The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms

[RPG Post]

The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms

Is Deus Ex Carnem a phrase? God out of the flesh. It sounds like it could be a Clive Barker creation, coined for a Book of Blood. Would it hold, I wonder, the pejorative aura of its brethren saying? I mean nothing pejorative by it, when I use it for discussion of The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, by J.K. Jemisin. It is a book about gods and flesh.

THTK is a first novel. A strong one, with a good sense of language and style. The characters live and breathe, demand more pages to explain who they really are. The world, if kept in shadows and half formed beyond the central city, is defined by its peoples and beliefs more than it's geography. And it is a fascinating world, with gods enslaved and used as power sources, as weapons, as tools for Machiavellian schemes.

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Flesh and Gods

The narrator, Yeine, is a female tribal leader, considered crass and an object of derision by the central ruling clan, yet invited to the Sky, the capital of all the world. There she is informed that she will fulfill her mother's obligation as an heir to the throne, one her mother abdicated for reasons known only to herself. Yeine searches for information about her mother, avoids the blades and poisons of the other two heirs and learns the history of the gods, both prisoners and rulers.

Her future is somehow entertwined with the gods' and her present is saturated with them. Yeine is very involved with the gods.

"I wanted him. To entice him. To control him. I saw myself naked on the green grass, my arms and legs wrapped around Nahadoth as he shuddered upon me, trapped and helpless in the pleasure of my flesh. Mine. I saw myself caress his midnight hair, and look up to meet my own eyes, and smile in smug, possessive satisfaction."

There are reviews on Amazon that complain that the story is a romance cloaked in fantasy trappings. That is somehow meant to be dismissive, as if the tales of the gods of every culture before the monotheistic three came to dominate were not tales of lust, love, betrayal and emotions run rampant. What Jemisin does well is create a mythology that feels familiar, that could be any culture from our world, populated by gods that are familiar, yet new. And with the gods come emotions, games and manipulations.

THTK is not Tolkien fantasy, not high fantasy of elves and dwarves and humanoids. This is a book of poetic descriptions, of interactions of flesh and gods and the anything but simple relationships between people. I recommend it with no reservations, only a warning that this is a novel of people, many unlikeable and a protagonist who does not understand the politics playing around her.

Check out The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms at Amazon.