N.K. Jemisin - Broken World Trilogy

Still just as good.  Had forgotten large parts.

N. K. Jemisin - "The Fifth Season"

rereading because it's good and I can't concentrate on new things.

 

 

    Damaya has got to deal with this. Now. 
    She decides she needs an ally.
    There's another girl among the loners that she's noticed. Everyone notices this girl. There's something wrong with her. Her orogeny is a precarious pent thing. A dagger constantly poised to plunge into the earth. And training has only made it worse, because now the knife is sharper. That's not supposed to happen. Selu is her name, and she hasn't yet earned or been given an orogeny name. But the other grits call her Crack to be funny, and that is the name that has stuck. She even answers to that name, since she can't seem to stop them from using it. 
    Everyone's already whispering that she won't make it, which means she's perfect. 
    Damaya makes her move on Crack at breakfast the next day. (She drinks only water now, which she has drawn from a nearby fountain. She has to eat the food that they serve her, but she inspects it carefully before putting anything in her mouth.) "Hi," she says, setting her tray down. 
    Crack eyes her. "Really? Things are bad enough that you need me?"

N. K. Jemisin - "The City We Are (Great Cities Trilogy)"

Written wonderfully and I'm quite enjoying it. One thing that currently slightly irks me is the wishy-washy description of power and city-ness. There's multiverses. Sure. Cities squash through planes. Okay. Cities have power, and the Enemy can't fight them after they are born, but can stop the birth from happening. Okay. But where do they get their power from. What are the rules? Currently it seems the moment one of the boroughs, Aislyn (State Island), Bronca (the Bronx), Brooklyn, Manny (Manhatten), Padmima (Queens) "tap" into their power, they can just expel the Enemy. Is it that easy? I wonder if we will learn more of the rules, the backdrop, those infinite planes and multiverses (why do born cities squash through thousands of planes?) and I hope we get a deeper glimpse of the characters of each of these people.

N.K. Jemisin - The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms

book 1 of the Inheritance Trilogy
book 2 - "The Broken Kingdoms"
book 3 - "The Kingdom Of Gods"

Not as good as her Broken Earth trilogy but still a nice read. Lots of little inconsistencies though. Seems she had a cheaper editor??


"A mortal man's strength had limits. he spent himself and slept. He could be a good lover, but even his best skills were only guesswork - for every caress that sent a woman's head into the clouds, he might try ten that brought her back to earth."


Amazing double negation: "Like the good Itempan girl I had never quite been, I nevertheless flinched."


The little sun "En" from Sieh's orrery, who became his companion (and killed for him) and suddenly got referenced in a child's song that had been going around in the books, was a wonderful writing trick. '"Trickster, trickster," he whispered. "Stole the sun for a prank." En pulsed on my breast, pleased to be mentioned.'

N. K. Jemisin - "The Fifth Season"

Amazing book about an Earth gone rogue and humanity try to survive whenever a Season, brought about by volcanos, tectonic activity, ... occurs. Three timelines of the same person, a rogga, who can sess (feel and influence) such activity, necessary in that volatile world, but feared by all the 'stills', the "normal" people who cannot feel anything.

Her trip in search of her husband (to kill him, for out of fear he killed their child), her own childhood, her trip to a sort of freedom with a ten-ringer from the Fulcrum...

Amazing story, well written. A fantasy page turner of the best kind.


"Let's start with the end of the world, why don't we? Get it over with and move on to more interesting things.
    First, a personal ending. There is a thing she will think over and over in the days to come, as she imagines how her son died and tries to make sense of something so innately senseless. She will cover Uche's broken little body with a blanket - except his face, because he is afraid of the dark - and she will sit beside it numb, and she will pay no attention to the world that is ending outside. The world has already ended within her, and neither ending is for the first time. She's old hat at this by now.
    What she thinks then, and thereafter, is: But he was free.
    And it is her bitter, weary self that answers this almost question every time her bewildered, shocked self manages to produce it:
    He wasn't. Not really. But now he will be."