The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms
Dec. 29th, 2019 08:53 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
chocolatepotBut you know how I am about things that are popular - I instinctively avoid them.
Brief summary: The daughter of a runaway princess is recalled to her grandfather's palace in order to be a pawn in the succession; along the way she sorts out the aftermath of the Gods War in which one god killed his sister and imprisoned their brother and children in semi-mortal forms.
The book reminded me a lot of The Goblin Emperor in two ways:
1) It deals with imperialism and racism in a fantasy setting without offering an easy fix (although I have to say it didn't deal with them as much as I'd been led to believe by the internet)
2) The plot revolves around the politics, traditions, and mythology of a high fantasy empire rather than physical combat or a quest for an object
Two things I love in fiction! It's a very compelling, satisfying read - I got through it in 48 hours, and I'm psyched to read the next two books in the trilogy. But there was one thing that struck me in a critical way.
One of the reasons I was avoiding the book is that I thought it was YA for some reason. It's definitely more New Adult-to-adult fiction (it uses the word "penis"! Several times in a row!), but there is a YA feel to it. Part of it's just that the protagonist is young and has a lot to learn about her place in the world, a staple of the bildungsroman, but mostly it's the love triangle. I don't think anything feels more YA to me than a love triangle where one guy is "normal" and minimally developed and the other is supernatural and a complete three-dimensional character. Now, it's not a super-serious love triangle, you're never really meant to think Yeine is torn between the two guys, so maybe triangle isn't the right word ... but the situation where there's a dark romance and another guy's normalcy or deficiency at some point is implicitly or explicitly compared to the supernatural love interest. In this it was done in a very grown-up way (T'vril fails to bring her to orgasm, so she goes in the bathroom after he falls asleep and Nahadoth oral-sexes the life out of her) but there's still something about it that pings me as, well, adolescent.
I did really like Yeine's relationship with Sieh, a child trickster god. Honestly, it was the best-written relationship in the book. Sieh appears from time to time in various ages, but his innate self as he was created is a child; attracted to the part of the sister-god's soul in her, he makes friends with Yeine quickly and wants to snuggle with her from time to time. Not only is there an emotional depth there that I don't get with Yeine/Nahadoth, heroines in YA or fantasy are just rarely allowed to have real relationships with kids.
In the end after the order of things has been uprooted, T'vril becomes king/emperor. He's been the palace steward and shows himself during the book to be compassionate and organized - I definitely want to read more about him. Hopefully he turns up in the later books! I love competence.
Yeine's cousins, Scimina and Relad, the real potential heirs, are kinda cliché. Scimina is basically Cersei, hard, sexually dominant, and ambitious; Relad is a louche drunk in her shadow. Felt a bit like they came from central casting.
Brief summary: The daughter of a runaway princess is recalled to her grandfather's palace in order to be a pawn in the succession; along the way she sorts out the aftermath of the Gods War in which one god killed his sister and imprisoned their brother and children in semi-mortal forms.
The book reminded me a lot of The Goblin Emperor in two ways:
1) It deals with imperialism and racism in a fantasy setting without offering an easy fix (although I have to say it didn't deal with them as much as I'd been led to believe by the internet)
2) The plot revolves around the politics, traditions, and mythology of a high fantasy empire rather than physical combat or a quest for an object
Two things I love in fiction! It's a very compelling, satisfying read - I got through it in 48 hours, and I'm psyched to read the next two books in the trilogy. But there was one thing that struck me in a critical way.
One of the reasons I was avoiding the book is that I thought it was YA for some reason. It's definitely more New Adult-to-adult fiction (it uses the word "penis"! Several times in a row!), but there is a YA feel to it. Part of it's just that the protagonist is young and has a lot to learn about her place in the world, a staple of the bildungsroman, but mostly it's the love triangle. I don't think anything feels more YA to me than a love triangle where one guy is "normal" and minimally developed and the other is supernatural and a complete three-dimensional character. Now, it's not a super-serious love triangle, you're never really meant to think Yeine is torn between the two guys, so maybe triangle isn't the right word ... but the situation where there's a dark romance and another guy's normalcy or deficiency at some point is implicitly or explicitly compared to the supernatural love interest. In this it was done in a very grown-up way (T'vril fails to bring her to orgasm, so she goes in the bathroom after he falls asleep and Nahadoth oral-sexes the life out of her) but there's still something about it that pings me as, well, adolescent.
I did really like Yeine's relationship with Sieh, a child trickster god. Honestly, it was the best-written relationship in the book. Sieh appears from time to time in various ages, but his innate self as he was created is a child; attracted to the part of the sister-god's soul in her, he makes friends with Yeine quickly and wants to snuggle with her from time to time. Not only is there an emotional depth there that I don't get with Yeine/Nahadoth, heroines in YA or fantasy are just rarely allowed to have real relationships with kids.
In the end after the order of things has been uprooted, T'vril becomes king/emperor. He's been the palace steward and shows himself during the book to be compassionate and organized - I definitely want to read more about him. Hopefully he turns up in the later books! I love competence.
Yeine's cousins, Scimina and Relad, the real potential heirs, are kinda cliché. Scimina is basically Cersei, hard, sexually dominant, and ambitious; Relad is a louche drunk in her shadow. Felt a bit like they came from central casting.
