NK Jemisin’s KINGDOM OF GODS, also of incest

Trigger warning: mention of rape in quotations. 

My first impulse was to simply refer to Kingdom of Gods–the third and thankfully last of the Inheritance Cycle Trilogy–as “Kingdom of Incest” but I realized that’d be misleading. There’s a good reason for this impulse, though, and it isn’t just to be mean-spirited. You will see.

I make no secret of the fact that I’ve always thought the trilogy rather rubbish what with all the shiny divine semen and whale sex, but it’s only on reading the third book that I realized the whole thing very much falls under the domain of “people who like this sort of thing will find this the sort of thing they like.” That’s to say it often reads like fanfiction–something that panders to the fandom’s dominant ship, favorite tropes, and that will attract thousands of adoring reviews on the strength of said ship and said tropes. If you aren’t into that ship or those tropes it’s not going to work for you, chiefly because there isn’t much else in the fanfic, or in this case Jemisin’s trilogy, that can offer any sort of engagement. In that way it’s functional, straightforward, and a little like reading tie-in fiction where provided there is enough of the kind of tropes you like it doesn’t much matter if the writing is amazing, decent, or downright subpar. Again, a comparison with Anne Bishop is in order–and people who liked one not infrequently loved the other (although, obviously, Jemisin’s stuff isn’t so replete in misogyny nor reliance on rape).
 Oh, and this is a combo-breaker. Whereas the first two books both had female narrators with identical voices and personalities, this one has a male narrator. It also vindicates me by being very much worse than its predecessors.

There will be no tricks in this tale. I tell you this so that you can relax. You’ll listen more closely if you aren’t flinching every other instant, waiting for the pratfall. You will not reach the end and suddenly learn I have been talking to my other soul or making a lullaby of my life for someone’s unborn brat. I find such things disingenuous, so I will simply tell the tale as I lived it.

For those playing at home, the first book’s narrator talked to her other soul; the second’s talked to her unborn fetus. Yeah. Clever, isn’t it? How tweenly self-referential. I did hold out hope for a moment here, though, because look at the part I bolded: a female narrator who’s allowed to be not maternal and unapologetic about it.

This little bit of hope lasted for no time flat. Joke’s on me, fellows. The narrator is a boy. The trickster god of childhood (who never tricked)? Yeah, that one. If Yeine/Oree’s voice failed whatsoever to compel it was at least inoffensive; in contrast Sieh’s is obnoxious, dull, and gives the impression that both character and author are entirely too in love with this narrative voice–and think that it’s much cleverer than it actually is.

This new one — who has always and only been male — named himself Bright Itempas, because he was an arrogant, self-absorbed son of a demon even then. And because Itempas is also a gigantic screaming twit, he attacked Nahadoth, who… well. Naha very likely did not make a good conversation partner at the time. Not that they talked at all, in those days before speech. So they fought, and fought, and fought times a few million jillion nillion, until suddenly one or the other of them got tired of the whole thing and proposed a truce.

Million jillion nillion indeed. I’m sure Sieh’s style is meant to be cute and endearing, but for me all it manages is to make me want to punch him in the nose times a million. Gag. Sieh, despite being a trickster whose tricks run mostly to mooning people and causing pratfalls, would like to believe that he’s cunning, cute, and just a little bit dangerous. This is an especially unfortunate self-image seeing that he spends most of the first chapters bawwwwwing how unloved, alone, and incredibly jealous he is of the love the three creator gods can enjoy in each other and snore.

Then Naha finds her. Pathetic, isn’t it? We two gods, the oldest and most powerful beings in the mortal realm, both besotted by a sweaty, angry little mortal girl. It is more than her looks. More than her ferocity, her instant maternal devotion, the speed with which she lunges to strike. She is more than Enefa, for Enefa never loved me so much, nor was Enefa so passionate in life and death. The old soul has been improved, somehow, by the new.

She chooses Nahadoth. I do not mind so much. She loves me, too, in her way. I am grateful.

