The Inheritance Trilogy

by N.K. Jemisin

It is important to appreciate beauty, even when it is evil.

I slid the door shut and left. Foolish of me. Yes. Even then, you resisted the truth. Do I know it? Now, yes. Then, you did not. Why— You’re dying. Your soul is at war. And another memory preoccupies you. Tell me what you want, the Nightlord had said.

This is infuriating. So many fucking cliffhangers

“It takes great concentration to wield magic in a controlled fashion,” he said. “Impressive given that you’ve had no training. And you did it with nothing but food and candlewax. Truly amazing. Of course, it means we’ll have to watch you eat from now on, and search your quarters regularly for anything bearing pigment.”

Why is it that all the protagonists in books are unbearably dumb? I understand that authors must toss believable obstacles in front of them but why make them stupid?

But I knew: he was not the sort of man who loved easily, or casually. If I wanted him, I would have all of him, and he wanted all of me. All or nothing; that was as fundamental to his nature as light itself.

Ah.

—my son— —and stopped, frozen. Indecisive, for the first time, because of me.

Are you kidding me?

In the days that followed, Shahar convened an emergency session of the Nobles’ Consortium and blatantly asked for help. The people of Shadow could rebuild, she said, with time to heal and sufficient assistance. But more than goods and food, they would need something the Arameri could not provide: peace. So she asked the assembled nobles to put aside their differences with each other and the Arameri and to remember the best principles of the Bright. It was, I am told, an amazing, stirring speech. The proof of this lies in the fact that they listened to her. Caravans of supplies and troops of volunteers began arriving within the week. There was no more talk of rebellion—only for the time being, but even that was a significant concession.

N.K.Jemisin is terrible at this. Yikes. This is quite possibly the worst paragraph in this novel, and the novel is the worst of the trilogy. Too much of Sieh telling and not enough showing. Thank god it came before Broken Earth rather than after. That would have tarnished her reputation

my son— —my unknown, unwanted, unlamented son, whom I would have mentored and protected if I had been able, whose love I would have welcomed if I’d been given the choice— —did not die.

What the fuck is it with Sieh suddenly becoming concerned and trying to fuck shit up for everyone?

—to kill my son!

Seriously? What the fuck is this shit? It made no sense when Kahl destroyed Sky and it makes no sense now and it fucks shit up for everyone except Sieh, who happens to have zero reason to be suddenly paternal. Yeah, this is hot garbage.

So I was. But it would have happened anyway. Damn Enefa; I would think what I liked, mourn as I wished for the son I had never known. I remembered his fingers on the back of my neck. He would have forgiven me if he could have, I think, if forgiveness had not been counter to his nature. If my weakness had not left him to suffer so much. Everything he’d become was my fault.

Again with the telling and not showing? What the fuck happened to N.K. Jemisin here?

All the mortals nearby screamed, some of them fleeing for the stairs. Itempas threw up an arm as he was flung farther back. Ahad, beside her, cried out and vanished, reappearing near me. Even Kahl staggered, the blur around him bending away from the sheer blazing force of her. I could feel the heat of her fire tightening my skin from where I was, ten feet away. Anyone closer was probably risking burns. And Glee herself…

I am bored. I am reading an N. K. Jemisin novel and I am bored. This happened with Broken Earth too. She really fucking sucks at endings. She tries to make everything fair, and surprising, yanking power away from powerful actors, giving it surprising underdogs who have radical ambitions about what they want to achieve with that power, only to take it away at last moment, sometimes by having the underdog suddenly come to a realisation of how they were wrong, and are loved or whatever nonsense. It is infuriating, and formulaic, and, yes, I hate that I am saying this, womanly. Not that women are likely to do this kind of shit but the idea of woman has been culturally coded to mean this. And I hate it. She has so much potential, to do some truly surprising things.

Without Kahl’s power to crush me, I struggled to my feet. Damned knees hurt like someone had lined the joints with broken glass. I ignored the pain and grabbed for Deka, then dragged him over to Ahad. “Come on,” I said to both of them.

Sieh is going to ruin this somehow and Jemisin will try to wring some moral out of it. Fuck. I hate this aspect of her writing so much because it is not even deftly done. Anyone can see it coming a mile away, and the moralising is so in your face, that even if one is inclined to agree, you begin to hate it because nobody likes being preached at.

influencers,

This is the worst thing Jemisin has ever done