Refreshing Take on Fantasy

I went into Jemisin's book having never read any of her novels and not quite knowing what to expect. The learning curve is steeper than some of the fantasy out there, but once you get a few chapters in, and understand the general premise, the story takes off. Jemisin's writing is equisite. Her descriptions do a wonderful job of giving the reader a sense of place. She breaths life into her characters through their interaction and even with subtle touches of mannerisms and behavior that further imbed's them in the reader's mind. The book is a bit dark, which I enjoyed and felt with the subject matter she was tackling fit together well.

I picked up the audiobook version and am thankful I did. Sarah Zimmerman reads the book masterfully and hearing the book read aloud amplifies the beautiful writing of Jemisin. If you are looking for a refreshing setting for the fantasy genre, in depth characters, and an interesting, captivating plot, look no further than The Killing Moon.
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59 people found this helpful

Detailed, nuanced world, refreshingly different

I'd read the author's "Hundred Thousand Kingdoms" previously and thought it was OK and with potential, but I hadn't rushed to read her other books. But this audiobook was a Christmas gift and it's clear the author is just continuing to improve, I finished it in 2 days.

The setting is a fictional desert country the author says is loosely based on ancient Egypt, but the details are all new and imaginative. The Gatherers are among those who practice narcomancy (sleep magic), gathering dreams to ease the ill or the criminal into a quiet death, or using the power of the dreams to heal illness and injury. The plot follows Gatherer Ehiru and his apprentice Nijiri, who slowly realize that something is greatly amiss in the city of Gujaareh. Framed and imprisoned for a hideous murder, Ehiru is released only on the condition that he kills the foreign ambassador Sunandi of Kisua, who is herself concerned that someone in Gujaareh is trying to start a great war with her people. Despite their mutual distrust, Ehiru and Sunandi (with Nijiri assisting) must work together to find out who is responsible for the murders, whether war is coming, and find a way to stop it all before it's too late.

The characters are interesting and sympathetic; the magic and religion are fascinating and unique; and even the "bad guys" are not simply stereotypical baddies but have shades of grey and complex reasons driving their actions. I've already picked up the sequel!

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31 people found this helpful

Breathtaking

What did you love best about The Killing Moon?

I loved the rich setting details and multicultural scope of the story. More than that, I loved that these details were presented in an organic way rather than spoonfed in large chunks to the reader all in one sitting as sometimes happens in lesser works of fantasy.

What does Sarah Zimmerman bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you just read the book?

Since this is a work of fantasy, there are a lot of strange names for both people and places in the story and the author was able to read them in a fluent manner. Also, her voice expressed the perfect calm of a gatherer.

Was this a book you wanted to listen to all in one sitting?

Yes! Too bad I had to break it into chunks for my commute.

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26 people found this helpful

Nightmare Resolved

Any additional comments?

NK Jemisin's best yet. Halfway through the story I worried resolution would be deferred to the next book, which will be released shortly, but the author slammed the end of the story down like a card player laying a flush of spades. I would love to see more fantasy like this, featuring an end at the end, a rich setting at the beginning, and a magic awash with moral uncertainty.

What the book jacket doesn't tell you is that this is a story about euthanasia. At least, its magic is. Dreamblood seems to be the energy released when a soul is shoved/escorted to the afterlife. Two of the protagonists, the gatherers, specialize in freeing sufferers. But they also harvest the “corrupt,” a perilous term ripe to be exploited by political intrigue and fallible men. And it is. And as readers, we are disturbed no matter where we fall on the euthanasia issue.

This struggle of using a potentially terrible magic for good lies at the frenetic beating heart of the Killing Moon. The forces of human need, free will, and religious devotion all clash, with no clear victor. NK Jemisin challenges the reader, not only with moral dilemmas but also with a frolic through tense and perspective shifts. (Yes, including second person, present tense.) A few times I had to blink and take a breath, when her words struck a perfect chord.

The setting is non-European but what it is seems mostly understated. Mentioned in passing are a seasonal flood, camels, a few drifts of sand, and loindrapes (more classy than loincloths?). The culture's dominant feature is the religion of a dream afterlife and a goddess of sleeping peace, an invention that transcends reference to any real-world local.

Given that euthanizing monks make up two of the three main viewpoint characters, and the tone of the story, I would be tempted to classify this as Dark Fantasy. Since it's second world, magic-centric, and has resolution in fewer than five hundred pages, High Fantasy is another reasonable description. If you like delving the uncertain waters of often disturbing ideas, of unrequited romance, and bitter triumphs, this is the fantasy book for you. Oh, and the Reaping magic is atom-bomb overpowered, but at least it has the decency to drive the user into gibbering madness.

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24 people found this helpful

Fantastic narration!

I do plan to put a more in depth review up at my blog but I just wanted to pop in here and comment on how much I *loved* this book. I couldn't find time to read the book so I downloaded the audio and am so happy that I did because Sarah Zimmerman did a fantastic job on the reading!

Not only did this story have captivating characters that I quickly grew to care about a great deal, it was also set in a detailed world that Jemisin describes so beautifully that you can close your eyes (listening helps with this process) and actually see it. Further, the fascinating 'magic' system is unlike anything I've seen before in fantasy.

This is one of those stories which lingers in my mind for days and days after I finish reading/listening. In fact, it's occupied my thoughts so much that I might have to listen to it again before diving into The Shadowed Sun, which is waiting patiently on my iPod.

