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Jun 09, 2011

Janina rated it:

What did I expect from The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms? Honestly, I can’t tell. When I saw the translation of book two in a German bookstore some weeks ago, I simply was drawn in by the blurb on the back of the book. It sounded like a stand-alone – or at least like the first book in a trilogy – so when I went looking for the English version, I was surprised to find out that it was in fact not. Now, the summary of book one didn’t sound as intriguing to me at all, but I figured I would maybe not be More...

18 comments like (19 people liked it)

Mar 25, 2011

new_user rated it:

N.K. Jemisin approaches empire in her epic fantasy debut, The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms. Laura Resnick (In Legend Born) conceived of conquered Silerians, but few authors discuss the national, political and local effects of imperialism, fearing bored readers and infodumps. Jemisin's subtlety indicates a social awareness, an appreciation for PR vs. reality, biased histories, and mistrust of power.

"Once, like High North, Senm was also a land of barbarians, and the Amn were simply the most suc

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24 comments like (16 people liked it)

Sep 17, 2011

mark rated it:

a pleasingly old-fashioned fantasy, and by old-fashioned, i mean the opposite of the dense, complicated, multiple perspective, incredibly epic mega-fantasies that have had the most popularity over the past couple decades. this is something different. the language is straightforward, for the most part, and certainly beautiful at times. although the mystery is a complicated one, and deals with rather large issues such as the making and unmaking of an entire world, it still feels somehow 'miniature More...

2 comments like (10 people liked it)

Feb 02, 2011

Jon rated it:

I flew through this book, faster than I thought I would. Perhaps it was the font size and white spacing; perhaps it was the compelling story. Told in the first person by a backwoods 'barbaric' young woman called to the very center of the world, unbelievably as the heir, by her grandfather. Completely out of her element, but not without heart, courage and brains, Yeine proves equal to the challenges of brutal court politics.

I can't say I enjoyed this story, but I can appreciate t More...

0 comments like (9 people liked it)

Jun 14, 2011

Vinaya rated it:

I think I may have read too much fantasy.

I'm always apprehensive when I read a book everyone loved and can't get worked up about it. I was expecting this book to be radical and innovative and unusual. It wasn't.

You've read this before.
You're too harsh.
This writing style-

**********

Makes no narrative sense.

Seriously, what is it about this book I'm missing? What makes it worthy of being a Hugo and Nebu More...

19 comments like (37 people liked it)

Dec 18, 2010

Dawn rated it:

I am an avid reader of urban fantasy and rarely do I engage in the high fantasy but I am so pleased that I went out a limb to read this book. If you are seeking an epic battle with travels to an exotic land with political drama then I think this book might just be for you.

In short Yeine has just buried her mother and she is summoned by the king, who is also her grandfather to the Sky city. When Yeine is summoned she has no idea why and is really surprised when it turns out that she is More...

3 comments like (6 people liked it)

Aug 09, 2010

ambyr rated it:

I liked this pretty much exactly as much as I expected. I loved the writing style, poetic without being overburdened, the cultural descriptions, the cosmology, and some of the secondary characters. Sieh, in particular, stole the show for me. Neither Yeine nor Nahadoth did much for me, alas, and the politics never came across as subtle as I think they were supposed to be. But both were well-worth dealing with to have a chance to explore Jemisin's world.

As a non-linear reader (yes, I t More...

0 comments like (7 people liked it)

Mar 31, 2010

Lightreads rated it:

I read this book using synthetic speech -- Nuance’s Samantha voice (.wav sample file). Not my favorite aural modality – Neospeech’s synthetic* line of voices such as Kate (another .wav) are examples of much better synthetic speech output. There’s also human-voiced audio, of course, and I actually see now that the U.S. National Library Service is considering recording this book (your tax dollars at work, Americans!). But the NLS runs about eighteen months behind on everything, there’s no commerci More...

3 comments like (7 people liked it)

Jan 16, 2011

Zoë rated it:

N.K. Jemisin's debut fantasy novel is...well, it's something completely different. I've only been this absorbed in, disturbed by and utterly delighted with a book a very few times in my life - I read it in one day and two days later my head is still buzzing with it. And I don't think a single person that I've emailed or spoken to in the past two days has escaped without hearing me rave about and recommend this story.

THE HUNDRED THOUSAND KINGDOMS is an exquisitely written fantasy whic More...

5 comments like (8 people liked it)

Sep 18, 2011

Carolyn rated it:

I really enjoyed this fantasy - I found it quiet, intricate, and gleaming, shiny, in a way. Maybe that's the worldbuilding. The image of place is so innovative and strong.

