Itempas aka Shiny aka Cranky Jesus
Jan. 1st, 2014 02:03 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bloodygranuaileBack in the fall I read N. K. Jemisin’s The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms along with Mark Oshiro over at Mark Reads, and it was so good that it was super difficult to read it at such a slow pace. It is still difficult, but I am a little more used to it, so I got off-track fewer times when reading its sequel, The Broken Kingdoms.
The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms seemed to wrap up as a complete story pretty well, so I thought I had a pretty decent idea of picking out what was the thing being set up for the next novel: Itempas’ punishment to wander the world as a human until he learned how to love. I am pleased to say I was right! Other than that, though, I was not in the least able to foresee a damn thing about this novel. It was continually surprising in awesome ways.
This story has a different viewpoint character than the last one, which I’ve decided is something I really love in series. Our protagonist is a young artist named Oree, who sells arty things to tourists in the shadow of the great tree that Yeine magicked up at the end of the last book. Oree is Maroneh, meaning she is descended from the survivors of a tribe of people whose entire continent was destroyed by Nahadoth in the God’s War. Oree is also blind, although she can see magic.
One day, Oree finds a dude asleep in her muck bin, and she takes him into feed and clean him. He ends up staying for a while. He is a rather strange dude, as he never talks, he periodically kills himself and then comes back to life with no trouble, and he also glows for a few minutes every day as the sun comes up. Since he never tells Oree his name, she starts calling him Shiny. Shiny is, obviously to the reader, a crankily mortal Itempas, but Oree doesn’t know this as the Arameri have covered up any public knowledge of Itempas’ punishment.
What the Arameri have not been able to cover up is that Nahadoth and the Enefadeh are free, Yeine exists as a goddess, and a bunch more minor gods/children of gods, called “godlings,” have popped up everywhere. When the book opens, Oree has recently broken up with a godling called Madding, who is the god of obligations.
The plot here really kicks into high gear when it is discovered that someone is killing godlings and removing their hearts. Oree gets initially drawn into this for three reasons: one, she discovered one of the bodies. Two, Madding and all his friends are, predictably, angry and worried. Three, Shiny is so spectacularly upset at this that he actually talks. Unfortunately, a bunch of priests of Itempas show up, and, being snotty assholes, make everything worse, resulting in everybody getting on the Order of Itempas’ Most Wanted list, and Oree discovering that in addition to being able to see magic, she can also paint magical portals! This is an awesome power that I wish I had so that I could teleport places and not spend two hours of every workday in the car. Unfortunately, it is also a dangerous power, particularly when you accidentally put priestly policemen halfway through the portals and then they close. OOPS. This brings Oree to the attention of a creepy-ass cult called the New Lights, which is sort of a splinter faction of the Order of Itempas, and they have a dastardly plot to use demon blood to kill the Nightlord. “Demon” is the term used for any offspring of gods and mortal lovers, and they were supposedly exterminated when it was discovered that their blood kills gods. The New Lights, in addition to being creepy theocidal murderers, are largely really scary because they are super culty and are absolutely entitled as all hell. They are the kind of people who are like “You will like us and join us willingly! We will keep you imprisoned by force until you understand what nice and right people we are” but who cannot stop being mean snotty condescending assbags for even ten seconds. It doesn’t even occur to them to even try, they just feel entitled for Oree to like them personally without them being at all nice to her. People like that drive me up the fucking wall, and N. K. Jemisin does a creepily good job of making me hate the New Lights A LOT in a very short span of time. They are THE WORST. Then they get even worse. I don’t really want to talk about how much the worst they are, partly because I will get angry and partly because we’re into the part of the story where Jemisin drops giant plot twist bombs every chapter or so, so everything is spoilers.
It’s hard to pick out one thing as a particular strength for this book because Jemisin is just such a masterful storyteller. She’s got an incisive eye for the nuances of power; in this book the focus is a bit less on race and more on religious tribalism and disability, but she’s got the same gift for going right to the heart of complicated social justice matters—stuff usually talked about with a whole host of useful but often academic specialized terminology—using everyday, effective, and often humorous language. Her pacing and characterization are very tight, and I find her plots nearly impossible to predict. Overall, I just find her writing really engaging; her viewpoint characters have very relatable and human internal narrations even when the stories are literally about finding out that they are not human or turning into non-humans. Even the romances with god dudes who are complete assholes (and yeah, both Nahadoth and Itempas are pretty much giant assholes) doesn’t bother me as much as it usually does because they’re written with a lot of understanding and very little mooning about. (Not that mooning about is always terrible in romance but it’s the sort of thing that’s hard to follow when you’ve got no idea What On Earth Does She See In Him.)
Oh, and some of the godlings are awesome and some are terrifying and some are terrifyingly awesome (GIANT TEETH LADY I AM LOOKING AT YOU) (AND THEN HIDING IN TERROR WHY DID I LOOK AT YOU WHY); there needs to be a Neil Gaiman Award for Fabulous Creepy Mythic Creatures in Fiction just so that N. K. Jemisin can win it.
