Bookish Thoughts

In the final installment of Jemisin's excellent Broken Earth  trilogy, Essun and Nassun are racing to put an end to the war that's been tearing their planet apart for millenia. They have very different goals, one wanting to save the world and start over and the other wanting to just end it all. They grapple with whether or not all this suffering is worth it. And meanwhile, Hoa takes us back to the beginning, and the part he played in starting this war. The ending was thrilling and incredible, with as much redemption as could be managed. Nassun and Essun don't really get a chance to repair their broken relationship, but there's a lovely moment of grace that suggests forgiveness is possible. That said, the ending was also somewhat creepy, as the frame story is finally revealed in full. It's teased from the very beginning - how many stories are written in the second person? Still, the reveal of exactly why Hoa was telling Essun this story was a bit of a shock. Thou...

In The Fifth Season , the world ends. In The Obelisk Gate , the characters figure out what they're going to do about it. The thing is that the world hasn't ended so much as changed. The constant refrain throughout the book is that the planet will be just fine. It's the future of humanity that's in question now. But the bulk of humanity is no more than innocent bystanders in a war that's been going on for millennia. A war that, we're told, has more than one side. A war for which this will be the final decisive battle. The scope expands in this book. The end of the last book revealed that this story is being told to Essun by Hoa, which sparked my biggest question and one that doesn't even come close to being answered in this installment. But it must be in the conclusion. It's such a specific and unique framing device that there has to be a reason for it. But instead of addressing that question, since Hoa and Essum both presumably know the answer to it, h...

My favorite thing about NK Jemisin is that she makes her readers work hard. She creates these fantastically rich worlds with intricate magic systems that inform complex societies. She builds up entire cultures, buttressed by new vocabulary and gods. And then she just throws you in the deep end and expects you to learn how to navigate it all. This works so well because she is a brilliant writer, expertly dropping hints throughout the narrative that help expand the world while the plot rushes forward. Her books take a little while to get invested in because they have such a steep learning curve. But it's always worth it. This is a rather long way of saying that I returned to the prologue at least four or five times while I was reading the rest of the book. The prologue is so incredibly dense that it took a long time to digest. I think the entire first book is actually contained in those first few pages, though it takes the entire book to make all of that clear. It was a treat to ...