The Broken Kingdoms
Inheritance Trilogy • Book 2
by N.K. Jemisin
Narrated by Casaundra Freeman
Why Listen to This Audiobook?
A blind artist who can see magic but not faces stumbles into a murder mystery involving gods — and Casaundra Freeman makes every moment feel intimate and urgent.
- Great if you want: lush secondary-world fantasy told from a deeply personal POV
- Listening experience: slow-building tension with a cozy-then-ominous mood shift
- Narration: Freeman's warm, measured delivery suits Oree's quiet resilience perfectly
- Skip if: you need book one's context fresh — this relies on it heavily
About This Audiobook
In the city of Shadow, built around the roots of the World Tree following a divine revolution, the godlings who once ruled have become neighbors to mortal kind. Oree Shoth is a blind street artist who can see magical beings that others cannot, which is how she notices that the homeless man she takes in glows with a light no ordinary mortal should produce. When godlings begin turning up murdered, the man she sheltered is connected to every death, and whatever is hunting him is willing to destroy Oree to reach him. Book two of N.K. Jemisin's Inheritance Trilogy expands its world with characteristic ambition.
Casaundra Freeman's narration suits the intimate scale of Oree's first-person voice, her performance grounding the divine-scale plot in the human experience of a woman navigating a city of extraordinary dangers with practical intelligence. The tonal contrast between Oree's pragmatic interiority and the cosmic stakes of the conflict gives the audiobook an unusual texture that Freeman honors throughout. At just over eleven hours, The Broken Kingdoms rewards previous acquaintance with the trilogy's world.
