A PROJECT

On

Novel - The Broken Kingdoms

Subject: English

SESSION: 2021-2022

SUBMITTED ON: 20 January 2022

SUBMITTED BY: SUBMITTED TO:

Rahul Bagari Dr. Priyanka Khetan

ROLL NO. 64 (FACULTY OF ENGLISH)

CLASS- 3rd SEMESTER

SECTION- A

University Five Year Law College

University of Rajasthan, Jaipur

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DECLARATION :-

I, Rahul Bagari, hereby declare that project titled "The Broken Kingdoms" (novel) is
based on the original research carried out by me under the guidance and supervision of
Dr. Priyanka Khetan. The interpretations put forth are based on my reading and understanding
of the original text. The book, article and website etc. which have been relied upon by me have
been duly acknowledged at the respective place in the text.

For the present project which I am submitting to the university, no degree or diploma has been
conferred on me before, either in this or in any university.

DATE: SIGNATURE

20 January 2022 Rahul Bagari

ROLL NO. 64

CLASS- 3rd SEMESTER'A'

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CERTIFICATE :-

Dr. Priyanka Khetan ; Date: 20 January 2022

Faculty of English
University Five Year Law College
University of Rajasthan, Jaipur

This is certify that Mr. Rahul Bagari, student of 3rd semester 'A' of University Five Year Law
College, University of Rajasthan has carried out the project titled "The Broken Kingdoms"
(novel) under my supervision and guidance.

It is an investigation report of a minor project. The student has completed research Work in my
stipulated time and according to the norms prescribed for the purpose.

Supervision

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENT :-

I have written this project, "The Broken Kingdoms" (novel) under the supervision
of Dr. Priyanka Khetan, Faculty of English, University Five Year Law College, University of
Rajasthan, Jaipur. Her valuable suggestions here in not only helped me immensely in making this
work but also in developing an analytical approach this work.

I found no words to express my sense of gratitude for Director Dr. Aruna Chaudhary.

I am grateful to librarian and library staff of the college for the support and cooperation
extended by them from time to time.

Rahul Bagari

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TABLE OF CONTENT :-

CERTIFICATE..............................................................................................................................02

DECLARATION...........................................................................................................................03

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT.............................................................................................................04

GENERAL INTRODUCTION TO LITERATURE, NOVEL AND STORIES...........................06

CHAPTER-1
AUTHOR INTRODUCTION..................................................................................................07-08

CHAPTER- 2
SUMMARY OF THE NOVEL................................................................................................09-10

CHAPTER-3
CRITICAL ANALYSIS OF THE NOVEL..............................................................................11-12

CONCLUSION..............................................................................................................................13

BIBLIOGRAPHY..........................................................................................................................14

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 GENERAL INTRODUCTION TO LITERATURE,
NOVELS AND STORIES

Literature:

With the development of language, the human imagination has found a way to create and
communicate through the written word. A literary work can transport us into a fictional, fantastic
new world, describe a fleeting feeling, or simply give us a picture of the past through novels,
poems, tragedies, epic works, and other genres. Through literature, communication becomes an
art, and it can bridge and bond people and cultures of different languages and backgrounds.

Novels & Short Stories:

Whether it's "Don Quixote," "Pride and Prejudice," "The Great Gatsby," or "The Fall of the House
of Usher," novels and short stories have been enchanting and transporting readers for a great many
years. There's a little something for everyone: within these two genres of literature, a wealth of
types and styles can be found, including historical, epistolary, romantic, Gothic, and realist works,
along with many more.

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 CHAPTER : 1
AUTHOR INTRODUCTION

Nora Keita Jemisin (born September 19, 1972) is an American science fiction and fantasy writer,
better known as N. K. Jemisin.Jemisin was born in Iowa City, Iowa, and grew up in New York
City and Mobile, Alabama. She lived in Massachusetts for ten years and then moved to New York
City. Jemisin attended Tulane University from 1990 to 1994, where she received a B.S.
in psychology. She went on to study counseling and earn her Master of Education from
the University of Maryland.

