“I could tell already that I was going to become very, very sick of being compared to a goddess.” Mm. Started well, dipped in the middle, rallied at the end but then I suspect I’m not the ideal reader for this. This is slightly better written than usual pulp romantic fantasy with a welcome female gaze throughout. Fantasy isn’t my go-to genre and while I have no trouble accepting certain narrative assumptions in SF novels (AIs, FTL travel etc) for some reason Gods getting birthed out of maelstroms, running around squabbling and hiding souls in mortal bodies don’t quite do it for me. Anyway, the narrative here hits the ground running, launching straight into a setup not a million miles away from King Lear, introducing a passingly interesting world and all narrated by a protagonist with a (thank God) nicely skeptical voice, undercutting any potential portentousness. Then, oh God, it starts edging into Mills and Boon territory – orgasms are “stormwinds”, would you believe – and the narrative takes a looong time to progress. Still, for this, her first multi-award nominated novel, Jemisin’s prose does get the reader onside within the first few pages and when her heroine has an early nightmare not unlike Bruce Wayne’s recent whacky-doodle freak-out in “Batman vs Superman” Jemisin actually pays it off within the narrative itself, rather than two films down the line, which these days is not to be sniffed at. “The Lies Of Locke Lamora” was more my cup of fantastical tea (yes, written by a bloke, starring blokes but with a splash of SF and way more humour) but fair play to any fan of this. NK Jemisin is having exactly the sort of success you want to shove down the throats of those right-wing “Sad Puppies” nit-wits so more power to her.
