N. Jemisin: The Kingdom of Gods

Remath Arameri:Current head of the Arameri family; mother of Shahar and Dekarta.

Salon:Headquarters for the Nobles’ Consortium.

Script:A series of sigils, used by scriveners to produce complex or sequential magical effects.

Scrivener:A scholar of the gods’ written language.

Semisigil:A modern version of the Arameri blood sigil, modified to remove anachronistic scripts.

Senm:Southernmost and largest continent of the world.

Senmite:The Amn language, used as a common tongue for all the Hundred Thousand Kingdoms.

Shadow:The city beneath Sky.

Shahar Arameri:Current heir of the Arameri Family. Also high priestess of Itempas at the time of the Gods’ War. Matriarch of the Arameri family.

Sieh:A godling, also called the Trickster. Eldest of all the godlings.

Sigil:An ideograph of the gods’ language, used by scriveners to imitate the magic of the gods.

Sky:The palace of the Arameri family.

Sky-in-Shadow:Official name for the palace of the Arameri and the city beneath it.

Teman Protectorate, the:A Senmite kingdom.

Time of the Three:Before the Gods’ War.

True sigil:An Arameri blood sigil in the traditional style.

T’vril Arameri:A former head of the Arameri family.

Usein Darr:A Darren warrior; heir to the Baron Darr.

Wesha:West Shadow.

White Hall:The Order of Itempas’s houses of worship, education, and justice.

World Tree, the:An evergreen tree estimated to be 125,000 feet in height, created by the Gray Lady. Sacred to worshippers of the Lady.

Wrath Arameri:Captain of the White Guard in Sky.

Yeine:One of the Three. The current Goddess of Earth, Mistress of Twilight and Dawn.

Going to keep it short this time. This is the longest novel I’ve ever written, after all, and I’m plum tuckered out.

I need to thank you.

Seriously. That’s not just pretentious “I’d like to thank all the little people” bullshit. A writer is a writer whether she’s read or not, but no writer can have a career in this business unless she satisfies her readers. And really, even that’s not enough, not in these days of the long tail and a quarter-million new titles published per year in the United States alone. A writer needs readers who will find other readers, and grab them by the arm, and say to them, Read this book right now . She needs readers who will post reviews on retailer sites and argue with other readers over their ratings; readers who will select her work for their monthly book club meetings and discuss it over tea and cake; readers who will tweet about the book’s surprises; readers who’ll put the book on a literature syllabus. She even needs people who’ll rant that they hate the book—because those kinds of strong reactions make people curious.

The opposite of liking is not disliking, after all. The opposite of liking is apathy.

All new writers have Something to Prove—me more than most, maybe. But because so many of you have been anything but apathetic, I know I’ve done a good job. So thank you. Thank you. Thank you.