Sweet fancy Moses this book is good. Wow. I mean... wow. For a first time author N. K. Jemisin creates a world that is so amazingly rich and fantastic that I kept having to remind myself she'd never done this before. Jemisin's voice seems to come from an old place. Books like this have been written in the past, but few of them feel this alive. She, astonishingly so, creates a multifaceted world of magic that feels comfortable and familiar. Her ability to create that world is going to rocket her into a space that most fantasy authors dream. My only concern is that this world burns her out. As an author, living with these characters has to carry a weight. I know she must dream about them, and these books feel like the only way she's able to safely part with them. Once the whole series is done, I think she's going to need to go to Paris, sit in a cafe, and drink a cup of coffee unburdened. She deserves it.
This book uses a literary device called the unreliable narrator. While reading, I never really knew if I could trust that the character Yeine was telling me the whole truth, or simply the truth that she wanted me to know. Using this device can be fought with danger. One minor character exchange that's not written well and the whole book can be tossed in the toilet. Jemisin not only pulls it off for 430 pages, but at the end of the book I still have absolutely no idea if I should trust Yeine's account at all. Usually, when using this literary device, authors will reveal how unreliable the narrator was in the end, it's part of the denouement. Jesisin decides to introduce a brand new character and pushes the rest of the story line further into the second book. At the end I was gasping. This. Doesn't. Happen. I will read the second book. It took everything in me to not download it at once and blow off the rest of my reading schedule. In fact, even as I type this I keep toggling over to the Amazon page.... it's hard to resist.
As most of my dear readers know, this is up for a Hugo Award. Between this and Feed I might as well flip a coin. Deciding what one I liked better is almost impossible. However, and this is a really really GOOD however, The Hugo Awards have been known to give out the top prize to more than one book. Last year ended in a tie between The City & The City and The Windup Girl, so it's safe to say that this year may have the same result.
I'm moving onto a book selection from the Required Reading Revisited Book Club. Jane Eyre, is on tap for August. I bought the Penguin Classics hard cover edition, because if I'm going to slog though a 1800's Gothic novel it might as well be pretty. I am decidedly NOT a Bronte person, but I'm going to give this doorstop of a novel a shot.
(Image brought to you by: Asen Todorov)
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