N. K. Jemisin: The Awakened Kingdom

[bibliogramma]

N. K. Jemisin returns to the universe if her amazingly wonderful Inheritance trilogy with a novella set 300 years after the events in the trilogy's final volume. The Awakened Kingdom is a delightful and powerful story of the first god born from the union of Yeine, Itempas and Nahadoth, the new triumvirate of gods that maintain the universe. This very young god (who chooses the name Shill for herself in the course of the story) knows that she is somehow to be a successor to the dead god Sieh, but her attempts to figure out how to do this - to understand her role and purpose in the whole of creation - are not going well at all.

So she decides to manifest in the world, hoping that interactions with mortals will help her find herself. As is the wont of clueless child gods, she ends up making some very large mistakes, and some very major interventions in the lives of the mortals she encounters, but she also learns some very important lessons and grows in some very surprising and powerful ways. This is also the story of a young man who challenges the restrictive roles and limits placed on men in his culture, whose future is changed by his relationship with the questioning child god.

Jemisin has said of this novella:

Shill is a true child god — unlike Sieh, who just played at childhood — and frankly I’m loving her; writing her basically means contemplating how a being with an adult-level intellect, Phenomenal Cosmic Power, and no freaking clue about anything blunders through complicated events. But as the marketing text notes, a good chunk of the story will take place in Darr and focus on a young Darren man, in a society in which men have few rights and forced male circumcision is a thing — so still some Serious Stuff therein.

I must say, I loved reading Shill's voice - and seeing the changes she undergoes and brings about - at least as much as Jemisin loved writing her. In this case, good things definitely come in small packages.