The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms by N. K. Jemisin – Review

The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, Book 1 (The Inheritance Trilogy) by N. K. Jemisin

I make it a strict rule never to read commentary on anything I’m reviewing until I’ve finished the article, in an attempt to record my initial responses to a book as clearly as I can. In the case of N. K. Jemisin’s The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, there has been an awful lot of online commentary to dodge in the last two or three weeks, which says something in itself. There is a buzz about this one, clearly, and I gather that the response is generally positive. Consequently, I do not write this review entirely in a state of blissful ignorance, but with a voice asking, from deep in the back of my mind, “is it worth the fuss?” We will come to that in due course.

To begin, however, this is the story of Yeine, nineteen years old, a member of the Somem tribe of the Darre people, through her father (although Darrean society itself is matrilineal); until recently Yeine was the chieftain of her people. However, Yeine is also Baroness Yeine Darr, through her mother, Kinneth, formerly a member of the Arameri. This recounting of lineage makes for a formal beginning, and in some respects this is a very formal novel; formal in the manner of its telling, through Yeine’s first-person narration, her words carefully chosen. It is formal, too, because of the nature of the people with whom her own life has become entwined. The Arameri, the inhabitants of the city called Sky, are intricately bound to a way of life that is governed by blood relationship and custom. Everyone knows exactly who they are and precisely where they stand in relation to Dekarta Arameri, “uncrowned king of the world” (p. 7) and also Yeine’s grandfather. Everyone within the palace is related to everyone else to some degree, however distant (as one character notes, “all descendants of Shahar Arameri must serve. One way or another.” [p. 19]), and everyone carries a mark to indicate the precise degree of their status within the palace hierarchy. Everyone, that is, except Yeine, her mother having abdicated her position as Dekarta’s heir for love of Yeine’s father, and gone with him to the High North, a three-month journey from Sky, and the place where Yeine was born and raised.

Thus, we have a society which, if not entirely stagnant, is distinctly sluggish, and entirely hidebound by custom. A cadre of high-ranking courtiers of mixed parentage (because, like animal breeders, the Arameri recognise the need to invigorate the gene pool from time to time) are kept close to the throne to ensure their compliance and to swiftly root out any discontent. They run the palace while a Consortium governs the Hundred Thousand Kingdoms on behalf of the elite Arameri, many of whom merely go through the motions of ruling. There are a number of analogies to be drawn here with historical colonial activity, in India particularly. The Arameri “highbloods” severely underestimate the capabilities of that high-ranking cadre rather as colonial administrators underestimated the young Indian men they educated and then employed, with not dissimilar results in some instances.

via Strange Horizons Reviews: The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms by N. K. Jemisin, reviewed by Maureen Kincaid Speller.