The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms

N. K. Jemisin

Feb 2010 · Sold by Orbit

About this ebook

After her mother's mysterious death, a young woman is summoned to the floating city of Sky in order to claim a royal inheritance she never knew existed in the first book in this award-winning fantasy trilogy from the NYT bestselling author of The Fifth Season.

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 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.

Ratings and reviews

i cant get through the first few pages. it's as if the author is skipping around when trying to describe things. I absolutely love to read and have probably read at least 1000 books, so far, if not more and I've been frustrated by authors who had abhorrent writing language, usually it's too simplistic and repetitious. but, in this case, it's as if they've thrown together a bunch of made up words along with elaborate words to try to make it seem complicated or more interesting however, it just causes it to seem over done. the pace is far too fast even in the first pages, the names are over kill, stick to something that I wont mind reading repeatedly and rolls off of the tongue instead of something that will likely be mispronounced. you dont know if your main character is female or male because the author doesnt say in the beginning which is a pretty crucial detail, whether you find out later or not doesn't matter, you should automatically know in the beginning. dont think I'll finish.

The writing does draw you in: intricate worldbuilding, dangerous gods, parallels to white supremacy, interesting narration & a unique/quirky/non-Mary Sue lead. After the halfway point however, I'm not sure what happened --seemed that things were resolved too quickly & the protagonist fell in love/lust just for the sake of the plot.

It wasn't all that great. The main character wasn't developed as well as she could've been. Don't know why it's called the hundred thousand kingdoms when it's not even focused on that. It's slow paced and by the end, I didn't feel like there was anything happening. There were things in the book that were mentioned that could've been really interesting but is ignored.

About the author

N. K. Jemisin is a Brooklyn author who won the Hugo Award for Best Novel for The Fifth Season, which was also a New York Times Notable Book of 2015. She previously won the Locus Award for her first novel, The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, and her short fiction and novels have been nominated multiple times for Hugo, World Fantasy, Nebula, and RT Reviewers' Choice awards, and shortlisted for the Crawford and the James Tiptree, Jr. awards. She is a science fiction and fantasy reviewer for the New York Times, and you can find her online at nkjemisin.com.