This is a classic underdog tale, really, of a heroine thrown into a battle she can't win, and her underdog allies, who happen to be enslaved gods. The slow reveal of all aspects of this and the evolution of their alliance was one of the extreme pleasures of this book.

There are also a few quirky narrati More...

14 comments like (3 people liked it)

Aug 28, 2011

Hirondelle rated it:

This was interesting, so interesting I am not sure how good it really was. I think the 4 stars rating are more me judging the experience of reading this ( wow, fun!) than the book itself - which is flawed.

This book was not exactly what I thought that it was going to be: big thick multi-volume plots with lots of courtly intrigue and cliffangers and huge multicast families. Like of course A Song of Ice and Fire, and tons of things which came before and after. Apart from ASOIAF I am p More...

0 comments like (3 people liked it)

Dec 31, 2010

joє rated it:

I found the many bits and pieces of the story intriguing, so no surprise there that it was so many things at once: unsettling, beautiful, dark, gripping, weird, magical & creepy (I could go on & on!).
Written in a beautifully refreshing narrative style which emphasized the story (and ultimately its narrator as well), --sometimes easy, often difficult for me to follow--, (as clichè as it sounds) it is about a girl trying to find a place in the world, - to belong.

In a story center More...

4 comments like (4 people liked it)

Nov 07, 2010

Rachel rated it:

This was a commendable first effort, but I cannot bring myself to rate it any higher. In view of all the positive reviews it has been receiving, I just expected more from this story, but, no, it fell completely short of expectations.

The writing itself is certainly readable, but when it comes to portraying emotional turmoils, the author opts for "Tell, Don't Show" too often, so some scenes are filled with rather cringe-worthy descriptions of how a character "feels" More...

4 comments like (16 people liked it)

Aug 17, 2011

Mei-Lu rated it:

At 3 am this morning a startling thought occurred to me. Even though I was alone in the way that every reader is alone at 3 am in the morning - the house totally dark and silent, my cats curled up tightly (one pressed close against my body, the other sleeping within eyesight but far enough away that my movements don't disturb her) and it occurred to me - how many hundreds, maybe thousands, of people have stayed up until 3 am with this book, unable to put it down? We're like an unseen fraternit More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Mar 26, 2011

jD rated it:

The is an excellent work of fantasy. Ms. Jemisin weaves a creative concept about imprisoned Gods without leaning on readily available prepackaged mythology. Had I based my decision to read this book on most of the confusing reviews I had read, I would have missed a rare offering of pure genius.

This book accomplishes what few fantasy writers achieve, it's easy to follow the story and understand the world around the characters. As a fan of fantasy, I can work with the complexity of More...

2 comments like (1 person liked it)

Dec 16, 2010

Mike rated it:

What sold me on the novel wasn’t the back of the book, or the multitude of good reviews it has received but rather the single opening sentence from Brent Weeks’s (the Night Angel Trilogy, The Black Prism) review of it Goodreads: “What if gods were real…and walked among us…enslaved…and were used as weapons…and were really pissed off about it?” That sounded pretty cool to me. In fact, it reminded a little of Scalzi’s The God Engines; a novella I quite enjoyed.

The plot, at the outset More...

2 comments like (3 people liked it)

Jan 29, 2010

N.K. added it

Just got the ARCs. Reading for typos and errors, and also for the thrill of READING MY BOOK YAY WHOA.

2 comments like (19 people liked it)

Feb 03, 2012

Emily rated it:

It was okay. It's a cool world, very anime feeling. But I feel like a lot of the characters were just kind of... empty shells? Like, the book says "This character is like this." and then you never really see the character live up to that description. Nahadoth and Yeine's relationship was really annoying. The book tries to make you think like Nahadoth is this SUPER DANGEROUS GUY but really he just is a mopey wiener. Yeine is way too overly dramatic. I really never understood what her mo More...

1 comment like (1 person liked it)

Oct 25, 2011

Tiyana rated it:

When a book receives as much hype as The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms has, it can go only one of two ways for me: I either love it to death and can appreciate all the praise it's garnered, or I scratch my head an am left with consumer disillusionment. Unfortunately, in this case it turned out to be the latter.

First off, let's mention the great things about this novel because there are several.

The premise: an outcast warrior princess, suddenly named an heiress to the titular More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Feb 17, 2011

CJ - You Carry On As If I Don't Love You rated it:

Honestly, I don't know where to begin with this book.

I did not really enjoy the first portion of this book. It was well-written, beautifully written actually, the backdrop of the world was rich and lush but I felt the atmosphere more than I Felt Yeine. I liked her enough but I didn't care about what happened to her. Through the first portion of the story, anyone could have been the narrator and it wouldn't have affected the story.

