The Broken Earth Trilogy (The Broken Earth, #1-3) (2024)

Impressive, truly immersive and an addictive read, although I don't feel book 2 and 3 reach the brilliance of The Fifth Season. A very rich series with a lot of exploitation related themes merged into a story that in epicness is comparable to any excellent anime series
Tell them they can be great someday, like us. Tell them they belong among us, no matter how we treat them. Tell them they must earn the respect which everyone else receives by default. Tell them there is a standard for acceptance; that standard is simply perfection. Kill those who scoff at those contradictions, and tell the rest that the dead deserved annihilation for their weakness and doubt. Then they'll break themselves trying for what they'll never achieve

The Fifth Season - 4.5 stars
Survival doesn’t mean you are right
Survival is not the same as living
The detached, ironic, omnipresent and slightly snarky narration in the prologue is quite something, and gives the whole book a distinct feel. Also the mother of the dead boy, Essun, is narrated in a you voice, quite something to get to used to.
Then we have Damaya, the powerful girl who was locked away because of an incident, and is psychologically manipulated in a terrible way to control her, Stockholm syndrome.
The viperpit of school she end up into is fascinatingly sketched by N.K. Jemisin.
And finally imperial Syenite, who works as part of the order, who is subjected to a The Handmaid's Tale like treatment.

The book starts off with super filmic scenes, and is truly gripping to read. The world of The Fifth Season is slowly revealed, with tectonics in overdrive, people who can contain these powers, non-human observants coming from an egg and floating obelisks (Laputa Castle In The Sky like) that give a glimpse of an advance precursor civilization. There is slavery, an unified continent through nodes of tectonic manipulation, utility casts, comms that are short for communities who band together and prepare themselves for cataclysmic events called Fifth Seasons (also known as Death).
Exploitation and power, and the fragility of power only based on only destruction. It is an incredible mix expertly written to keep you hooked and keep on flipping the pages.

The effortless LGBTQ incorporation is also nicely done, although how they are in love/impressed after meeting someone during a week, and the the island society section, was a bit to sudden for me.
Also this society to me seems to be an inverse of the slavery of orogenics (the earth tectonic controlling people who are widely discriminated against), I mean all our leaders have this power, nice if you are a “normal” person that you have new earth-bending overlord, almost like X-Men Magneto style.

However the end results is unpredictable and keeps on your feet, while also being beautifully parsimonious. Very well done.

The Obelisk Gate - 3.5 stars
Being useful to others is not the same thing as being equal
The book starts of with themes of parsimony, with a synergy between loss of a satellite and the loss of a child. The linkage between Ussun and her daughter is interesting as well, a mirroring of the Stockholm syndrome already present in The Fifth Season. Still the geographical standstill after all the traveling in the first instalment is a bit of a bummer. Nassun her perspective has much more conflict and moral ambiguity than Essun her storyline, which has a lot of slow study and getting used to a new society.

The stakes are very high, with an utopian society under threat (But if you stay, no part of this comm gets to decide that any part of this comm is expendable. No voting on who gets to be people), major themes of inequality and justice being played out (It is surprising how refreshing this feels. Being judged by what you do, and not what you are) and dystopia taken to a whole other level with cannibalism become a standard way of living through the Fifth Season coming into full swing.

If anything the comm setting of this book made me think a bit of Mockingjay, Divergent with its underground setting and strangely enough also The Dragon Reborn comes to mind, with the obelisks power being a bit like a s'angreal, but executed in an original and well done manner.
Makes me think of the third part of the Hunger Games and the third book of the wheel of time

Hoa is incredible if his genus being a bit overpowered.
And sometimes characters just seem forgotten for a few hundred pages, which feels strange compared to the razor-sharp pacing of the first book.
We also see more of the potential orogenics, with some choices being a bit strange, like why build a tunnel if you could use the same power to wipe out the enemy? The transmutation of orogeny into magic halfway, while the original is already badass enough in a sense, make the characters even more Overpowered
Also the ethics seem a bit harder/less well reflected upon, with one of the main characters even thinking something like: No one needs to die, except your enemies

Sometimes a bit messy, lacking the total freshness of the first part, and some absurd high stakes and reveals, but still very compelling

The Stone Sky - 4 stars
The Fulcrum is not the first institution to have learned an eternal truth of humankind: No need for guards when you can convince people to collaborate in their own internment.

