The Inheritance Trilogy

by N.K. Jemisin

I have Amn eyes: faded green in color, more unnerving than pretty. Otherwise, I am short and flat and brown as forestwood, and my hair is a curled mess. Because I find it unmanageable otherwise, I wear it short. I am sometimes mistaken for a boy.

Weapons. Yes. They are said to be somewhere in Sky, four of them, trapped in tangible vessels and kept under lock and key and magic chain.

They found so many ways to lie about the things they did. It mocked the suffering of their victims.

It is blasphemy to separate oneself from the earth and look down on it like a god. It is more than blasphemy; it is dangerous. We can never be gods, after all—but we can become something less than human with frightening ease.

“How to be cruel,” she said very softly. “How to spend life like currency and wield death itself as a weapon.” She lowered her eyes. “Your mother told me that, once. I’ve never forgotten it.”

tears would have made him feel weak. Men have always been fragile that way.

There are some things one can understand only by experience, and there are some experiences no one wants to share.

it kills him a little to stifle that part of himself. He was meant to be glorious.

I contemplated going mad.

I did not let myself feel amazement. That would lead to doubt.

“I have decided to live,” he said quietly.

(One of many reasons I’d settled on a male form myself. Mortals said fewer stupid things to boys.)

Choose how your nature shapes you. Embrace it. Find the strength in it. Or fight yourself and remain forever incomplete.”

In two thousand years, I will join hands with her descendant and namesake and become mortal.

The word was meaningless in itself, though its root suggested the mask’s purpose: to diminish its wearer, reduce them to nothing more than the archetype that the mask represented.

So many of Nahadoth’s children were like her, just a little mad but beautiful in their madness. Such a proud legacy our father had given us.

White trousers and shirt. Brown boots. I found myself perversely pleased that he’d been unable to find boots in white.

Petty lol

In the name of Itempas We pray for light. We beg the sun for warmth. We diffuse the shadows. In the name of Itempas We speak to give meaning to sound. We think before we act. We kill, but only for peace.

It had not been all suffering and horror. Life is never only one thing.