Jemisin, N.K. - The Shadowed Sun
Book two of Dreamblood (first book is The Killing Moon)
This is set about ten years after the events of The Killing Moon, and while it's nice to have read the previous book for worldbuilding, I don't think it's necessary.
Trigger warnings for sexual violence and abuse, both in the book and discussed in this post.
Spoilers for TKM
Gujaareh has now been under the rule of the Kisuati Protectorate for ten years, and lost prince Wanahomen is looking to retake the city. At the same time, Hananja's Servants have taken in their first woman, Hanani, who is training to be a healer. And a strange plague is spreading through the city.
I didn't think all the elements in this book were as neatly connected as the points in TKM, particularly the dream plague and the Wanahomen-retaking-Gujaareh aspects. In some ways, the two intersect, especially seeing as how one character is using the wild dreamer character in order to further his own schemes and grasp power in the city. On the other hand... I'm still not exactly sure how the scheme works. People get sick and start dying, and the disease is frightening and therefore causes social unrest. Okay. But as far as I can remember, there didn't seem to be a very concrete way of leveraging this into a Gujaareen-consortium takeover of Kisuati rule, and although Tiaanet's father is using it to cut down his own political rivals, it seems like a terribly imprecise tool with a huge potential for unintentional destruction. Which is, of course, what happens.
It didn't help that I felt Tiaanet's entire place in the story wasn't quite justified. I loved her as a character-I have a fondness for the performance of femininity as a weapon-but I feel if you are going to have someone who has been sexually abused by her father, she should really have a bigger portion of the book. I love that she gets her revenge on her father, but it seemed an awful lot to put on a character who really doesn't interact that much with the other main characters. It made the sexual abuse feel like it was inserted only to give Tiaanet a reason to use the girl as a weapon, which I'm sure wasn't Jemisin's intent, but there you go.
I also wasn't a huge fan of how Hanani is assaulted as well, particularly how Wana sets it up. It works as a show of how ruthless Wana is, but not necessarily as a precursor to romance and closeness. I found myself wanting more equality in Jemisin's main het couples; for the Inheritance trilogy, the main het couples are almost all gods or godlings + mortal (mostly) women. I do like that all the women are obviously strong characters, but it'd be nice to have something like Sunandi's marriage as the central romance.
That said, I enjoyed having a character like Hanani and watching her grow, and I'm glad she finds a place for herself on her own terms. Moreover, I like seeing the world outside of Gujaareh, particularly a Banbarra tribe. I really like how Jemisin does the worldbuilding in this duology, and this book looks less at ethics and more at gender roles.
I kind of want to point people to it as an example of how to do not-perfectly-feminist societies that are not Western; I feel too often I read books where the more Western culture is more egalitarian and feminist and therefore better than the societies of color (see: Michelle West's Sun Sword books, Raymond E. Feist & Janny Wurts' Riftwar/Empire books). Even when there isn't a Western-analogue culture to compare things to, the narrative of non-white cultures being backwards, primitive, sexist, cruel, etc. is so widespread that it's difficult to write a non-white culture without unintentionally invoking those tropes.
Jemisin gets around it by having more than one non-white culture (gasp! the idea!). So the Kisuati are progressive in some ways and not in others; Gujaareen find Kisuati women uncomfortably forward and not honored as goddesses, while Sunandi (Kisuati) finds this restrictive. And then, even in Gujaareen society we have Tiaanet, who uses performative femininity as a tool, as well as Hanani, the first female Servant in Gujaareh. And then, in addition, we get the Banbarra tribe Hanani ends up in, with a fairly strict divide of gender role that has both benefits and drawbacks. It's very obvious that there isn't one perfect way to True Feminism, that each culture is not a monolith, and that things are complicated and women find ways of making things work in every culture. But yes. So much easier to avoid tropes when you have more than one of a single type of underrepresented category. Even better when it is the majority, as opposed to just two.
In conclusion: I didn't enjoy the plot nearly as much as TKM, but I love the world in Dreamblood, and it was great being able to see more of it. The ten-year span between the books helps as well; Gujaareh of TKM is not the same Gujaareh of this book, and I am very fond of "what happens a long time after" stories.
