I think my threshold for good fantasy varies wildly from book to book, season to season. At times it is a comfort food, and seeking comfort and ease I find it and look no further - while at times I approach it more like I approach the rest of literature, seeking comfort and ease and beauty and grace and a compelling truth about the human condition.

So for The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms my comparison to other fantasy novels may be a bit off. In the moment, I enjoyed it. I quite like N.K. Jemisin’s style, her structure and world building and the way characters can bounce off each-other. But the writing I found at times a bit of a hinderance, a bit of first-novel awkwardness in the timing and flow, the characters and the world feeling at times like a not-quite-colored-in sketch. Which I guess is different from having flat, two-dimensional characters? Because they definitely had dimensions, just subtly incomplete, hence me finding the world building and inter-character dynamics both fun and lacking.

Anyways, it is still a good book, but for now I would first recommend The Fifth Season and the rest of that series, where it feels like she hit her stride as an author.