Until I hit the halfway mark. Things picke More...

7 comments like (7 people liked it)

Feb 19, 2011

Stephen rated it:

4.0 to 4.5 stars. I learned something while I was reading this excellent fantasy story by Ms. Jemisin that may seem obvious to most but still has changed my outlook on fantasy stories going forward. You see, I have always been a big fan of interesting world-building, compelling back stories and histories and unique magic systems and fantasy elements. The problem is that as you read more and more fantasy stories you start to recognize variations on all the well trod (and often trampled) ground an More...

2 comments like (17 people liked it)

Aug 27, 2010

Wealhtheow rated it:

Once there was a woman who was heir to the throne of Sky. But she fell in love with a lowly hunter of the Darr nation, and abandoned her family and powerful destiny to live instead among people who hated and feared her. Her only child, Yeine, grows up as a Darr warrior, fierce and forthright. And then one day, her mother dies, and Yeine is summoned to the palace to meet the grandfather she's never met. He is the man who rules the universe...and possibly, the man who poisoned her mother.
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2 comments like (8 people liked it)

Nov 01, 2011

Li rated it:

Yeine herself I'm sort of indifferent to-- I felt she ended up being more of an instrument than an active person, a relatively generic set of eyes with which to be introduced to the real story: the history of the gods. Given I really liked the history and portrayal of the gods, though, I didn't mind all that much that I wasn't very interested in Yeine.The mythology-- I love. These are exactly the kind of pantheon-style god-stories I like, where the gods aren't perfect, but their issues aren't More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Apr 13, 2010

Patty rated it:

I'm not much into writing reviews, but what I'll say is that if you like the fantasy genre, you'll like this. I'm looking forward to reading the rest of the trilogy.

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jan 11, 2011

Kerry rated it:

Oh wow! This book was amazing. I haven't anything I can say about it right now - I need to digest it a bit more. But I loved it and I'm so looking forward to the next one, as soon as I have a space in my currently overwhelming book queue.

But I loved it. Read it. And hopefully I'll have something coherent to say about it later.

Here I am, back again after spending about 6 days reading the Women of SFF 2011 January selection of Elizabeth Bear's Dust. I'm figuring I should be More...

6 comments like (2 people liked it)

Aug 18, 2011

Andrea rated it:

I really really love this book. I honestly don't know why I even bought it but it was the best decision. This is an amazing fantasy book. Set in a whole new, and I really mean that, world this author immediately brings the action without really waiting for you to catch up. But by the 5th chapter you'll be so thrilled you won't even mind. The best thing is, good things do come to those who wait. The ending was superb and everything I could ever hope for while still being absolutely unexpected. I More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Apr 14, 2011

Molly rated it:

I actually finished this last week but forgot to review it!

"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..."

I liked the secondary and tertiary characters in this far more than the main character, whose voi More...

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Jan 06, 2012

Misty rated it:

A couple of weeks ago I was having a “Best Reads of 2009″ conversation with a fellow book enthusiast; and while on most titles we disagreed (She loved the “Blue Bloods” series, while I wanted to chunk them out of a car window while cruising down the interstate at 70mph) we did agree on 1 thing… “The Mortal Instruments” series finished leaps and bounds over the rest of the competition in 2009. The series had all of the components to keep a reader captivated, separation, angst, deceitfulness, and More...

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Jan 01, 2012

Betsy rated it:

http://betsyda.com/randomdewey/2011/12/12/the-hundred-thousand-kingdoms/.
Yeine’s mother was the king’s daughter who had been exiled when she married a barbarian and gave up her birthright. Yeine has been raised to be a warrior of her father’s barbarian tribe. Now nineteen years old, she’s been summoned by the king, her grandfather, to the city called Sky, at the heart of the Hundred Thousand Kingdoms. The king has surprising news for her. He has declared her one of his heirs, and only one More...

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Jan 01, 2012

Bissfan rated it:

Yeine Darr lebte ihr Leben im Schatten der Verfehlungen ihrer Mutter. Diese war in die Ungnade des Herrschers der Welt – Yeines Großvater – gefallen, als sie auf die Thronfolge verzichtete, um unter ihrem Stand zu heiraten und ihrem Mann in die Provinz zu folgen. Und als sie Yeine gebar, wollte diese so wirklich nirgendwo dazu passen. Das Volk ihrer Mutter hatte sie verstoßen. Das Volk der Darre akzeptierte sie nicht vollkommen, da es Mutter und Tochter die Schuld an ihrer Armut gab. Doch als ku More...

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