Nassun certainly needs a lot of therapy could also be a good sub title for this grand finale of the trilogy, a mix at times of The Road by Cormac McCarthy, the mountain passage from The Gunslinger by Stephen King and really epic scale anime like Code Geass or Neon Genesis Evangelion.

Emotions run high in this part, sometimes Ykka is the only sensible, if sometimes overly hopeful character, in my view. introducing a whole new society (Syl Anagist) with quite similar exploitation and racism overtones as a third perspective is maybe a bit much in the last part of a series, but gives some background. I am not hundred percent sure how Hoa's people become so radicalised though in such a short period; it feels like a not super well crystallised version of Somni-451 journey to awareness in Cloud Atlas. In general this narrative feels to much alike to Alabaster's or Essun her story. Also too much magic technobabble in his sections for my taste, while I have a high tolerance for that.

Despite this criticism I feel this book is very effective, if for the last big showdown being a bit brief.
It really makes you think of things like if civilization isn’t inherently exploitative, through quotes like:
But for a society built on exploitation, there is no greater threat than having no one left to oppress. And now, if nothing else is done, Syl Anagist must again find a way to fission its people into subgroupings and create reasons for conflict among them. There's not enough magic to be had just from plants and genegineered fauna; someone must suffer, if the rest are to enjoy luxury or You must be tools—and tools cannot be people.

Human endurance and capacity to push on and survive despite horrible conditions and losses really comes back in this volume. What a reader experience in the Broken Earth is the same ecosystem shocks we bring about for or other species, only projected on the human race. In the end there is hopefulness, but not without sacrifice, strive and loss.
A fitting conclusion to a truly impressive trilogy!

NK Jemisin’s Broken Earth trilogy is the first trilogy to win the Hugo Award for Best Novel for all three of its instalments – and it won them in three consecutive years, so inevitably anyone reading it is going to have pretty high expectations. I thought it was… fine. There was some adept character development, and rather than repeat standard sci-fi/fantasy tropes, Jemisin introduced concepts of her own: an angry Father Earth trying to wipe out humanity via earthquakes and other disasters; and Stone Eaters, people made of rock who move through the ground. Her main character is an Orogene, a human gifted with the power to manipulate and soothe the angry earth, but this power is wild and can frequently result in the death of bystanders, both intentionally and by accident, and non-gifted people treat Orogenes as despicable mutants, a la the X-Men, to be either killed in infancy or enslaved to use their powers for the “greater good”. These concepts of Orogenes and the angry earth reflect contemporary, real-word concerns over global warming and the culture wars. I was impressed by the twist Jemisin used to meld the three separate narrative strands in Book One, which was by far the strongest of the trilogy. And the series was primarily written in the second-person, which is an unusual and difficult voice to pull off, but Jemisin managed it.

However, there was a LOT of padding: the Castrima chapters in Book Two and the Syl Anagist chapters in Book Three dragged on with not much happening to characters I wasn’t wholly invested in. This meant that the climactic confrontations which concluded the last two books were sapped of the full impact they should have had. I also couldn’t quite get used to the jargon Jemisin’s characters use – communities are called “comms”, the most common swear word is “rust” or “rusting”. Because these invented terms tended to be slight variations on real-world English, they were jarring rather than fantastical, which impeded my ability to imagine myself into the world (admittedly this is a very minor flaw and pretty common in imagined-world literature, it just bothered me here more than it usually does. I don’t think I can articulate why, though). So I enjoyed reading The Broken Earth well enough, but didn’t think it was great in a Best Novel of the Year sort of way, let alone Best Novel Three Years Running.