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This is set about ten years after the events of The Killing Moon, and while it's nice to have read the previous book for worldbuilding, I don't think it's necessary.
Trigger warnings for sexual violence and abuse, both in the book and discussed in this post.
Spoilers for TKM
Gujaareh has now been under the rule of the Kisuati Protectorate for ten years, and lost prince Wanahomen is looking to retake the city. At the same time, Hananja's Servants have taken in their first woman, Hanani, who is training to be a healer. And a strange plague is spreading through the city.
I didn't think all the elements in this book were as neatly connected as the points in TKM, particularly the dream plague and the Wanahomen-retaking-Gujaareh aspects. In some ways, the two intersect, especially seeing as how one character is using the wild dreamer character in order to further his own schemes and grasp power in the city. On the other hand... I'm still not exactly sure how the scheme works. People get sick and start dying, and the disease is frightening and therefore causes social unrest. Okay. But as far as I can remember, there didn't seem to be a very concrete way of leveraging this into a Gujaareen-consortium takeover of Kisuati rule, and although Tiaanet's father is using it to cut down his own political rivals, it seems like a terribly imprecise tool with a huge potential for unintentional destruction. Which is, of course, what happens.
It didn't help that I felt Tiaanet's entire place in the story wasn't quite justified. I loved her as a character-I have a fondness for the performance of femininity as a weapon-but I feel if you are going to have someone who has been sexually abused by her father, she should really have a bigger portion of the book. I love that she gets her revenge on her father, but it seemed an awful lot to put on a character who really doesn't interact that much with the other main characters. It made the sexual abuse feel like it was inserted only to give Tiaanet a reason to use the girl as a weapon, which I'm sure wasn't Jemisin's intent, but there you go.
I also wasn't a huge fan of how Hanani is assaulted as well, particularly how Wana sets it up. It works as a show of how ruthless Wana is, but not necessarily as a precursor to romance and closeness. I found myself wanting more equality in Jemisin's main het couples; for the Inheritance trilogy, the main het couples are almost all gods or godlings + mortal (mostly) women. I do like that all the women are obviously strong characters, but it'd be nice to have something like Sunandi's marriage as the central romance.
That said, I enjoyed having a character like Hanani and watching her grow, and I'm glad she finds a place for herself on her own terms. Moreover, I like seeing the world outside of Gujaareh, particularly a Banbarra tribe. I really like how Jemisin does the worldbuilding in this duology, and this book looks less at ethics and more at gender roles.
I kind of want to point people to it as an example of how to do not-perfectly-feminist societies that are not Western; I feel too often I read books where the more Western culture is more egalitarian and feminist and therefore better than the societies of color (see: Michelle West's Sun Sword books, Raymond E. Feist & Janny Wurts' Riftwar/Empire books). Even when there isn't a Western-analogue culture to compare things to, the narrative of non-white cultures being backwards, primitive, sexist, cruel, etc. is so widespread that it's difficult to write a non-white culture without unintentionally invoking those tropes.
Jemisin gets around it by having more than one non-white culture (gasp! the idea!). So the Kisuati are progressive in some ways and not in others; Gujaareen find Kisuati women uncomfortably forward and not honored as goddesses, while Sunandi (Kisuati) finds this restrictive. And then, even in Gujaareen society we have Tiaanet, who uses performative femininity as a tool, as well as Hanani, the first female Servant in Gujaareh. And then, in addition, we get the Banbarra tribe Hanani ends up in, with a fairly strict divide of gender role that has both benefits and drawbacks. It's very obvious that there isn't one perfect way to True Feminism, that each culture is not a monolith, and that things are complicated and women find ways of making things work in every culture. But yes. So much easier to avoid tropes when you have more than one of a single type of underrepresented category. Even better when it is the majority, as opposed to just two.
In conclusion: I didn't enjoy the plot nearly as much as TKM, but I love the world in Dreamblood, and it was great being able to see more of it. The ten-year span between the books helps as well; Gujaareh of TKM is not the same Gujaareh of this book, and I am very fond of "what happens a long time after" stories.
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) | Link