A graduate of the 2002 Viable Paradise writing workshop,[1] Jemisin has published short stories
and novels. She was a member of the Boston-area writing group BRAWLers, and as of 2010 was
a member of Altered Fluid, a speculative fiction critique group. In 2009 and 2010, Jemisin's short
story "Non-Zero Probabilities" was a finalist for the Nebula and Hugo Best Short Story Awards.

Jemisin's debut novel, The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, the first volume in her Inheritance
Trilogy, was published in 2010. It was nominated for the 2010 Nebula Award and short-listed for
the James Tiptree Jr. Award. In 2011, it was nominated for the Hugo Award, World Fantasy
Award, and Locus Award, winning the 2011 Locus Award for Best First Novel. It was followed
by two further novels in the same trilogy – The Broken Kingdoms in 2010 and The Kingdom of
Gods in 2011.

Jemisin lives and works in Brooklyn.Jemisin's novel The Fifth Season was published in 2016, the
first of the Broken Earth trilogy. The Fifth Season won the Hugo Award for Best Novel, making
Jemisin the first African-American writer to win a Hugo award in that category.[22] The sequels in
the trilogy, The Obelisk Gate and The Stone Sky, won the Hugo Award for Best Novel in 2017 and
2018, respectively, making Jemisin the first author to win the Hugo Award for Best Novel in three
consecutive years, as well as the first to win for all three novels in a trilogy. In 2017, Bustle called

1
1. "N.K. Jemisin: Rites of Passage". Locus. August 18, 2010. Retrieved September 7, 2016.
2. "N.K. Jemisin on THE HUNDRED THOUSAND KINGDOMS". Orbit Blog (Blog). Orbit Books. August
22, 2012. Retrieved August 28, 2018.

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Jemisin "the sci-fi writer every woman needs to be reading".emisin's urban fantasy novel The City
We Became was published in March 2020.

In October 2020, Jemisin was announced as a recipient of the MacArthur Fellows Program Genius
Grant.

Jemisin is the first author to win three successive Hugo Awards for Best Novel, as well as the first
to win for all novels in a trilogy.[1] She has also received the following accolades:

• The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms (2010) won the Sense of Gender Award, and was
nominated for the Crawford Award, Gemmell Award for Best Fantasy Newcomer, Prix
Imaginales for Best Foreign Novel and Tiptree Award for Best Novel.
• The Broken Kingdoms (2010) and The Shadowed Sun (2012) both won the Romantic
Times Reviewers' Choice Award for Best Fantasy Novel.
• The City We Became (2020) won the BSFA Award for Best Novel.

2
1. Clute, John; Langford, David; et al., eds. (June 28, 2021). "Jemisin, N K". The Encyclopedia of Science
Fiction (3rd ed.). Gollancz. Archived from the original on January 14, 2021.

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 CHAPTER : 2

NOVEL SUMMARY
The Broken Kingdoms is a fantasy novel by American writer N. K. Jemisin, the second book of
her Inheritance trilogy.[1] It takes place ten years after the events of The Hundred Thousand
Kingdoms and centers around a young woman named Oree Shoth, who lives in the World Tree-
shrouded, godling-inhabited city of Shadow.

A decade after the events of The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms comes the story of Oree Shoth, a
young street artist who lives in the city of Sky, which has been unofficially renamed "Shadow"
after the growth of the enormous World Tree. Oree is blind, but has the ability to see magic; she
has inherited this sensitivity to magic from her father, who also taught her to conceal her gift, as it
is considered heretical by the Order of Itempas. Oree seeks only to live as ordinary a life as
possible, despite her unusual abilities and disability.

Shadow is a city in which many "godlings"—immortal, demigod children of the gods—live hidden
among the mortal citizens, so Oree is not very surprised to find a downtrodden being who is
apparently unconscious, yet glowing brightly to her magic-sight, in the trash-strewn alley behind
her house. She takes in this apparently mute homeless man, whom she later whimsically dubs
"Shiny", and lives with him without incident for several months. She has no inkling of his identity,
suspecting only that he is a godling, though readers familiar with The Hundred Thousand
Kingdoms will quickly realize that he is Itempas, god of light and order. Itempas was disgraced
and sentenced to humanity by his fellow gods at the end of the previous book.

