I wish the love affair could have lasted, but the final book in N. K. Jemisin’s Inheritance series was such a disappointment for me. There was a good book hidden in those 600+ pages, but The Kingdom of Gods needed a few more drafts and some massive editing to get there. I can’t figure out what happened with this one. The first two books of the series were so tightly plotted with clear character arcs. This one just meandered forever with the main character resisting development the entire way. I’m sitting over here trying to understand what went so wrong.
The Kingdom of Gods centers around Sieh, a minor character from the other two books. Sieh is a godling whose nature is mischief, trickery, and childhood. Though many people (and gods) underestimate him, he’s lived for hundreds of thousands of years and is very powerful. That is until he makes friends with some of the ruling family’s children and something happens to zap him of his godly power.
This book wasn’t all bad. I appreciated reading a fantasy novel where the main character is not white and unapologetically bisexual. Not something you see every day. And Jemisin is still a talented writer. The actual sentences have a nice flow even if the story itself is half-baked. I just wish this awesome series hadn’t ended on such a sour note. Luckily each of the books in the series is a stand alone, so I can still wholeheartedly recommend reading both The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms and The Broken Kingdoms.
