal Review
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Summary / Annotation
Fiction Profile
Author Notes

COMMUNITY REVIEWS

100,000 points for this book! submitted by Peter Kooger on July 19, 2011, 1:18pm I loved this story. The characters are engaging and well-written, the world feels alive and interesting, and the plot is a real page-turner. Great work, Jemisin! Can't wait to see what those wily gods are up to in book 2.

Best fantasy I've read in a while submitted by marielle on August 15, 2011, 4:08am This is the first really good new fantasy for adults I've read in a really, really long time.

Yeine Darr is half Arameri, the ruling class with control over the gods, and half Darre "barbarian." Her grandfather, near death, appoints her as her heir. Will she simply be his pawn, or will she fight for freedom from her heritage?

The writing, plot, mythology, and basically everything about this book is superb. It is nominated for a Hugo award for best novel in 2011 and I absolutely think it should win!

It's not bad, but there's better stuff out there. submitted by eknapp on April 12, 2012, 8:06pm Yeine, the nineteen-year-old leader of a tiny barbarian nation, is summoned to Sky, the empire's capital city-in-the-sky, and designated an heir candidate alongside her cruel, ambitious aunt and uncle. A pantheon of bitter enslaved gods further complicates her new life.

I yawned through the first half of the book, which was filled with exposition: incomplete character history, clunky world-building, and trumped-up mysteries. It perked up significantly with descriptions of the creation of the Three, the first gods to be born of the Maelstrom, and the Gods' War which led to the story's current sorry state of affairs in the mortal world. These parts of The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms reminded me strongly of Steven Brust's novel To Reign in Hell. That's a good thing.

It concluded in predictable but reasonably satisfying fashion. It's billed as the first book of a trilogy but the book feels conclusive; I think the next one will be more of a sequel than a Part Two (if that makes sense).

Considering how highly The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms came recommended, I was pretty disappointed. Characters were thinly-drawn. The plot occasionally relied on convenient coincidences. The protagonist didn't try very hard to survive; she just brooded a lot. I wanted--and thought I was getting--a fantasy/political thriller but it read too much like a romance novel. For me the book shone brightest when trying to convey the perspective of tormented, captive gods. But that didn't make it good; it merely saved it from being bad. I probably won't bother with the rest of the trilogy.

Good submitted by ashflowtuff on June 29, 2012, 9:50am Looking forward to reading the next in the series.

Good, and the series gets better submitted by Susan4Pax -prev. sueij- on August 26, 2013, 1:07pm I liked this well enough. The concept was interesting and the characters sufficiently complex to be worth reading. The thing that annoyed me most was that it took me nearly the whole book to figure out who was talking to whom (and why) at the beginning of each chapter. But my husband, who read it before me and recommended it, said he got that much earlier than I did, so it might have just been the distraction of moving that kept me from figuring it out.

The series got better as it went on, and by the third (and final) book, I loved it.

I didn't love it submitted by EJZ on July 9, 2019, 12:47pm Some of the premise was definitely original - A race of, essentially, humans that live in a world with Gods that have been subjugated and forced to do others' bidding. That part was interesting. But I couldn't get into the main character, Yeine, at all. I didn't feel like her character had any real depth - she is written as a confused stranger in a strange land, and she takes the reader along on her somewhat boring journey of self-discovery. Each character also seems to perceive the emotional weight and meaning even the most minute action, and a lot of repetitive phrases seem to recur - like "she set her jaw." I can't count how many times a character "gave a sly grin that I could tell meant they knew I had been talking to XXX" or that "there was a look in his eye that meant YYY"

I preferred the Broken Earth books.

kingdom submitted by smr on June 20, 2021, 12:08pm kingdom

Wonderful introduction to the trilogy submitted by trina05 on July 13, 2023, 12:12pm Feel in love with Jemisin's immersive writing. The concept is different and engaging, the characters are flawed and interesting, the story is compelling albeit a little slow going in the beginning.