When one of the local godlings is murdered, Oree finds the body—and falls under suspicion when
the Itempan Order seeks a scapegoat rather than the actual culprit. Shiny increases the danger to
Oree when, in an apparent fit of pique, he manifests inhuman power and injures, then kills, several
Orderkeepers. Madding, another godling denizen of the city and Oree's ex-lover, attempts to aid
her. However, he and a number of other godlings, and Oree, are then captured by a heretical group
of Itempans who call themselves the Order of the New Light. The New Lights, led by a renegade
Arameri fullblood named Serymn and her scrivener husband, Dateh, oppose the Order of Itempas,
which has attempted to change mortal society and doctrine in response to the events of the previous

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novel, which are not widely known. Dateh reveals to Oree that she is a demon, a part-god mortal
whose blood is toxic to gods; it is demon blood, which Dateh also bears, that has been used to kill
godlings. The gods, led by Itempas, long ago attempted to hunt down and destroy all demons due
to the threat they represented, but a few escaped.

Oree is left with no choice but to seek allies from among the gods and the Arameri—although both
groups would happily kill or use her for their own purposes—in order to defeat the New Lights
before their actions can threaten the entire mortal realm.

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 CHAPTER : 3

CRITICAL ANALYSIS OF THE NOVEL

"The Broken Kingdoms" is an excellent sequel to The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms because it
expands the universe of the series geographically, historically, magically and in the range of
characters, while keeping the same superb prose and gripping narrative that made the first one such
a memorable debut.

The author makes an interesting narrative choice when she has us - the readers of the first volume
at least - know more than Oree for a good part of the novel and we watch Oree's groping towards
the true nature of her "guest". In return we know considerably less about the nature of the world -
gods and godlings and their interactions with humans as well as magic and its workings - and the
novel slowly reveals quite a lot, including some twists that explain more about what has happened
in the first volume too. It actually pays off rereading The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms after
reading its sequel to see both the little touches that we missed and how skilfully the author managed
to weave a great story but reveal far less than the "full picture".

From the beginning we understand that Oree has an added dimension since while blind in normal
conditions, she can see magic, emanating both from gods or humans. Her back story that
interweaves the main narrative adds more depth and complements well the forward going action.
The secondary characters are also very well drawn, from her godling lover Madding, to "Shiny",
her unwitting lodger and later companion, not to speak of the main villains who are quite chilling
as you will discover.

While the blurb quoted above summarizes well the main thrust of the book, "The Broken
Kingdoms" has much more, including some great action scenes, delicious irony in the motivation
of the villains versus their unwitting results and quite a few musings on the nature of godhood,
power and magic.

The major niggle I had with the novel was the same I had with the first volume, namely the limiting
nature of the "laws of the universe" of the series, where gods - and godlings - push humans around
and ultimately decide their fate. That is something I tend to rebel against by instinct and while I

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recognize that the characters have no choice but to live in such a universe - the ultimate
authoritarian dictatorship backed by infinite power however disguised or occasionally well
intentioned - I still do not like it that much and the last part of "The Broken Kingdoms" illustrate
my point clearly.

"The Broken Kingdoms" is an excellent fantasy with great narrative and emotional power that
only its stifling universe - for humans at least, since after all it is the gods and godlings playground
- slightly takes away from my appreciation.

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 CONCLUSION

'The Broken Kingdoms" stands at about 400 pages divided into 21 named chapters, a
prologue, a glossary and a "historical record", as well as an extract from the third series book "The
Kingdom of Gods" which is narrated by Sieh - the well known child-god of the first two novels.

'The Broken Kingdoms" is narrated by the blind Maroneh artist Oree who has a touch of magic
and came to the city of Shadow beneath the World Tree some 10 years ago just after the events
recollected in The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms had taken place. In a nice touch that adds depth
to the novel, each chapter has a sub-heading describing it as what kind of painting its content would
inspire Oree create.

Connecting to the first novel but with a completely different focus and many new characters, 'The
Broken Kingdoms" - secondary world fantasy with magic and gods - can be read on its own and it
has a definite ending.

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 BIBLIOGRPHY

1. https://fantasybookcritic.blogspot.com
2. https://en.wikipedia.org
3. https://cse1cognizance.wordpress.com

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