As before in previous Resolution Project posts, I am reading the works of N.K. Jemisin this year. The entire works, no exceptions. For this post, I meant to have both of the Dreamblood books read, but life conspired against me and you’ll have to wait on pins and needles for a review of the next one.
The Killing Moon (2012)
Author: N.K. Jemisin
Pages: 442 (Kindle)
Series: Dreamblood
Publisher: Orbit
The premise:
The city burned beneath the Dreaming Moon.
In the ancient city-state of Gujaareh, peace is the only law. Upon its rooftops and amongst the shadows of its cobbled streets wait the Gatherers – the keepers of this peace. Priests of the dream-goddess, their duty is to harvest the magic of the sleeping mind and use it to heal, soothe . . . and kill those judged corrupt.
But when a conspiracy blooms within Gujaareh’s great temple, Ehiru – the most famous of the city’s Gatherers – must question everything he knows. Someone, or something, is murdering dreamers in the goddess’ name, stalking its prey both in Gujaareh’s alleys and the realm of dreams. Ehiru must now protect the woman he was sent to kill – or watch the city be devoured by war and forbidden magic.
There are no spoilers in the discussion below.
Discussion: I have yet to read something by N.K. Jemisin that doesn’t make me cry. Even her short stories normally wring a tear or two out of me. This book didn’t devastate my soul the way The Inheritance Trilogy did, but I did cry. A little.
Did I like it? That I’m less sure of. The story itself was fascinating. I loved the system of magic she built, how it informed the practice of worshiping their god, and how differently worship of that same god looked across two different nations.
The premise (copied straight from Amazon), really gentles the notion of harvesting the sleeping mind. That does happen, sure, but what Ehiru does, what he’s doing on the first page of the book, in fact, is harvesting the dreamblood from people that he ushers into the afterlife, into the goddess who houses what amounts to heaven. So sure, yes, something is murdering dreamers in the goddess’ name, but it isn’t just the nameless monster walking the streets, Ehiru also murders people in the name of his goddess. The difference is that Ehiru harvests the dreamblood to share. The monster is consuming it all himself.
People are chosen to be gathered either by offering themselves or having someone else tithe their souls. It’s mostly used for people who are dying anyway, but is occasionally done for people who have been judged as corrupted. We’ll get to the second one later, but as for the first, it’s a notion I’ve struggled with, the option to choose when you’ll die. Modern medicine has stripped a lot of the dignity of old age from us as a society. How much nicer would it be to choose when you’ll go, to be ushered gently into the arms of your deity, to have the way prepared for you?
Of course, no system is perfect. People can also have claims of corruption placed upon them, and the Gatherers are left to judge whether or not the soul is truly lost. You can imagine, I’m sure, how this is obviously a terrible system, and that certainly comes into play in the novel.
I can’t really get into exactly what I didn’t like about the book without ruining the ending, so I won’t. Just suffice to say that the development of certain relationships didn’t happen the way I had hoped, and I was disappointed but not surprised by how they ended.
In conclusion: I’m already a quarter of a way into the second one, and then I think all I have left is the trilogy that just won three Hugos in a row, so I’m pretty stoked about getting to those. I’ve really enjoyed this challenge. N.K. Jemisin is pretty amazing.
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