Yeah, it’s a little early, but I’ve got a million things to do in the next few days before I hit the sky for London, so here’s chapter 3 of The Broken Kingdoms. In which Oree figures out a little more of the mystery surrounding her strange houseguest, and readers of The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms get to see a couple of familiar faces…
12 thoughts on “Have a going-away pressie”
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YAY! Thank you so much! :D
Scene from Capclave (somewhere in Maryland):
Jeff Vandermeer: So, panelists, tell me, who are some short story writers you are really excited about right now?
Ann Vandermeer: Well, one author who is really blowing my mind right now is Nora Jemisin.
Neil Clarke nods, as if this is the obvious response.
Later in the exchange:
Neil Clarke: I’m thinking of other authors I really like, other than Nora of course….
THank you for posting this early. I really want the rest of right now, but with some luck the book will be in the mail tomorrow morning. It’s b een shipped so here’s hoping that I get it fast.
Ben: you made my vacation. ::squee:: Thanks for passing this on!
Love it!
Though…I don’t really like Yeine anymore. At all. Something about her rubbed me the wrong way -really badly- when she became a god. Like how she handled Kurue…Brrr.
Still, Oree is awesomesauce. Love her to bits already. Can’t wait to see what the deal with her eyes is.(AndIreallyREALLYhopesheendsupwithItempas. Screw this “Three” business! OreeXShiny FOREVER!!!)
…Jk! :D
…Sort of. -_-
…Not really. ?_?
Hi Sarita,
Yeah, in THE BROKEN KINGDOMS we’ll get to see Yeine the way others have always seen her, as opposed to the way she looks from inside her own mind. She’s always been a scary chick, even before her godhood; I figured it was time I made that obvious.
As for Oree x Shiny… ::cough:: Can’t tell ya. =P
Cool. Thanks for clarifying on Yeine. Because when she turned into a god, I was like “Oh yeah. Break it down, girl!” Then she killed Kurue and I was like “WTF”. Hard. It wasn’t just because Kurue was my favorite in the Enefadeh (right next to Sieh). It was just that I could TOTALLY understand why she did what she did. She wanted her and her family out of that craptastic situation. That and GOD!Yeine gave Itempas, who did far, FAR worse than Kurue second-chance-treatment. If ol’ girl is half as nutty as I think she is…then Pooh Bear help the pantheon. And Oree.
On OreeXShiny >:D Oh yessss.
Keep up the great work Ms. Nora!
Just finished The Broken Kingdoms, today. Loved it. The second half was crushtastic good
Scary chicks in fiction are cool. I still like Yeine. She is doing what she has to do. I won’t say anything else because spoilers suck.
Thanks for another great read.
Sarita, killing Kurue was pretty selfish in some ways, but none of the other Enefadah seemed to think she’d actually done the right thing. And as for why Itempas got to live – Yeine explained why she couldn’t kill him, because that would destroy everything but her, Nahadoth and the Maelstrom.
jessara40k
Yeah, I know the Enefadeh didn’t think she did the right thing, but just think about this for a second: Yeine said herself that Naha could have handled the situation with Itempas differently. But he didn’t. Then he proceeded to keep him and his children imprisoned for two thousand frick frakkin’ years! With Sieh and Zhakkarn, I felt that the lack of anger at Nahadoth had more to do with the fact that they were still very loyal to their father and that they still wanted to open a can of whoop-ass on Itempas to avenge their mother.
But Kurue’s the smart one. She knows that Naha screwed up big time and was pissed at him for subjecting them all to torture and humiliation because he was proud. The whole Kurue/Naha dymanic being compared to Kinneth’s anger with her father at the end didn’t escape my notice. I don’t know. Maybe its just because the Enefadeh seem on general kind of amoral to me (though their fate did make them extremely sympathetic)but Kurue acted the most -human- out of the bunch. It isn’t like her anger wasn’t righteous. That none of them mourned her after what they had all been through was also pretty jarring. Nahadoth made a bee line around his child’s dead body and focused SOLELY on Yeine. (Which is why Naha’s my least favorite…the scatterbrained jerk.)
I know she couldn’t have killed Itempas, but at least give Kurue the same punishment.
And I have officially thought about this too hard/ being entirely too hard on certain characters. :P
Let’s just keep talking about how awesome the series is, m’kay?
Sarita, sorry I took a while to get back to you, but I can’t help feeling that Yeine was talking about before Itempas murdered Enefa and enslaved Nahadoth. After that, IMO, Nahadoth giving in to Itempas would have been like a battered woman going back to her abuser. But let’s just agree to disagree on that.
On a brighter note Broken Kingdoms was out yesterday in the UK – I saw it in Waterstones in Sunderland.
Hi Sarita,
Just my take on Yeine at the end of 100K — other interpretations are fine too; I think any artistic endeavor is fundamentally interactive — but the point I’d hoped to convey was that she’s still Yeine. And Yeine is a killer. She might regret it, might even hate herself for it, but she doesn’t hesitate and she doesn’t show mercy. And remember that Yeine came to Sky to avenge her mother’s murder. Regardless of how much she’d changed by the end of the story, she was definitely going to see to it that anyone who had a hand in Kinneth’s death got punished for it somehow. Humanification was sufficient for Itempas, but Kurue had already been afflicted with that. So since she didn’t appreciate even the minimal blessing that was mortal life, Yeine took that away.
I agree wholeheartedly with your assessment of Kurue. She was right; they were all suffering for Nahadoth’s stubbornness, and it wasn’t fair. But I don’t think you should lay that unfairness solely at Naha’s feet. Kurue, Zhakkarn, and Sieh’s suffering was part of Nahadoth’s punishment; they were hostages to encourage his capitulation to Itempas. Naha did what he could to protect them (short of giving in to Itempas); notice the scene after Sieh’s torture, in which Nahadoth immediately healed Sieh and told Scimina “We had an agreement.” That agreement, though it’s never explained, was that Scimina could do whatever she wanted to him as long as she left his kids alone.
Beyond that, Naha knew there was no point in pleading for their release; Itempas had already made his terms clear, and he wasn’t the type to change his mind or show mercy. So there really was no clear moral path. If Nahadoth had agreed to Itempas’ terms, it would’ve meant submitting to his sister’s murderer, and his own rapist. (In a way. When Itempas stripped Nahadoth’s power and forced him into a single shape, it was as close as gods get to physical rape.) I think it was kind of unfair of Kurue to expect this of him, under the circumstances. So while I certainly sympathize with her, I sympathize with Naha too, given that he was in an epic catch-22 situation. And I sympatize with Yeine, who was torn between respecting Kurue (which she did) and wanting justice. None of them had easy decisions to make.