Book Review: Hundred Thousand Kingdoms & The Broken Kingdoms by N. K. Jemisin

I am reviewing two books at once because they are the same series and I am super lazy.  So yeah first off I accidentally read the second book first, or rather two chapters of the second book before I threw it away in confusion.

The first book is my favorite of the two by a long shot. The first book follows Yeine who is the daughter of the princess of the ruling family and a "barbarian." Shortly after the death of her mother she is called to the capital by her grandfather and soon finds herself in a very bad situation. In this fake world there are Gods and for a long time there were three Gods. Then the sun god got sorta pissed and killed the goddess of twilight and almost destroyed the world, because she was the one that created life. In a response he imprisons his brother, the god of night, and some of his children and came them to the ruling family to use as weapons.

The interesting thing about this story is it was told in an odd way, which I though was going to make me murder the book but really just made me read faster. Major parts of the story are told out of order as if Yeine keeps forgetting things and having to go back to talk about them. The way the story unfolded was wonderful. The gods had that kind of depth and scary that gods in fantays books always have, their moral code has nothing to do with your life or any life. There was a mystery to this book.

The books ends with Yeine becoming the new twilight goddess and restoring the world to its true balance by releasing the night lord and herself from their mortal prisons. They also make the sun god human so that he can wander the earth to learn compassion and humility for what he did to the world.

The second book follows a blind woman named Oree who happens to take care of the sun god in his new human form and is crazy boring. This book takes place fifteen years later than the first book but its boring. I just didn't feel the interesting any more. The story was told in a straight line which sort of ruined the novelty of the first book.

The thing is that I am crazy interested in the mythology of this world in the history of its people and its gods, and the second book doesn't cover any of that. The gods are the real draw for me and they goddlings as well. I have seen that the trisckster goddling will be the main character of the third book so I am cool with that, he was the first goddling.

One other thing is the author is African American and the heroines and even the sun god are all black, which I think is kind of cool. They even mention that the sun god and the twilight goddess made the first people to look like them, and Africa is the cradle of life. It was a fun twist in a fantasy world. I will also state that the ruling family that is super crazy evil are all crazy white to the point of being see through, not sure if that was to be some kind of metaphor because its shown that they were wrong.