And another Off the Shelf book review! After hearing a bunch of stuff about N. K. Jemisin’s new series, Dreamblood (a two book series coming out in May and June 2012), I thought I’d better catch up and read the already finished trilogy! It also helped that I could up my OtS count. 😉 Ah something to help me choose what to read next!
The Inheritance Trilogy starts out with The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms. The blurb goes:
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 a pair of 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.
This book is traditional fantasy and yet… not. The story starts out as you’d expect, the barbarian girl goes off to the ruling city as she’s summoned by her maternal grandfather who is the ruler of the world, but once she gets there things go crazy. There’s politics, glimpses of (not even remotely) a hundred thousand cultures, gods, bits of magic, religion, slavery, opulence, death, treachery, and surprise twists. I loved how this story ended and can’t wait to read the next one in the series (and fortunately I don’t have to)! I love how the world is so big, and yet we aren’t overly burdened with descriptions (in spite of the fact that I’m one of those people that love the descriptions). The pace was terrific, and I couldn’t stop reading once I got to the last third of the book, which doesn’t happen to me often at all.
On that note, I’ve been very fortunate in my reading lately, which I hope to post about soon! in future blogs. Please, if you haven’t read this book yet, and are wondering about the hype you’ve likely heard, just go read. I doubt you’ll regret it!
The Double Phoenix 