However, one further thing I really appreciated was how causally Jemisin introduced trans and queer characters into the narrative as if this was no big thing (much like how the queer characters in The Wire were treated), and how she described the complex, fraught racial dynamics of this fantasy world, in ways that were both alien and familiar to our own. Ultimately, I suspect these novels benefited from the fightback against the Sad Puppies movement, and I’m fine with that. I don’t think the second volume of The Broken Earth was better than Cixin Liu’s Death’s End, for example, but ultimately, awards for art are really a bit nonsense anyway, as you can’t actually rank artistic achievement according to an objective measure. And sometimes the real world intervenes so that you have to allocate prizes in such a way as to take a stand against dickhe*ds.

These novels are... different. I wanted to like them, as I'd heard all the glowing critical reception and had previously read the Dreamblood Duology and reasonably enjoyed that. However, after finally finishing The Broken Earth trilogy the other day, it's become clear to me that this series is fundamentally a propaganda vehicle pushing that same feminist/forced diversity agenda, which already plagues Hollywood and MSM today.

Don't get me wrong, it was indeed well-written and contains rich, original world-building and complex characters, but all the blatant social justice pandering became too much to stomach! Obviously the author is a woman of colour but does she have to push that minority victim narrative so much?

From a black middle-aged, not-particularly-attractive female protagonist, to all the gay/bi characters, to the inevitable array of strong, noble female characters (Essun, Nassun, Ykka, Tonkee, Kelenli), contrasted with the abusive a-hole father figures (notably Jija but also Alabaster, Schaffa, and Gallat to an extent).

Hell, even the Earth itself, which is traditionally always thought of as "Mother Earth" - and with good reason, as nature is inherently feminine not masculine - is now suddenly Father Earth the moment it turns into a raging, evil SOB? Come on, give me a break!

At this point, I would bet solid money that Jemisin has a deep-seated distrust and resentment towards male authority figures. Either way, it becomes tedious and unacceptable when about the only genuinely good male characters are either dead/Stone Eater or else a fawning young doctor obsessed with the beauty of our objectively non-beautiful female lead. These two don't exactly redeem the male gender in the face of all of the above!

Over the course of three medium-sized novels, the oppressive patriarchy angle becomes so relentless it's nearly impossible to overlook. Probably the crowning moment was this cringe-inducing passage from p. 220 of The Stone Sky, which totally pulled me out of the book (not really a spoiler so don't worry):

"They say," Danel continues watching you sidelong, "that a ten-ring rogga broke the world, up in the equatorials."
Okay, no. "Orogene."
"What?"
"Orogene." It's petty, maybe. Because of Ykka's insistence on making rogga a use-caste name, all the stills are tossing the word around like it doesn't mean anything. It's not petty. It means something. "Not 'rogga.' You don't get to say 'rogga'. You haven't earned that."

Talk about hitting the reader over the head! I suspect it's exactly this sort of thing though that won the series all those literary awards.

I'm still giving it a decent rating (3 stars) because, as previously noted, it remains well-written and highly creative. But it would easily score a full point higher if it wasn't so shamelessly pushing a tiresome SJW agenda.

Разбитые земли

Ты живешь в расколотом мире. Давно, когда тут еще смотрели на небо, на планете были города с асфальтом на мостовых и электрическим освещением. Красивые люди в нарядных одеждах гуляли по бульварам среди цветников и фонтанов, говорили о музыке и поэзии, ох Отец-Земля, и о поэзии! Лучший город на свете звался Юмен, столица Империи. Мир был един, говорил на одном языке, нечего было делить им, жив��им на материке. И был великий маг, кому подчинялись стихии. Однажды он сделал что-то, что раскололо твой мир. Империя теперь раздроблена на коммы – множество мелких сообществ, каждое из которых ревниво блюдет свою целостность, привычки и обычаи. Коммы могли бы показаться ужасающим анахронизмом в более стабильном сочетании времени-места, но в разбитых землях они предоставляют большинству единственную возможность выжить сообща: запасы продовольствия и необходимых вещей, созданных кустарями, закон и порядок, который обеспечивают силы местного самоуправления. К четырем привычным сезонам здесь прибавился Пятый – сезон локального Армагеддона. Никто не знает, когда он начнется в очередной раз, сколько продлится, и в чем будет заключаться. Все знают, что большая часть живущих не переживет Пятого сезона. И никто теперь не смотрит в небеса.

