When the murdered and desecrated body of a godling is found in an alley, an event that should have been next to impossible and is only the first in a long chain of killings, Oree finds herself enmeshed in a spiral of conspiracies and wars between the two worlds – that mortals’ and the gods’ – and discovers something unexpected and terrible about her origins. A mystery, a puzzle to be solved: and Oree’s innate curiosity is such that she can’t pass up this kind of challenge. Shiny is a strange, dark and brooding creature, who seeks death in many ways – only to be resurrected from it every time – and who never speaks. Oree, by her own definition, is “plagued by gods”: she has been the lover of Madding, one of the godlings peopling the city and moving among mortals, and she has taken into her home an odd one she calls Shiny because of his ability to glow at sunrise. And the focus of the story is on a new character, Oree, a blind artist who can nonetheless acquire a sight of sort because she can perceive magic. One of the surprises awaiting me in this book was the jump in time and characters from book one, The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms: it’s been ten years since the upheaval brought on by Yeine, and the world has more or less settled into its new tracks, even though unrest still simmers under the surface.

The broken kingdoms by nk jemisin