And when it all ends and the miracle has occurred and she is a goddess (again), I weep. I am happy. But still so very alone.

Here’s a pro tip, Sieh old boy: if you want a grown woman to like-like you chances are good that manifesting as a prepubescent kid and going “MOMMYYYYY” all over her is… probably… not gonna go over well. Unless the woman in question is a pedophile. But let’s not go there because it’ll make me nauseated and there’s certainly enough nauseous material in the book as it is.

This bit of italics sets the tone, more or less, for half the novel. It’s all very Oedipal, not least because Sieh really hates his dad and wants to kill him. I was going to say “one of his dads” but there’s this thing about Nahadoth being non-binary, shifting between genders freely. You would think, of course, that this would be some meaningful statement that gender is fluid, and not essential to any quality or nature typically associated with gender stereotypes–

“You are more troubled by this than you should be,” said Nahadoth. “What is wrong?”

I burst into frustrated tears. “I don’t know.”

“Shhhh. Shhhh.” She — Nahadoth had changed already, adapting to me because she knew I preferred women for some things — sat up, pulling me into her lap, and held me against her shoulder while I wept and hitched fitfully. This made me stronger, as she had known it would, and when the squall passed and nature had been served, I drew a deep breath.

[...]

Naha frowned and began to shift back toward male. It was a warning; she was not as quick to anger as he was. He was male most of the time these days.

Oh.

I guess it’s good to know that Nahadoth becomes female when she feels motherly, and male when he’s all pissy and wrathful. Yeine is, of course, remarkable for–among other things–her “instant maternal devotion.” Oree “made a lullaby of her life” for her fetus. You can see why I was a bit excited that maybe this time around we can get a female protagonist and narrator who doesn’t give much of a shit for motherhood. Oree’s fetus grew up into a godlingling named “Glee” by the way, and while I understand why she’s named that I can’t help but find it incredibly silly. I will also note here that Glee would probably have made a better protagonist than Sieh and so would any of the women, but that’s neither here nor there. Jemisin seems to write pretty neat women when she’s not making them the protagonist–that is, secondary female characters tend to have a good deal more color than her female narrators. Even Yeine has become more interesting once she stopped occupying a point of view. All of Jemisin’s male characters are, however, equally boring.

The gist of the plot is that Sieh one day dicks around with a couple of Arameri kids, Shahar and Dekarta, and suddenly finds himself stripped of godhood, reduced to mortal body and aging at an accelerated rate. Yeine and Nahadoth are upset. Sieh is upset. Itempas is upset. Everyone runs around borking because nobody knows why/how this is happening and how Sieh may be cured. Simultaneously there’s a nefarious plot that runs very like the nefarious plot of Broken Kingdoms where there was a mage who wanted to become a god; this time around there’s a godling who wants to become a creator god. Because this is a very serious fantasy full of deepening deepness this time around there’s added incest.

“You’ve been with Nahadoth and many of your siblings,” she said. Her revulsion crawled along my skin like the evacuating mites. She was trying to resist it, and failing. “I know… things are different, for godkind.”

If she had only been older. Just a few centuries might have been enough to reduce the memory of her mortal life and her mortal inhibitions. I mourned that I would not have time to see her become a true god. “I was Enefa’s lover, too,” I said softly. I did not look at her at first. “Not … not often. When Itempas and Nahadoth were off together, mostly. When she needed me.”

And because there would be no other time, I looked up at her and let her see the truth. You might have needed me, too, in time. You’re stronger than Naha and Tempa, but you’re not immune to loneliness. And I have always loved you. To her very great credit, she did not recoil. I loved her more than ever for that. But she did sigh.