I cannot wait for “The Kingdom of Gods.”
The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms seemed to wrap up as a complete story pretty well, so I thought I had a pretty decent idea of picking out what was the thing being set up for the next novel: Itempas’ punishment to wander the world as a human until he learned how to love. I am pleased to say I was right! Other than that, though, I was not in the least able to foresee a damn thing about this novel. It was continually surprising in awesome ways.
This story has a different viewpoint character than the last one, which I’ve decided is something I really love in series. Our protagonist is a young artist named Oree, who sells arty things to tourists in the shadow of the great tree that Yeine magicked up at the end of the last book. Oree is Maroneh, meaning she is descended from the survivors of a tribe of people whose entire continent was destroyed by Nahadoth in the God’s War. Oree is also blind, although she can see magic.
One day, Oree finds a dude asleep in her muck bin, and she takes him into feed and clean him. He ends up staying for a while. He is a rather strange dude, as he never talks, he periodically kills himself and then comes back to life with no trouble, and he also glows for a few minutes every day as the sun comes up. Since he never tells Oree his name, she starts calling him Shiny. Shiny is, obviously to the reader, a crankily mortal Itempas, but Oree doesn’t know this as the Arameri have covered up any public knowledge of Itempas’ punishment.
What the Arameri have not been able to cover up is that Nahadoth and the Enefadeh are free, Yeine exists as a goddess, and a bunch more minor gods/children of gods, called “godlings,” have popped up everywhere. When the book opens, Oree has recently broken up with a godling called Madding, who is the god of obligations.
The plot here really kicks into high gear when it is discovered that someone is killing godlings and removing their hearts. Oree gets initially drawn into this for three reasons: one, she discovered one of the bodies. Two, Madding and all his friends are, predictably, angry and worried. Three, Shiny is so spectacularly upset at this that he actually talks. Unfortunately, a bunch of priests of Itempas show up, and, being snotty assholes, make everything worse, resulting in everybody getting on the Order of Itempas’ Most Wanted list, and Oree discovering that in addition to being able to see magic, she can also paint magical portals! This is an awesome power that I wish I had so that I could teleport places and not spend two hours of every workday in the car. Unfortunately, it is also a dangerous power, particularly when you accidentally put priestly policemen halfway through the portals and then they close. OOPS. This brings Oree to the attention of a creepy-ass cult called the New Lights, which is sort of a splinter faction of the Order of Itempas, and they have a dastardly plot to use demon blood to kill the Nightlord. “Demon” is the term used for any offspring of gods and mortal lovers, and they were supposedly exterminated when it was discovered that their blood kills gods. The New Lights, in addition to being creepy theocidal murderers, are largely really scary because they are super culty and are absolutely entitled as all hell. They are the kind of people who are like “You will like us and join us willingly! We will keep you imprisoned by force until you understand what nice and right people we are” but who cannot stop being mean snotty condescending assbags for even ten seconds. It doesn’t even occur to them to even try, they just feel entitled for Oree to like them personally without them being at all nice to her. People like that drive me up the fucking wall, and N. K. Jemisin does a creepily good job of making me hate the New Lights A LOT in a very short span of time. They are THE WORST. Then they get even worse. I don’t really want to talk about how much the worst they are, partly because I will get angry and partly because we’re into the part of the story where Jemisin drops giant plot twist bombs every chapter or so, so everything is spoilers.
It’s hard to pick out one thing as a particular strength for this book because Jemisin is just such a masterful storyteller. She’s got an incisive eye for the nuances of power; in this book the focus is a bit less on race and more on religious tribalism and disability, but she’s got the same gift for going right to the heart of complicated social justice matters—stuff usually talked about with a whole host of useful but often academic specialized terminology—using everyday, effective, and often humorous language. Her pacing and characterization are very tight, and I find her plots nearly impossible to predict. Overall, I just find her writing really engaging; her viewpoint characters have very relatable and human internal narrations even when the stories are literally about finding out that they are not human or turning into non-humans. Even the romances with god dudes who are complete assholes (and yeah, both Nahadoth and Itempas are pretty much giant assholes) doesn’t bother me as much as it usually does because they’re written with a lot of understanding and very little mooning about. (Not that mooning about is always terrible in romance but it’s the sort of thing that’s hard to follow when you’ve got no idea What On Earth Does She See In Him.)
Oh, and some of the godlings are awesome and some are terrifying and some are terrifyingly awesome (GIANT TEETH LADY I AM LOOKING AT YOU) (AND THEN HIDING IN TERROR WHY DID I LOOK AT YOU WHY); there needs to be a Neil Gaiman Award for Fabulous Creepy Mythic Creatures in Fiction just so that N. K. Jemisin can win it.
I cannot wait for “The Kingdom of Gods.”