Трилогия Норы К.Джемисин «Расколотая Земля» - вещь, во многих смыслах, уникальная. Произведения, удостоенные высших степеней престижных мировых премий, переводятся на русский язык, как правило, оперативно. И не суть, что Хьюго. Небьюла, Локус – премии фантастические. Это на русскоязычном пространстве фантастика загнана в гетто, мир давно признал за ней равенство прочим видам литературы и рассуждать о второсортности Кларка, Азимова, Саймака, .Бредбери, Шекли, Симмонса, Гибсона, или Нила Стивенсона никому в голову не придет. Это отношение англоязычного мира к своим фантастам потеснило привычный российский снобизм и лауреатов переводят достаточно скоро. Всех, кроме Джемисин, которая третий год подряд берет Хьюго со своими романами о Расколотой Земле. Я все ждала перевода, не бралась за чтение, но с третьим романом цикла, награжденным не одним только Хьюго, но и Локусом, и Небьюлой не выдержала. И не пожалела.

В фокусе внимания три женские фигуры, к которым повествование будет циклически возвращаться: девочка, девушка, женщина. Между ними ничего общего, кроме обладания магическими способностями, орогенезем. Имеет смысл подробнее остановиться на особенностях социального устройства здешнего мира. Очень небольшой процент населения потенциально способен производить магические действия с земной твердью, вообще, это совершенно ориентированный на земную стихию мир, о привычных нам четырех (пяти, считая китайское дерево и металл) стихиях в разбитых землях не упоминают. Всегда только Father Earth – Отец-Земля. Магов зовут ородженами и участь их здесь незавидна, ребенок, в котором родственники или знакомые углядели магические задатки, скорее всего, будет убит... родителями. Как вариант – отдан стражникам, которые собирают маленьких волшебников вместе, воспитывают и обучают их, главным образом, контролировать усилием воли спонтанные разрушительные импульсы. Нет, не Хогвартс, здешняя образовательная система более всего напоминает пенитенциарную, а детей, недостаточно хорошо справляющихся с овладением навыками самоконтроля убивают. Такая история: направо пойдешь – коня потеряешь, налево пойдешь – себя потеряешь. В случае, если студент справляется успешно, он подвергается испытаниям и получает право на ношение кольца, как знака своей причастности к касте ородженов. Каждая новая ступень мастерства – дополнительное кольцо. Лучшие маги останутся в почетном пожизненном рабстве у правительства, худших - отправят смирять небольшие локальные землетрясения на станциях Императорской Дороги, предварительно подвергнув лоботомии (чтобы ненужных мыслей не рождалось).

«Господа, вы звери»? ��ет, просто они хорошо знают, что может натворить даже один стихийный ороджен (рогга - так их тут обзывают). Девочку по имени Дамайя (Дама-Дама), которая едва не убила обидевшего ее одноклассника, родители держат, как собаку на цепи в ожидании стражника, который заберет в столицу. Учиться. И не хотят отдать пальто, а на улице зима. У нее есть троюродный брат, ему пригодится. А помрет – так помрет. Он заберет ее, Шаффа, укроет от холода, впервые в жизни накормит досыта, и будет заботиться о ней, и сломает руку – просто за тем, чтобы преподать первый урок повиновения, смирения и самоконтроля. Молодая прелестная, но уже обладающая четырьмя кольцами Сайенит (Сайен для близких) путешествует в обществе мага высшей ступени Алебастра (занятно, он чернокожий, если вы понимаете, о чем я). Их отправили в рыбачью деревушку, выход которой в море перегородил кусок скалы, обелиск, и нужно разрушить его направленной магией. Сайен терпеть не может Алебастра, но в здешнем мире полезные человеческие свойства культивируются, руководствуясь примерно теми же принципами и методами, какими мы при селекции породистых животных и растений. Дополнительным (или основным?) результатом совместной поездки должно стать зачатие юной волшебницей ребенка от мага.

