The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms was Jemisin’s first novel and in it, a young woman (Yeine) is named potential heir to the Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, and must go to a floating magical city overrun with horrifying humans and enslaved gods to compete for the throne.

This story has a lot of intense and complex world building - religion, politics, physics, magic - and some very human characters. In some ways, this book felt more like YA than some of Jemisin’s other work in that it’s not quite as graphic as some of her later work and there is a coming of age story arc, yet it is decidedly not YA in its themes and content.

Some of the ideas in this book show back up in The Broken Earth Trilogy - like killing people by turning them into jewels - which, weird flex, but ok.

Overall, I enjoyed this but I had trouble paying full attention to it while I was reading. I wasn’t as immersed in the world and ideas as I was with her other books, although I will read the next two books in the series, of course.