N. K. Jemisin's Dreamblood

I’d been meaning for a while to read N.K. Jemisin, whose works overall have been receiving good reviews and who, as a rare female African-American who publishes fantasy, has been vocal in advocating for greater diversity in speculitive fiction.* I’d bought her first-published trilogy, The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, in an Amazon 4-for-3 offer, but it just sat in the spare room unread. Part of me wondered if I was interested in Jemisin more because of her identity than because of her storytelling: would I have bought her books if she wasn’t black? Would I have already read them? At the least, I wouldn’t be asking myself these questions. Ultimately, I think it’s mainly that I just wasn’t in the mood for the kind of epic The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms looks like it’s going to be, because when I stumbled across Jemisin’s blog, in which she told the story of the passionate writing of her first two books, which she was unable to sell until publishing the successful (but slightly less unusual) trilogy. Not only was I taken by the publishing story, but the myth-soaked Dreamblood duology sounded deeply interesting.

The rich world-building is a central strength of the Dreamblood books. It draws from history, mostly ancient, of Egypt and Nubia. Jemisin’s fantasy world is complete with mythology, history, and notably details of class status and econmics: these are portrayed not as static but subject to change (in fact, such change is a strong theme of The Shadowed Sun). (It also has its own cosmology, which I probably wouldn’t even have noted except for reading the author’s Q&A in the back.) The heart of the Dreamblood books is the City of Gujareh, a somewhat younger and more cosmopolitan city, with a trading port, than the old motherland, Kisua, to the south. (In terms of earth, Gujareh seems to be positioned in northern, which I believe because of the flow of the Nile was known as Lower, Egypt.) The residents of Gujareh worship Hananja and build their lives around dream magic, long forbidden .

Gujareh has four branches of public servants/priests, which together form the Hetawa: Sentinels (guards), Teachers, Sharers (healers), and the few but powerful Gatherers, who can visit and take over dreams. Gatherers collect dream energy for the Hetawa, dispense euthanasia, and sometimes carry out executions, in the latter cases leading dreamers into pleasant dreamlands before killing them. But, as The Killing Moon opens, strange deaths in the city suggest the Hetawa has become corrupt and a devestating killer from legend – a Reaper – may be on the loose. It falls to Ehiru, a Gatherer with ties to the royal family who has come to doubt his abilities and calling, to investigate, along with his student Nijiri. Nijiri is the point-of-view character we are closest to and most root for, a Gatherer-in-training whose low-caste origins (though such things aren’t supposed to matter to the Hetawa) make him more of an outsider, and who’s long held a crush (or perhaps a deep, abiding love?) for Gatherer Ehiru. Also looking into the killings is Sunandi, a Kisuati diplomat and player in a deadly game of espionage whose loyalty is uncertain.

Even though there’s a lot of exposition about the world to get out of the way in order to appreciate the novels, Jemisin’s skill at weaving in details and the high stakes, emotionally intense story generally keep the reader from feeling overloaded. There are, however, some awkward issues of plot and also times where Jemisin needlessly holds back explanations for the reader – where the detail being held, when revealed, is not really surprising or game-changing or where the fact that all the characters clearly knows what’s going on but the reader is in the dark makes more for frustration than suspense. (I felt this was true of some of the descriptions of the Gatherers’ rituals.) In these ways, it seems the duology’s “real” status as first novels shows a bit. Big events happen in each of the two books, and while they can be read independently, a few minor characters or subplots in The Shadowed Sun might not make much sense to those who skipped The Killing Moon. Although Jemisin has made no commitments, there’s certainly room for a great many more stories to be told in this world.

In The Shadowed Sun, we follow the story of Hanani, first woman accepted to the Hetawa as a Sharer-in-training. After a tragedy that may not have been her fault, she finds herself sent from the city to dwell with the strange, seemingly savage Banbarra, a desert tribe. There she meets Wanahomen, a scion of Gujareh’s royal family. But even as Hanani confronts and comes to accept many of the desert customs, the Banbarra are preparing to wage war against Gujareh. Meanwhile, a deadly plague spreads through the dreams of Gujareen city-dwellers. While Hanani may not quite edge out Nijiri as my favorite character, her struggles to make her way in the world as a woman (and the struggles of the world as it reacts to her) make for a compelling tale. The last few chapters, though short, offer a handful of false endings before giving the reader a final view of Hanani. (Though it’s not necessarily the ending I might have hoped, it’s more satisfying than the one I feared I was getting!)

*There’s been quite a bit of discussion of this over the ether lately, and this blog post is just a review, not a think piece. I do want to say that I think the relative lack of diversity in sci fi and fantasy is a deficiency well worth discussing, one I think the field is making some (limited) progress in addressing. Although it’s only one facet of this issue, I’ve long had an issue with the portrayal of races (orcs or dwarves or elves or Ferengi or Venusians or weasels or mice or rats) who are all good or all bad or all act in one particular, stereotypical way.