In the seventh chapter of The Broken Kingdoms, I have no clue what’s going on, and I love every second of this. EVERY SECOND. Intrigued? Then it’s time for Mark to read The Broken Kingdoms.
Chapter Seven: “Girl in Darkness” (watercolor)
What an INCREDIBLE chapter. I usually don’t like using lists on the main reviews now that I’m sticking to them more for Double Feature reviews on both my sites to save time, but this chapter jumps around quickly from on point-of-view to another, so I think this’ll allow me to capture everything I want to say. LET’S DO THIS.
- I’m loving the way that there are technically narrative asides like there were in The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, except that most of these are flashbacks that serve to inform what’s happening in the present. In this case, Jemisin flashes back to Oree’s childhood to give us insight on Oree’s power and why that matters while she tumbles through darkness. Both of Oree’s parents were well aware of their daughter’s magic at an early age, and while they had different reactions to it, it seems to me that they both feared just how powerful Oree was. The first scene we get involves Oree’s mother looking upon a painting that Oree was working on, one that was so unsettling that she outright lied to her daughter about her own terror. And then there’s a gentle suggestion that Oree predicted her father’s death.
- WITH HER PAINTING.
- And then we cut straight to Oree’s absolutely unreal experience in the black. I think Jemisin does a fantastic job describing something that’s difficult to visualize. How do you narrate some floating in a mind-numbing existence of nothing but darkness? This is how you do it.
- Back to Oree’s father. (I love that he calls her Ree-child.) It’s clear that he tried to raise her to understand her power, whereas Oree’s mother was simply afraid of it. This first passage establishes an important fact: Oree can use up her magic, which will make her physically tired at first, and then she could possibly die.
- “You have to understand. We’re not like other people.” Oh my god, was Oree’s father a demon, too? How did they get their magic?
- Where is Oree that no god can even hear her prayers? This is worse than space. And after seeing Gravity a couple times now, few things in the world are worse than space.
- “If you don’t control it, it will control you, Ree-child. Never forget that.” And so we have the basis for what ultimately happens in this chapter: Oree controls her magic. Just because she doesn’t have paint or brushes or a canvas doesn’t mean she can’t open a door. It’s the only way she survives this place.
- But not before this part: “Well, just think. What if you took a man and believed he was a rock? Something alive that you believed was something dead?” OH MY GOD, WHAT DID HER FATHER DO?
- Which is a fascinating parallel, since Oree opened those portals herself after drawing that world in chalk. Oh god, are the “holes” that opened at Madding’s place the same thing?
- Anyway, in a desperate bid to survive with her sanity, Oree finds comfort in creation, and it’s one of the most spellbinding things I’ve ever read. She re-creates her home out of sheer will of force, from the soil and the grass, to the breeze and the spring sun and the terrace garden, and she wills it into existence y’all. It’s not lost on me that she creates a specific moment in time, too: the exact day her dad died and the Gray Lady was born. In death there is life. In creation there is survival.
- Except then the ripples of pain begin to hit Oree, and the magic she possesses is quickly drained from her body, and no matter how hard she tries, she can’t keep the illusion up.
- AND THEN SHE IS ON SOLID GROUND? AND THERE ARE GODS TALKING? Well, I don’t know that they’re gods, but Oree says they sound like “godwords,” so I’ll assume these two beings are gods. WHO WERE EXPECTING OREE TO SURVIVE THE ORDEAL. AND IT’S PROOF THAT… I DON’T ACTUALLY KNOW. WHAT IS THIS PROOF OF? WHO ARE THESE THINGS?
- OH MY GOD I’M SO UNPREPARED.
Please note that the original text and the video below contains a use of the word “mad.”
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