Эссан за сорок, она – ты (потому что часть этой героини всегда во втором лице единственного числа). Жила в маленьком южном городке с мужем и двумя детьми, дочерью Нассун, отцовской любимицей и сынишкой Ича, он младший и больше похож на тебя. Ты пришлая в этом комме, тебя тут терпят, устроилась учительницей в начальную школу, а мужа твоего, силача и красавца Джийю все любят и знают. У вас отличная семья. Была. До вчерашнего дня, Вчера Джийя забил Ичу насмерть, обнаружив у него унаследованный от тебя орогенез. Страшно? Да. Страшно интересно, я серьезно, это интересно читать и тут очень простой английский язык, без постмодернистских вывертов и намеренной остраненности. И объем не кажется таким уж неподъемным. И финал окажется совершенно неожиданным. Это я еще о камнеедах ничего не сказала. Будем надеяться, что трилогию Джемисин переведут таки на русский, она того стоит.

[Note: this review covers the entire series, not just a single title. I bought the books separately and not as part of a boxed set, if that makes a difference.]

Recently, I came across reports of some medical studies about the dermatological condition called rosacea. (I think the studies themselves are fairly recent; here’s a summary.)

The gist of these studies: possible connections, even correlations, between rosacea and the presence on the skin of a common type of mite, and the bacteria that the mite carries in its gut.

Of course, dermal mites don’t (as we understand them) have anything like conscious intent — even less so, the bacteria they carry. But imagine, if you will, that these tiny creatures are conscious enough at least to know that they can get something from human beings that they can get nowhere else — something needed not just to survive, but to flourish. Imagine that they have evolved and are shrewd enough to learn that they can pull even more of this something from us than is available merely on the surface. Imagine the horror when a human host discovers this, begins swatting at its face, douses itself with pharmaceutical and cosmetic substances, trains lasers at itself…

…imagine the fury, the hatred in the human host, then, when it learns that none of these superficial “treatments” helps; they seem, in fact, to make things even worse. How might the human host respond, finally?

And now: picture the Earth, and billions of creatures swarming across it…

__________

Speaking purely intellectually and scientifically, the speculative-fiction author named N.K. Jemisin is a representative of the species known as hom*o sapiens. At another level, though, it’s obvious that she has actually been transported among us from somewhere extra-galactic. How else to explain her 100% convincing knowledge of things human, but outside human experience?

Let us consider the present case, that is, these three justly celebrated, best-selling novels. (Jemisin is the only author ever to have received three consecutive Hugo Best Novel awards, in three successive years, at that.) Each is plenty big enough to stand alone (total paperback length: 1400+ pages). But collectively they depict, in depth, an Earth that no one alive has ever lived on. (Indeed, for a while I couldn’t decide: was this an Earth that existed a million or so years ago? or was it an Earth that will exist that far in the future? or, perhaps, was it Jemisin’s own home planet, its history simply recounted in translated-to-humanspeak form?)

Yet Jemisin’s Earth has many features we might recognize as those of our own Earth — for instance:

-- It’s spherical, its surface comprising both land masses and seas, subject to climatic and geological forces.
-- It has one moon.
-- Of the creatures who populate the surface, humans remain (a bit precariously) at the top of the food chain.

