In the third chapter of The Kingdom of Gods, WHAT. WHAT THE HELL. HOW. HOW?!?!?! If you’re intrigued, then it’s time for Mark to read The Kingdom of Gods.
Chapter 3
WHY IS SIEH ASLEEP. HOW DO YOU SLEEP AFTER SOMETHING LIKE THAT. WHY CAN’T HE SENSE ANYTHING? WHERE THE FUCK IS HE? Y’all, this opening scene feels way too much like the Empty and I DON’T LIKE IT. I DON’T LIKE IT AT ALL.
“Sieh?”
The voice that had summoned me from the vague place. Female. Familiar and yet not.
OKAY, WHO? WHO?
“It is you. My gods, I never imagined…” Soft hands touched my shoulders, pulled at me. I groaned softly as she rolled me onto my side. Something pulled at my head, painful. Why the hells was I cold? I was never cold.
WHAT IN THE GODS’ NAMES IS HAPPENING.
“Sh-Shahar,” I said.
!?!?!?!?!?!? It’s Shahar? In this void???? What???
She was Shahar. I was certain of it. But something had happened to her. Her face was longer, the bones finer, the nose bridge higher. Her hair, which had been shoulder length when I’d last seen her – a moment ago? The day before? – now tumbled around her body, disheveled as if she’d just woken from sleep. Waist length at least, maybe longer.
I DON’T UNDERSTAND!!! IS SHE OLDER??? HOW IS THIS POSSIBLE???
“Not that I’m not glad to see you” – she did not sound glad, not at all – “but if you were ever going to come back, why now? Why here, like this? This… gods. Unbelievable.”
IS EVERYONE SPEAKING IN CODE. I DON’T GET IT. And why the hell does Sieh have hair now???
“Tell me what’s happened,” I said as she shifted me about like an oversized doll. “How much time has passed since we took the oath?”
“Took the oath?” She stared down at me, an incredulous look on her face. “Is that all you remember? My gods, Sieh, you broke the oath almost the instant you made it –”
WHAT THE HOLY FUCK IS GOING ON. WHAT? WHAT???
“Just tell me how much time has passed!”
Fury reddened her cheeks, though the pale light around us – Sky’s glowing walls – made this difficult to see. “Eight years.”
YOU ARE ABSOLUTELY FUCKING WITH ME. HOW? HOW THE FUCK DID EIGHT YEARS JUST PASS?Â
“I haven’t seen you once since the day eight years ago when you and I and Deka agreed to become friends. You tried to kill us and disappeared.”
WELL, THAT’S THE WORST FRIENDSHIP OATH IN THE HISTORY OF TIME. What the hell happened??? How? I KEEP ASKING THE SAME QUESTIONS AND GETTING NO ANSWERS.
“You pulled me out of him and he’s going to kill you if you don’t tell me right now what you did!”
“Who –” she began. And then she froze, her eyes going wide, because even she could feel it now. Of course she could, because he was in the room with us, taking shape as the glowing walls went suddenly dark and the air trembled and hushed in reverence.
“Sieh,” said the Lord of Night.
No lie, this passage gave me chills. BRAVO, N.K. JEMISIN. THAT WAS SUPER CREEPY.
“We found you adrift, like a soul with no home. Damaged. Yeine attempted to heal you and could not. I took you into myself to do the same.”
How is any of this possible? What happened to Sieh? Oh god, he was LITERALLY INSIDE OF HIS FATHER the whole time, for eight goddamn years, while Yeine sought a cure. What the hell is Sieh’s condition, then? This doesn’t sound like anything I’ve heard of in this series. And how the hell was Shahar able to CALL ON SIEH AND BECKON HIM OUT OF HIS FATHER’S ESSENCE??? Y’all, how scary was that moment when Nahadoth realized that perhaps Shahar still retained some sort of control over his son? FUCKED UP. THIS CHAPTER IS SO FUCKED UP. Oh god, poor Shahar! I can’t even fathom facing down the wrath of the Night Lord. This is entirely not okay.
