The world N.K. Jemisin builds in The Killing Moon is both incredible and deeply disturbing. It’s an Ancient-Egypt-like planet, where magic is drawn from dreams and death by a small group of Gatherers. Human souls are sacred but also sources of magical energy, harvested and consumed by the priests for healing and other purposes.
Only a chosen few, the Gatherers, are trained to collect this dream-magic. They’re moving through the city like thieves, stealing their tax rather than getting it voluntarily. The power of magic gives them a constant urge to take too much, to cross the line between service and corruption. Once that line is crossed, the Gatherer becomes a Reaper, a dangerous, soulless creature, that can end all life.
The concept reminded me of the Cosmere novels by Brandon Sanderson where all magic comes down to soul units, or The Runelords: The Sum of All Men by David Farlang where magic is forcefully extracted from humans at a great cost. Jemisin’s take is equally disturbing, closer to Farlang’s magical system than Sanderson’s. It’s disturbing and unpleasant but this alien world, where human life and honor are worth nothing to the powerful, is not supposed to be nice.
It’s not a comforting kind of fantasy, kind of the opposite of books like Legends & Lattes, and even worse than the Broken Earth series I recently featured here. Despite that, N.K. Jemisin is at the top of her game. Her writing is rich, her world-building precise, and her imagination is uncompromising. 5*/5
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