ಠ_ಠ

This is why I wanted to refer to this book as “Kingdom of Incest.” Previously I thought of Jemisin’s gods as hormones-charged humans in funny suits, but the truth is far more terrible: they are humans in funny suits with added incest. They don’t behave, think, or act in any way that can be distinguished from the way humans behave, think or act. The one distinction between “mortal” and “god” or “godlinglinglingling” is the latter’s willingness to have sex with their siblings, nieces, nephews, grandchildren, and parents without discrimination. While I get that since they’re all born from the same source it’s pretty much all in the family anyway, there’s such an amazing obsession over it that it looks as if the gods spend 90% of their time doing each other. Sieh in particular can barely say hello to any of his siblings or parents without reminiscing over the sex they’ve had before and wishing for more sex in the immediate future. In fact, he seems barely able to say hello to anyone period without all but dry-humping them on the spot, and yes I’m totally stud-shaming in case you think that’s a real thing. So this would be a good time, I think, to start sharing the sex scenes.

And I did not protest while she explored me, first with her fingers and then, oh gods, oh yes, her mouth, her mortal husband could have the rest but I would marry her mouth and fingertips.
I touched her, too. She liked that lots.

[...]

I controlled myself by focusing on her flesh, on her hands stroking my back (inadvertently I purred), on my own clenching tightening quickening excitement, on carrying her only into the good parts of existence and none of the bad ones.
And when she could bear no more, when I knew it was safe to bring her back to herself, when I was sure I could stay corporeal … only then did I let her go, and myself as well.
She fainted. That is normal when one of us mates with a mortal.

ಠ_ಠ

I’m sorry, if the other party faints every single time, it’s not because you’re such an astounding peerless stud, bro. It’s because your cock is poison.

If she wasn’t hurt, then why did she radiate such an ugly, clotted mix of emotions? I struggled to remember my handful of experiences with mortal women from before the War. Was this sort of behavior normal? I thought it might be. What, then, should a lover say at a time like this? Gods, it had been easier when I was a slave; my rapists had never expected me to give a damn about them afterward.

At one point, Sieh has sex with Deka–Shahar’s twin brother–because Sieh kissed the latter when he was seven and apparently that made a lasting impression. Come to think of it, Sieh really likes to talk about how children are “easy to seduce” and, while I know that’s in the context of children being easy to excite or intrigue with games and fun and so on, combined with the whole “kiss a seven-year-old boy in a very sexual manner” thing it becomes pretty gross (SHOTACON, SHOTACON). Speaking of gross, how about:

He looked up at me. I realized he knew Shahar was there. Of course; the bond between us. Perhaps that was why she’d come here, too, at this precise moment, out of the whole vast empty palace. I was lonely. I needed. That need drew them to me now, just as my need had drawn them on a long-ago day in Sky’s underpalace. We had shared something powerful when we took our oath, but the connection had been there even beforehand. That could not be broken by something so paltry as betrayal.
[...]
Shahar left sometime during what followed. Not immediately. She stayed for a long while, in fact, listening to my groans and watching while I stopped caring about her, or even being aware of her presence. Perhaps she even lingered after I pulled her little brother to the floor and made a proper altar of it, wringing sweat and tears and songs of praise from him, and blessing him with pleasure in return. I didn’t know. I didn’t care. Deka was my only world, my only god.

I DON’T KNOW ABOUT YOU BUT IF I WALKED IN ON MY BROTHER HAVING SEX I WOULDN’T STAND AROUND WATCHING EWWWWW FOREVER EWWWWWWWWW

There’s some face-bashingly silly stuff about Sieh’s pet sun which he hangs around his neck, is his most steadfast friend and acts like a puppy, but that’s too cutesy for words and I’m all out of CAPSLOCK OF GAGGING after the above. Suffice to say that it’s about as adorable as the thing with the nillion jillion twittery. By the way, Sieh’s a god of shotacon childhood, right, so at one point he gets very angry at thugs who threaten/bully children. Problem with that is, he’s already admitted to Shahar that he’s murdered babies. I, er, guess babies don’t fall under his thing with the childhood or something because Jemisin’s gods lose power/become weaker if they “deny their nature” or some such rot, and I can’t imagine denying your nature any harder than a god of childhood murdering babies. Consistency isn’t the order of the day here, folks.