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17 people found this helpful

Wow - Jemisin can write!

The only Audible reviews on this book are glowing and I now know why - this is a brilliantly beautiful book. The characters are multi-faceted, the setting is so different from standard fantasy offerings, and the plot is intricate and sophisticated. In addition, Jemisin's prose flows so naturally and in a book about magic tied to dreams, her words not only have a dream like quality to them, but Sarah Zimmerman also delivers them in a voice that can almost put the listener into a trance.

I have only a couple thoughts to add to the positive reviews already posted. 1. Sarah Zimmerman has a lovely voice and her style of reading is just right for this book. The only minor criticism I have is that she does not differentiate characters voices for the spoken dialog at all. This is preferable to narrators that use stupid sounding voices, but good character voices would have been nice in this book that requires quite a bit of concentration anyway. 2. Jemisin does no info-dumps in this book in spite of the fact that she has created a very complex political system intertwined with a complex and unique religious system. She is definitely a "show me" rather than "tell me" author which I really appreciate. However, this necessitates a period in the beginning of the book where the listener will not understand everything that is happening. For anyone listening and wondering if/when this will all make sense, it does make sense after the primary characters are introduced and the "world" Jemisin is building starts to come together when the storylines of the 3 POV characters converge - this is about 3 1/2 hours into the narration. After that, although the plot twists and turns, you will follow without much trouble. And, I assure you that even when you don't have enough information to understand why things are happening as they are, you will not be bored - there are dramatic moments from beginning to end in this book.

The Killing Moon is a dark tale with a really satisfying ending. I highly recommend it. Now I have to run so I can listen to the Shadowed Sun (sequel) :)

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14 people found this helpful

Not Up to Broken Earth Standard

Jemisin's Broken Earth trilogy was one of my favorites of the last few years. Pretty spectacular. Killing Moon was a pale shadow of that. A lot of purposely-obscure narrative masking a pretty conventional plotline. Pretty much the usual medieval european cultural setting overlaid with some religious figures with supernatural powers. Meh.

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9 people found this helpful

Slow, boring, and painful to get through

I have had this book for some time to read. I enjoyed Jemison’s Inheritance series so I was excited to read this one, but I ended up not liking this at all. If I hadn't been listening to this on audiobook I would have stopped reading it.

I listened to this on audiobook and the narration was very well done. Zimmerman did a wonderful job reading it. I did think it was a bit weird to have a female narrator when most of the book was told from a male perspective, but this wasn’t too distracting.

The story itself moves really slow and is very boring. Some of the world building elements were interesting; like the Dreamblood and the religion around all of that. I also thought the relationship between Ehiru and his apprentice was well done.

The above being said, there was a lot more I didn't like. This is a very typical story of corruption in religion affecting a government. Nothing all that interesting to me. For what the story ends up being it was very long.

I also felt distanced from the characters and the world the whole time; like I was looking in through a foggy glass. This made it very hard to engage for me. The story does tie up pretty well which is nice since I will not be reading the 2nd book in the series.

Overall this was a long and boring read that was not at all that creative from a storyline perspective. While some of the world-building around dreaming was intriguing, the story itself was very typical in nature. I didn’t enjoy it even a little bit and will not be continuing the series. In fact this was bad enough that I probably won’t pick up any books by Jemisin in the future.

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5 people found this helpful

Exciting ideas crammed into an uninteresting story

Would you say that listening to this book was time well-spent? Why or why not?

No. It felt like a setup for all the rules in a world-building experiment, but nothing interesting ever really happened in that world. It's as if the goal was merely to get me to listen to the second book, but that will not be happening.

What was your reaction to the ending? (No spoilers please!)

The ending was predictable and not terribly exciting.

What did you like about the performance? What did you dislike?

The narrator did great with all of the made-up names, but that did not make it any easier to keep track of them all. I was also lulled to sleep quite a bit by her soft voice.

If this book were a movie would you go see it?

Yes. The premise is solid, but the action was just poor. I believe a movie could represent this story far better and really show the viewer what's happening in between the wordy descriptions composed of fictional vocabulary.

Any additional comments?

I was very "meh" about this book at the end. I went into it not knowing anything about it, and the opening sucked me in, but then the long wait between the opening and anything interesting (about 17 or 18 chapters) lost me. I had hoped the climax would make it all worthwhile, but it didn't. Overall, I think too much time was spent on establishing etiquette and explaining the social hierarchies than actually telling a story.

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4 people found this helpful

Nope.

My first impression of this book was that it’s complete dreck, but then I got used to it, which isn’t to say it grew on me. It just became familiar. It reads a bit paint-by-numbers, like the snowflake method gone a tad awry, like a lengthy outline fleshed out in mechanical fashion. Elements all seem to have equal weight, whether they need it or not. If it were music, it would need to be humanized. If it were a font it would need kerning.

Now, while I’m never going to say this book might actually be very good, I will admit it might be significantly better than it seems. We can blame the narration for that.

My mom used to grab a book off the shelf and read me to sleep as a child. This narrator sounds like that, which, as far as bedtime stories go, is fine. But my mom never pretended to be a professional caliber narrator. Zimmerman shouldn’t, either.

I’ve a friend who swears Jemisin has some quality titles and that this is merely an early misfire. I suppose I’ll give another title a try. Unless, that is, it’s the same narrator, in which case: nope.

I’d skip this one if I were you.

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3 people found this helpful