The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms

by N. K. Jemisin

425 pages

English language

Published Aug. 7, 2010 by Orbit.

ISBN:: 978-0-316-04391-5
OCLC Number:: 300280047

(129 reviews)

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.With the fate of the world hanging in the balance, Yeine will learn how perilous it can be when love and hate - and gods and mortals - are bound inseparably together.

9 editions

Angrboda reviewed The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms by N. K. Jemisin

Review of 'The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms' on 'Goodreads'

1 star

This is me giving up. I just can't seem to get into this story at all. To quote the wonderful Red Dwarf, the story is not gripping me. I'm in a state of non-grippedness. I'm completely smegging un-gripped!

It's not very often that I put a book away before finishing it, and if this had not been the first book of the series, I'd most likely have forced myself through it. As it IS the first of the series, however, I see no reason to pressure myself further when there are other books that I would much rather be reading.

I'm giving it a single star because I couldn't finish it, reserving the one star ratings for books I can't finish. In the future I might give it another go and start over, but not for a while I don't think.

arr reviewed The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms by N. K. Jemisin (Inheritance Trilogy, #1)

Review of 'The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms' on 'Goodreads'

3 stars

This is a good book. It's also not necessarily a book to my tastes!

It's generally quite well-written (with a singular notable exception a ways in that made me momentarily very confused about what the hell I was reading; sorry there are just some paragraphs you can't write about phalluses and not sound utterly ridiculous) and I think that most of the stylistic choices add to rather than take away from the narrative.

That said, a lot of this book is concerned with the Sexy! Danger! type relationship between the main protagonist Yeine and her primary love interest, and I just don't care about Sexy! Danger!

It bores me. Consequently, that entire plot, which is pretty central to the book, also bored me. It took a turn for actually engaging me towards the very end when its paradigm shifted substantially, but I probably wouldn't have made it that far at all if the book hadn't come with such high recommendations from various people.

If you're into the unpredictable, supremely powerful, dangerous and frightening yet intensely beautiful and sexy and compelling in spite of/due to his danger~ romantic hero thing, you'll probably be into this. And, as a bonus, unlike most narratives featuring that trope, the heroine is fully realized as a character and actually has agency.

But if you're like me and not into that whole scene at all, depending on your level of aversion it may or may not be worth it.

betty reviewed The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms by N. K. Jemisin (Inheritance Trilogy, #1)

Review of 'The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms' on 'Goodreads'

4 stars

Erk, I had a whole review typed up for this, and then my browser ate it. Let's see what I can do with a second chance.

I loved this book both for the voice of the narrator, and for the world building, which was complex enough that it is difficult to summarize the plot of the book without resorting to shorthands which would badly mislead. Let's see what I can do with the narrator, then.

Yeine is a girl, a woman by the laws of her people, who is competent and clever enough to know she is trapped, and utterly out of her depth. She is caught between two sides of a war between gods, between civilizations, and between generations, and the weapons are secrets she does not share, and a mad, enslaved god who may kill her. The stakes are her life, and the future of her people.

If …

unicorndeburgh reviewed The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms by N. K. Jemisin (Inheritance Trilogy, #1)

Review of 'The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms' on 'Goodreads'

5 stars

This is quite wonderful, but I'm not sure quite why I found it so, or how to describe it. There are some very standard tropes -- for example, the young person arrives at the city as an innocent yokel, but turns out to be destined for greatness. In this case it's a she instead of the usual he.

I'm usually very impatient with powerful characters that can subvert reality, but in this case I quite happily tolerated gods. The protagonist, Yeine, is simultaneously smart, and tough, and needy. I found it suspenseful, and the language and imagery beautiful. The world is somewhat of the standard-issue feudal fantasy, but not quite.