One Hundred Thousand Kingdoms

I've had a chance to read a pre-pub copy of N.K. Jemisin's One Hundred Thousand Kingdoms. It will be published in Feb 2010, and is the first of a connected trilogy (not one story, but three stories set in the same world and with some connected threads, or so I understand).

Told from the point of view of Yeine, a young woman who finds out, quite abruptly, that she is one of three potential heirs to a rulership she never dreamed of wanting much less being forced to compete for, this is a story ...