The Broken Kingdoms

N. K. Jemisin
The Broken Kingdoms Cover

Can be enjoyed if you don't think about it

Birgitte SB
6/19/2011
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Oree is a blind street-peddler with love of indepence and a generous spirit, who sell trinket in the shade of World Tree. She finds a dead gosling and her efforts to protect her friends lead her into ever greater danger. I really liked Oree, it was the saving grace of this book. The plot holes made you question the intelligence of the author. Did she read her own appendices? Because anyone who read One Hundred Thousand Kingdoms throughly knows the MacGuffin being hunted for in this story is not only abundant but catalogued extensively. The slower pace of this story made weaknesses in her plotting more bothersome than in OHTK, but those plot holes are nothing compared to obliteration of the entire premise of the plot. I do like the arc of characterization with the gods, I hope the author figures out how to reliably attach this larger tale to a reasonable story. The deficiency in plot here was far too distracting. Besides that glaring problem I found the story was constantly going too far into melodrama for the stakes.