But then, so much about Jemisin’s Earth is so, well, weird… E.g.:

-- Nearly its entire surface area is squeezed together on on one side of the planet.
-- The Moon orbits very eccentrically; it goes away for centuries at a time, and when it returns, it hangs around for only a few days.
-- Humanity, on this fictional Earth, inhabit nothing resembling what we’d call cities (although people call them that) — more like towns, hamlets, villages — because all such settlements survive (if at all) for no more than a couple thousand years, after which they’re all reduced to uninhabitable rubble and ash… all at the same time. Periodically, then, all humans must become nomads, and start something like “civilization” all over again.

So, you might think: this is a novel of Earth, post-apocalypse. But not exactly, no; it’s a novel of Earth, post-apocalyseS, plural. Its geology runs amok, unpredictably. And, somehow, a rudimentary humanity carries on.

What an Earth. And especially, what humans…

__________

Occasionally in my nonfiction reading over the years, I’d encountered the word orogeny — always (I think) capitalized in such phrases as the Andean Orogeny and the Alpine Orogeny. I’d never bothered to look up a definition, because (a) it obviously had something to do with mountains, and/or with geologic ages associated with them, and (b) I’d just, well, never encountered it often enough to be more curious about it. (So many words, so little time.) After all, I did get the whole continental-drift, plate-tectonics thing; I’d read plenty about the general concepts. (Among other things, I’d read, and loved, the entirety of John McPhee’s five-book series collectively called Annals of the Former World, which won the Pulitzer Prize in 1999. The word orogeny makes dozens of appearances therein.)

So orogeny, I “knew.” But until Jemisin’s series, I’d never seen the word “orogene.” (I’m confident she must have invented it; it’s perfect for her purposes.) I shall leave the details to your own imagination and curiosity, and perhaps reading, but, on Jemisin’s Earth:

First, the biological taxonomic genus hom*o survives, all right, in good old species sapiens form.

…but scattered around among the humans exist an uncanny subspecies, or perhaps a different species altogether, collectively referred to as orogenes. Outwardly, they differ from “regular” humans not at all, and indeed have all the same physical traits we recognize as human: varying skin tones and hair textures, for example. They have the same skeletal structures, the same eyes, the same number of fingers and toes. Clearly, they’ve evolved from, and alongside, hom*o sapiens.

And as an obviously heavily-outnumbered minority, orogenes suffer all the same burdens of prejudice as so-called “races” and “outsider” groups on our own Earth. The majority fear and hate them for their difference; they sequester orogenes in sub-communities of their own, especially as children who haven’t yet learned their alleged place in the primitive-but-civilized world of the majority. (Orogenes are sneered at, and even assigned their own epithetic slur: they’re called roggas — another very clever invented word, crackling with the same sweeping vocal contempt as its counterparts on this earth.)

So apart from their value as imagined “others,” convenient victims, why do the rest of humanity permit — encourage, even embrace — orogenes’ existence?

Answer: their survival value to the species as a whole. The value is right there, in the word “orogene.” The geologic forces which have come to shape Jemisin’s Earth act not only (as here and now) over the course of eons, but in the form of occasional continental, even global cataclysms — volcanic eruptions and entire chains of eruptions, bursting explosively through the surface, dividing the continent into land masses separated not by water but by fire. The sky, for centuries after such events, rains ash. People forget what sunlight even is. The lucky ones manage to scratch out existence, somehow. In fact, that these events have not completely destroyed all life is attributable solely to the interventions of (yes) the orogenes.

Throughout the time I was reading the series, I thought about natural disasters we ourselves know (or at least know of): hurricanes and tornadoes, tsunamis and floods, earthquakes and volcanoes, meteor and asteroid strikes… We accept, grudgingly, that they constitute a class of events we can do nothing about; we don’t think about them unless they clobber us, personally. And even then, well, what can we do except react to them, ex post facto — organize relief programs, send in the doctors and the undertakers? (This futility certainly lies behind the absurd resistance to climate-change science and warnings.)

With her orogenes, Jemisin has provided an “out” for the rest of us (called “the stills” in the books). For orogenes, it seems, cannot just sense the approach of seismic events; they can counter them. They do so via a pair of organs, part of the neurologic system, called “sessapinae” — the act of sensing such events is referred to as sessing them; the act of controlling them, simply orogeny or, more grandly, geomagestry.

