Matt’s Reviews: Broken Kingdoms by N.K. Jemisin

• Publisher‏: ‎               Brilliance Audio
• Publication date: ‎ November 3, 2010
• Language: ‎               English
• ISBN-10: ‎                  1441886516
• ISBN-13: ‎                  978-1441886514
• Duration: ‎               ~11 hours
• Book 2 of 3.5: ‎       The Inheritance Trilogy
• Author: ‎                    N.K. Jemisin
• Read By: ‎                  Casaundra Freeman

Broken Kingdoms by N.K. Jemisin is the second book in the Inheritance Trilogy. It picks up about a decade after the events of The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, and follows Oree and her associates.

Oree is a blind artist, but she can see the glow of magic when it happens. She takes in a homeless man that she finds living amongst the garbage in the city of Shadow. He is invisible to her, except at dawn when he briefly shines with magic, and when he completes his strange ability to resurrect after he dies, which occurs frequently.  When she stumbles upon a dead godling in an alley near the market, it starts a series of events that could threaten the entire universe. She becomes the target of the city’s security personnel, other nefarious groups, and perhaps of the gods themselves.

Broken Kingdoms expands the universe that Jemisin created in The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms. This time, rather than spend our time with the elite aristocracy of the city of Sky, we spend our time with the artists and merchants and godlings down below in Shadow, the town that is literally in the shadow of the great World Tree.

Jemisin creates a world populated with gods and godlings and mortals… and brings them all together in ways that make sense in their universe. She balances the abilities and idiosyncrasies of the various immortals with the desires and scheming of mortals. It is a world both very different and very like our own, filled with the search for power and the hope for love and life.

Broken Kingdoms is a fine extension to the trilogy. It mostly stands on its own and could be read separately, but the back story from The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms does add richness to the overall narrative. I recommend them both, and eventually, plan to fill in the rest of the series.