N. K. Jemisin - The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms

Rookie Season: Debuts | Week 42º

Mar 07, 2024

Extra seasoning for your everyday food for thought

Genre: Science Fiction, Fantasy

“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.”
— N. K. Jemisin

The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, the 2010 debut novel by American author N. K. Jemisin, is the first book in The Inheritance Trilogy—a series that has received wide critical acclaim. Originally published in 2010 by Orbit Books, an international publisher specializing in science fiction and fantasy titles, the novel traces the bizarre and complex interwoven lives of gods and mortals.

Yeine Darr is motherless, an outcast, and a barbarian. So one might imagine her shock and confusion when she’s summoned to the elevated city of Sky—a palace above the clouds where gods and mortals coexist—as a potential heir to Dekarta, the king of the world. WTH!

The throne to the Hundred Thousand Kingdoms is not so easily won, Yeine soon discovers, finding that Dekarta, the current aging ruler of the world, and his strange and bizarre ways can’t be trusted.

And just like that, Yeine is thrust into an immediate, thorny power struggle with a pair of cousins she never knew she had—both of whom harbor their own plans for the throne and their unwelcome kin. To survive the night, Yeine must find her wits as she draws closer to the secrets of her mother’s death and a dark, mysterious family history.

Set in a world where humans have managed to enslave their own gods (and the gods are none too pleased), The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms focuses on Yeine, an estranged, blood member of a dysfunctional family that exerts control over the gods and uses their sound and fury to conquer the whole world. But, as the balance between human politics vs. the will of the gods becomes harder to maintain (the latest family exchange of power growing more tense by the minute), readers soon learn that where love and pain collide—not only mortals choose to hide secrets.

Born in Iowa City, Iowa, N. K. Jemisin studied psychology at Tulane in New Orleans and counseling at the University of Maryland-College Park, working as a psychologist and career counselor in New York before deciding to pursue writing full-time. However, despite her “outsider” writer status (within the science fiction community), Jemisin has taken the genre by storm since publishing, winning a litany of accolades and awards (including a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship aka “The Genius Grant”) for her rare and extraordinary prose.1

“Powerful men are touchy over odd things.”
– N. K. Jemisin, The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms

Did You Know?

Did you know that N. K. Jemisin is the first writer to win three (3) successive Hugo Awards for Best Novel—plus, the first to win for every single novel within a trilogy!?2

Tell Me More . . .

The Hugo Awards3—first presented in 1953 (annually since 1955) to the best science fiction works of the year at the World Science Fiction Convention (chosen by its members)—are named after Hugo Gernsback,4 pioneer of the sci-fi mag Amazing Stories, widely considered the “godfather” and “inventor” of American science fiction. Today, “Hugos” are widely considered the premier award for writers of science fiction.

Remarkable!

Ms. Jemisin has won a total of four (4) Hugo Awards to date for her works:

The Fifth Season (2015)
The Obelisk Gate (2016)
The Stone Sky (2017)
Emergency Skin (2019)

Some Food For Thought:

Previous Black Hugo Award winners include Samuel R. Delany (Time Considered as a Helix of Semi-Precious Stones, 1968) and Octavia E. Butler (Speech Sounds, 1983 and Bloodchild, 1984).

However, Jemisin was the first to win a Hugo Award in the Best Novel Category and when informed stated, “If it is indeed true, I’m shocked, not in a good way. People of color have always been here. Women have always been here. And for a genre that supposedly prides itself on, to quote Gene Roddenberry, infinite diversity in infinite combinations [IDIC] . . . for a genre that prides itself on that to have never given the best-novel award to another Black person, that’s just bizarre.”5