The Broken Kingdom
The Inheritance Trilogy – Book II

By N K Jemisin
       

Oree Shoth is a blind artist, selling her wares on a street stall and living in Shadow, the great city where the Arameri rule the known world. Also living in the city around the great World Tree are many godlings, the immortal offspring of the three gods who live among the mortals and are both befriended and worshipped by them. Oree used to have a godling lover, now she shares her home with a strange magical man whom she names Shiny and who was found in her trash one day. But Oree has a magic of her own, as did her father and it is just about to get her into a whole lot of trouble.

It isn’t often that the fantasy genre produces an author who can come up with anything fresh and original, but Ms Jemisin has done just that. Just like the first one, this hits the ground running, and having the confident, independent yet vulnerable Oree as the narrator is what keeps it going. Her unique perspective is what makes the book special, that and the complex ideas where mortals often have the gods themselves at their mercy and nothing is ever what it seems. If you haven’t read the first book in the series The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms (also reviewed on this site) then you certainly need to do so before you tackle this. Set ten years after the events in the first book many of the characters put in an appearance in the second entry, and we get to see how they have fared. There seems to be something for just about every type of fantasy fan in here; paranormal romance, murder, a frisson of torture, political scheming, plus a fine sense of imaginative world building which underpins rather than overwhelms. It isn’t even very long, and there is room for plenty of surprises and shocks as well as a feeling of lessons learned and wisdom (or at least knowledge) gained, often at great cost. In my review of the first book I said that I didn’t think that the middle volume of this trilogy would tread water, and I was certainly right. I won’t even try and imagine what the talented Ms Jemisin is going to dream up for book three, but somehow I doubt I will be disappointed.