I want to say something, too, about how off I find the way Shahar’s treated by the narrative (and Sieh and her brother Deka). The first parts of the book have to do with Sieh’s self-centered whining, then his infatuation with Shahar, and then it all becomes some kind of repulsive incestuous clusterfuck because he’s in love with both siblings–except he more and more leans toward Dekarta as the “truer” love after Shahar “betrays” him, at which point Shahar is excluded from their treehouse doings because girls are icky she has been trained to be ruthless and sometimes the boys don’t like her anymore, so they go off to save the world and have sex the likes of which wouldn’t be out of place in a Harry Potter fanfic. In the meantime Shahar is left out of the loop, is never given a break by any of her family (including her mother, who’s harsh, emotionally manipulative and ruthless), and suffers alone thinking she’s lost everything of meaning to her for some fifty years while the boys are hanging around dormant in limbo, waiting for her death so all three of them can reach apostheosis and go rule another cosmos.

When Shahar exhaled her last breath I awakened, midwifed into existence by her mortality. My first act was to turn in space and time and kiss Deka awake, beside me. [...] Then we found Shahar, and gathered her up, and took her with us. She was, to say the least, surprised. But not displeased. We are together now, the three of us, for the rest of forever. I will never be alone again.

Apparently she’s not even a little bit angry about… you know… anything. Or for having the decision taken entirely out of her hands, if you think about it. It’s telling, too, that Sieh only states “I will never be alone” without sparing a single solitary thought as to the decades Shahar spent on her own under the impression that all her dreams have been shattered–her twin brother dead, her lover likewise, and her mother whom she finally reconciled with gone in an act of self-sacrifice. To the boys Shahar’s important only insofar as what she can do for them emotionally. What she herself feels or wants doesn’t enter the equation, and this more or less holds true even for the one chapter that’s from her point of view. I may have given the first two books quite the thrashing, but in pretty much all respects 100k Kingdoms at least is leagues ahead of Kingdom of Incest: better protagonist, a slightly more intriguing plot, and a narrative where the movers and shakers of things are women with varying degrees of agency.

That’s the reason behind Sieh’s loss of power, by the way: Yeine postulates that this is the next stage for godlings, that all of them are meant to become full-powered creator deities eventually, at which point they leave this cosmos to make their own creations. In Sieh’s case, his ascension is attached to Shahar and Dekarta because three is a magic number or something, and every creator deity trio must be similar to Enefa/Itempas/Nahadoth to achieve balance and stability. I’m not sure if that means all such trios must be one woman and two dudes or if there must be an equivalence for temperaments, but whatever it is, the idea stops making sense when you take into account that Shahar and Dekarta were humans, not godlings. So… uh… if a godling attaches herself to two other people (whether other godlings or humans) they’ll all fly off to another cosmos eventually? What happens to godlings who can’t find partners? IT MAKES NO SENSE.

In respect of the free-for-all love that runs rampant in this series, I’d like to offer a tally of the entire trilogy:

• Lesbian or bisexual women having romantic/sexual relationship with other women onstage: 0.
• Non-hetero woman presented as emotionally manipulative, a bad mother, and incestuous (had kids with her brother): 1.
• Non-hetero woman who sacrifices herself because she realizes it’s her preordained fate to die so the world may be saved (same woman as above): 1.
• Gay or bisexual men having romantic/sexual relationships with other men onstage (Broken Kingdoms shows two men in a poly relationship with a woman kissing but I don’t recall two women ever having kissed or even held hands in all three books): a lot.
• Gay or bisexual men who survive and continue to have sex with each other: really, a lot.
• Women ruining everything because of their jealousy, obsession, or moral bankruptcy: 3 (the first Shahar Itempas had a kid with, Enefa, this book’s Shahar–I’ll say, here, that actually the thing with the original split and Enefa’s murder was Sieh’s fault. He gets to go rule a new cosmos; Enefa gets dead).

Fuck it, I’m done. Speaking of which, there was a goddess in the first book who had a pretty tertiary role but at least she existed. Did she die somewhere or something, because she never showed up again? Does anyone recall?