(The stills also possess sessapinae, as do animals, but they’re useful only in triggering a vague sense of disquiet: Something is about to happen—, they think. And then it does.)

So that’s the general geometry, then, of society on the Earth of the stills: simply awaiting the next worldwide disaster, ignoring the certainty until it happens, coping with the aftereffects of the previous one in the meantime, all while living in tremulous, uneasy harmony (which sometimes dissolves into discord) with the orogenes… They, in turn, become tools of the majority, quelling tremors and micro-tremors (while occasionally flaring up in righteous, disastrous anger): managing, to the extent possible, the rebellious Earth.

__________

I won’t get into details of specific characters, plot points, relationships, “the way things work” on, yes, this broken Earth; that’s where your reading pleasure lies ahead of you. I did, though, want to touch on a couple elements of the style in which book’s written.

The first book, The Fifth Season, opens with a prologue called “you are here” (all lowercase). The prologue begins, in turn, like this:

Let’s start with the end of the world, why don’t we? Get it over with and move on to more interesting things.

First, a personal ending. There is a thing she will think over and over in the days to come, as she imagines how her son died and tries to make sense of something so innately senseless. She will cover Uche’s broken little body with a blanket—except his face, because he is afraid of the dark—and she will sit beside it numb, and she will pay no attention to the world that is ending outside. The world has already ended within her, and neither ending is for the first time. She’s old hat at this by now.

What she thinks then, and thereafter, is: But he was free.

And it is her bitter, weary self that answers this almost-question every time her bewildered, shocked self manages to produce it:

He wasn’t. Not really. But now he will be.

-- The only proper name, Uche, evidently identifies a small person, probably (“he is afraid of the dark”) a now deceased little boy.
-- Something very, very bad has happened — “the end of the world” — is currently happening, has happened before, and will no doubt happen again.
-- The bitter, weary “she” of this passage is an unnamed someone who not only knows what has happened (“She’s old hat at this by now”), but knows that it’s part of a cycle and, perhaps, what her role in it might be. She is horrified not only by what has happened to the world at large, but what has happened, specifically, to her son Uche.

I will say, though, that it took me a long time to work all this out. I started reading the book in early 2019, so can’t claim to have been pandemic-distracted. But I was still working fulltime, and reading, almost exclusively, only in the half-hour or so before conking out at night. I don’t remember and certainly did not record when things changed for me, but it may have been this passage, about a quarter of the way into the book. It’s a fragment of what is apparently some ancient writing which has somehow survived to the present (on Jemisin’s Earth) age:

Listen, listen, listen well.

There was an age before the Seasons, when life and Earth, its father, thrived alike. (Life had a mother, too. Something terrible happened to Her.) Earth our father knew He would need clever life, so He used the Seasons to shape us out of animals: clever hands for making things and clever minds for solving problems and clever tongues for working together and clever sessapinae to warn us of danger. The people became what Father Earth needed, and then more than He needed. Then we turned on Him, and He has burned with hatred for us ever since.

Remember, remember, what I tell.

I was exhausted, thereafter, and didn’t pick up book #2 (The Obelisk Gate) for another year. It, and #3 (The Stone Sky), went down in almost a single stupendous binge-read which just ended last weekend.

Very highly recommended. Bring some patience, and some open-mindedness as well. There’s a lot going on, including shifting points of view and the occasional hand-waving, verging-on-scientific “explanations” of science-fictional/fantasy worlds. (It’s easy to forgive in Jemisin’s world, since science itself has been periodically destroyed and rebuilt many times over the course of millennia.)

But as in so much other great, epic literature, the Broken Earth trilogy has less to do with the sweep of historic global events than with the drumbeat of human decisions and relationships. People — of whatever (sub)species — aren’t just pawns of the storytelling: they’re the whole point.

[Review verbatim from the corresponding post at my blog, Running After My Hat.