The creativity of Jemisin is shining once again, the writing is easy to follow, but the concept of the gods was a little hazy sometimes and the thing that kept bothering me was that the gods were presented as siblings, mother-son etc, and had physical relationships, I can suspend my disbelief but it was especially strong in this one lol, I enjoy the characters still, but yeah
I'm a bit slow on the uptake, so it wasn't until book three that I figured out that these books are really about love and its power to create and destroy.
Poignant and humorous while managing to combine the trivialities of humanity and the cosmic scale of a narrative about the gods who hold reality together, The Kingdom of Gods manages to showcase all of what Jemisin excels at: touching moments of intimacy and the sorrows of daily life, and epic worldbuilding and mythologizing. A superb book, and a fitting conclusion to the trilogy.
The Kingdom of Gods reckons with the origins and present state of the Arameri as seen through Sieh to make an amazing end to The Inheritance Trilogy. It complicates what we learned before without making earlier knowledge feel cheap, molding rage and sorrow like clay.
This was a deeply satisfying conclusion to The Inheritance Trilogy. There is a sequel novella to this trilogy which I will read after this, but I am content with what's here. It was tense, moving, contemplative, tumultuous, scary, exciting, and finally at peace, without losing zest and intensity along the way. It confronts and dismantles the Arameri's colonialist justifications which filled the first two books. They were challenged earlier, but this book brings things to a head in order to have a chance at a true reckoning for past misdeeds, of humans and gods.
I loved Sieh as the narrator. I've loved him as a …
The Kingdom of Gods reckons with the origins and present state of the Arameri as seen through Sieh to make an amazing end to The Inheritance Trilogy. It complicates what we learned before without making earlier knowledge feel cheap, molding rage and sorrow like clay.
This was a deeply satisfying conclusion to The Inheritance Trilogy. There is a sequel novella to this trilogy which I will read after this, but I am content with what's here. It was tense, moving, contemplative, tumultuous, scary, exciting, and finally at peace, without losing zest and intensity along the way. It confronts and dismantles the Arameri's colonialist justifications which filled the first two books. They were challenged earlier, but this book brings things to a head in order to have a chance at a true reckoning for past misdeeds, of humans and gods.
I loved Sieh as the narrator. I've loved him as a character since book one, and I was not disappointed by his spotlight here. Writing a long-lived godling of childhood in a way that makes him feel like a child when it's fitting doesn't seem easy, yet it was carried off in a way that accomplishes a complex portrait of childhood, not cheapening it by typifying it.
This book examines and pulls apart old wounds, deep rifts, and sorrows from the dawn of time, giving space for healing and growth without demanding forgiveness from the people who were hurt. It is an artful example of confronting past abuses, both of the importance of doing so and of a few small ways to attempt it. The idea of a cycle of violence fills this trilogy, and this third book especially, but also there's a hope of breaking the cycles, of having something better than rage and pain to look forward to.
It's ultimately joyful without asking for mourning to cease, leaving space for both grief and joy, for people to have complex and contradictory experiences of the same events.
It's done and I'm not disappointed in that at all.
Personally I'm glad to have started with Jemisin's Broken Earth trilogy first instead of Inheritance because I'm not sure I would have continued reading her other works. Jemisin writes a good story but Inheritance wasn't as appealing to me.
I liked the change in POV for this book and how the previous books connected across the advancement of time. Because I didn't approach the series with the same focus as I would on Stormlight Archive or A Song Of Ice and Fire some characters, their significance, relatives and relations were a bit hazy for me; which became a problem when everyone from the previous books had an appearance or impact in the final installment.
The reviews for this book/series seem a bit divisive so I should be surprised I feel the way I do about the book/series.
A bit too sprawling for my tastes. I think making the narrator a godling limited the believability of the plot, and the metaphysics of the pantheon were suspect (well, less believable than one might expect for omnipotent beings ...)
One approach is the Malazan approach: there are various gods, they walk the world, but the true scope of their power is deliberately vague and unknowable. Here, everything is precisely defined and leads one to wonder, for instance, why the god can't just wish the problems away.
A truly pleasurable end to the trilogy. The characterization of Sieh as he matures is inspired, and the threads of the previous two books are all woven together into a nice, coherent while that is altogether satisfying.
I look very much forward to Ms. Jemisin's continuing work!
I really enjoyed the first two books in this trilogy, but this one dragged a bit for me. I just never connected with the story, I think. I still think Jemisin is one of the strongest new voices in SF/F.
This balances on the edge of getting four stars, but the conclusion is just too big. The sour taste of way-too-bigness was somewhat washed out by the extra chapter, but it remains there in my mind.
