{"id":33,"date":"2010-09-21T10:19:54","date_gmt":"2010-09-21T10:19:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.fact.org\/reading\/?p=33"},"modified":"2012-02-27T14:20:31","modified_gmt":"2012-02-27T14:20:31","slug":"the-hundred-thousand-kingdoms","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.fact.org\/reading\/?p=33","title":{"rendered":"The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms"},"content":{"rendered":"<h3><em>The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms <\/em> by N. K. Jemisin<\/h3>\n<p>The North Reading Group met at the Milwood Library on  September 21st to discuss <em>The  Hundred Thousand Kingdoms<\/em>, by N. K. (Nora Keita) Jemisin (Orbit Books,  2010). This was her first novel, #1 of <em>The Inheritance<\/em> trilogy. The second, <em>The Broken Kingdoms<\/em>,  is due out in November.\u00a0 The three books are to be related,   sequential, but separate stories. She  has written several short  stories, one of which, &#8220;Non-Zero Probabilities,&#8221; was  nominated for the  2009 Nebula and Hugo awards.\u00a0  Ten members attended the meeting, and one  called in comments.\u00a0 All had started the book, and all but one   finished it.<\/p>\n<p>Comments were mixed. There was some discussion of a \u201cwhite  room\u201d feeling; <!--more-->that generally\u00a0 speaking more visual descriptions would  be beneficial. The dialog was somewhat \u201cinternal,\u201d and  several readers  commented that the ending was inappropriately unexpected. The heroine,  Yeine, was somewhat weak  according to one member: \u201cI\u2019m a pawn in the  game, what <em>shall<\/em> I do?\u201d Some thought  there was too little  action; too much going from room to room talking to  people. Others  remarked that if they  wanted romance (or, in this case, lust), they  could get it from Harlequin at  less expense and the book would have  been better off without it. And there was some criticism of the writing   style and typical first novel glitches.<\/p>\n<p>On the other hand, nearly everyone liked the setting and   believed the author has promise. There  were appealing and intriguing  differences from typical \u201cepic fantasy\u201d  novels. The way that Gods were  handled  was quite interesting, and the author drew on theology from a  really wide  variety of cultures. The motivation of  one God to appear  as a child was intriguing. She clearly understands emotional problems  and political intrigue, and  can develop complex characters.<\/p>\n<p>In summary, most people enjoyed the book and the consensus  would give it a \u201cB.\u201d\u00a0 Those who read the  \u201cteaser\u201d chapter of <em>Broken Kingdoms<\/em> thought it was not only interesting but considerably more polished than  its  predecessor.\u00a0 Several of us plan to give  it a try.<\/p>\n<p>After the meeting, we enjoyed dinner at Thai Cuisine,  located in the nearby shopping center off Parmer.<br \/>\n<em>&#8212;Tom Sciance<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms by N. K. Jemisin The North Reading Group met at the Milwood Library on September 21st to discuss The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, by N. K. (Nora Keita) Jemisin (Orbit Books, 2010). This was her first novel, #1 of The Inheritance trilogy. The second, The Broken Kingdoms, is due out in November.\u00a0 [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-33","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fact.org\/reading\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fact.org\/reading\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fact.org\/reading\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fact.org\/reading\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fact.org\/reading\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=33"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.fact.org\/reading\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":515,"href":"https:\/\/www.fact.org\/reading\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33\/revisions\/515"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fact.org\/reading\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=33"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fact.org\/reading\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=33"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fact.org\/reading\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=33"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}