I had no idea just how not okay this would get.
The problem, Nahadoth willed me to know, was that I was no longer quite like a god. The substance of me was somewhere between godstuff and mortality – but I was becoming more mortal as time passed. I could still shape myself if I wished, as I had done when I arrived as the cat. But it would not go easily. There might be pain, damage to my flesh, permanent distortion. And there would come a day, perhaps today, perhaps another, when I would no longer be able to shape myself at all. If I tried then, I would die.
What has this book become? EVERYTHING IS WRONG AND PAIN AND TERROR. Oh my god, how can you do this to a god??? There is a 0% chance I could have ever predicted this, y’all. Just… what???
“You will grow older,” he said. “As you leave childhood behind, you will grow weaker. You will begin to require sustenance and rest as mortals do, and your awareness of things beyond mortal senses will fade. You will become… fragile. And, yes, if nothing is done, you will die.”
THIS IS THE THIRD CHAPTER. THIRD CHAPTER. THIS IS WHAT N.K. JEMISIN DOES AT THE START OF HER BOOKS. I don’t even know what to say, y’all, because this is both an utter shock and completely upsetting. And that’s so neat to me because I don’t know that I’ve read a story about a god slowly becoming mortal and dying. This is nothing like the last book, either, which concerns a god being inside a mortal body.
And there’s just so much emotional turmoil here, too. Sieh’s rage here is childlike, yes, but it’s also of a being furious that his father was the one to bear such terrible news. He is already getting older. No, y’all, I can’t do this, I CAN’T.
“Where is he?” Then it occurred to me: Arameri. “Dead?”
“No.” She didn’t look at me and her expression didn’t change, but her voice went sharp and contemptuous of my assumption. “He’s at the Litaria. The scriveners’ college? In training.”
I raised both eyebrows. “I didn’t know he wanted to become a scrivener.”
“He didn’t.”
OH MY GOD, SHAHAR’S MOTHER SEPARATED TWINS TO AVOID PITTING THEM AGAINST ONE ANOTHER BUT SHE STILL SEPARATED THEM AND IT WASN’T A NICE GESTURE AND –
“Eight years ago,” she said in that same clipped, edged tone, “you and I and Deka took an oath of friendship. Immediately upon which you unleashed a flare of magic so powerful that it destroyed the Nowhere Stair and much of the underpalace – and then you vanished, leaving Deka and me buried in the rubble with more bones broken than whole.”
Sweet baby Itempas, I can’t believe this is happening. So… what magic was at work? What is in these kids’ blood that made a shockwave of magic destroy the Nowhere Stair and afflict Sieh with mortality???
“Deka had fewer injuries than I. Our fullblood relatives started to hint that Deka – only Deka, never me – might have done something to antagonize you. They didn’t come right out and accuse him of plotting to use a godling as a murder weapon, but…”
I closed my eyes, understanding at last why she had cursed my name. I had stolen her innocence first and then her brother. She would never trust me again.
Third chapter, this is the third goddamn chapter, and this is what’s happening. Oh my god, it’s so devastating, you know? Eight years passed, and whatever magic was at work here, it contributed to THE RUINING OF THREE LIVES. What’s going on???
“Deka… I haven’t heard from him since he left. He returns my letters unopened.”
THANKS FOR SHOVING THE KNIFE FURTHER IN, N.K. JEMISIN. I am a twin and I KNOW HOW MUCH THIS WOULD HURT MY VERY SOUL. And you can see that pain in Shahar: in her vengeance, her cynicism, her desire for something more. I do believe that Sieh is right, that there’s more to her than the Arameri culture she was born into. But where is this leading? How are they going to deal with Sieh’s return? I imagine Sieh will go visit Deka, but what will come of it? What happened in that room eight years ago?
Consider me 100000% hooked on this book, y’all. This is incredible.
Please note that the original text and the video contains use of the word “madness.”
Part 1
Part 2
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