★★★★ (of 5)

• Full Title: The Stone Sky
• Author: N.K. Jemisin
• Year: 2017 (mine was a trade paperback)
• Pages: 398*
• Genre: Fantasy
• Publisher: Orbit
• ISBN 978-0-316-22924-1 (trade paperback)
• Wikipedia page
• Author’s Wikipedia page

(* not counting appendices, acknowledgements, “meet the author”, or sneak peaks of other books)

 

Summary

The Stone Sky won the 2018 Hugo for Best Novel, the third year of a three-year Jemisin sweep (no other author has won three consecutive best novel Hugos, nor has any other author won this Hugo for all three books of the same trilogy). It follows 2015’s The Fifth Season and 2016’s The Obelisk Gate.

Beginning almost exactly where the previous book left off, The Stone Sky is set on the same planet with mostly the same character set as the previous two books — including people called “orogenes” who can sense and cause (or prevent) earthquakes and other seismological events, magic beings that can move through stone (and look like statues), and magical floating obelisks that can enhance everyone’s magic. (Can’t say much else here without it being considered a spoiler.)

It’s epic fantasy and also an adventure novel.

It differs from the first two books in three major ways: (1) we finally start getting more answers than questions, (2) has an ending, and (3) utilizes the first-person far more often.

 

Points For

As with the others, I think I can see why it might be considered a Hugo contender (though I haven’t read the other 2018 contenders). It has depth and power, competently differentiated characters with understandable yet contrary motivations, and it seems unlike any other series of books I’ve read (though I haven’t read a lot of fantasy), and the world-building is top notch. Jemisin did more than slap non-standard names on cities and characters and throw in some earthquake magic; it’s clear that long histories have been considered and created behind these pages. Descriptions of people and places were sharp enough for me to visualize the goings-on — without getting in the way.

It was immediately clear to me why I would like this one slightly better than the previous two books: it started explaining things that the first two books had only hinted at. I don’t mean it was entirely exposition; there was plenty of action and dialog and movement in this book too. It’s just that so many questions (many of which I’d already lost track of) were laid to rest. Where the stoneeaters come from, for example. Also, unlike the other books, this one had a conclusion.

 

Points Off For...

Still, points come off for the story being mostly in other books. (If you use an entire trilogy to tell a story, each book is going to contain less than half the story.) The first book had a beginning; the second one simply continued the story; this one has the ending.

The perspective-switching is still highly unusual and difficult to read. Like the first two books, signficant parts of this one are in second-person (Essun is always referred to as “you” by the narrator), and parts are in third-person. Unlike the other books, this one had huge chunks in first-person as well — the narrator finally telling his own backstory (which is where most of the explanations come from). And, like the others, this one is entirely in present tense. It’s irritating, because how can you be telling me this story about something that happened, if it’s happening NOW? Just as before, my brain switched into active-translation mode, changing verbs and pronouns in real-time as I read. It slows me down but allows me to continue. A book will never get five stars from me with these kinds of shenanigans.

 

The Trilogy

These three books together tell one story. This is really a single novel (The Broken Earth) of about 1,200 pages, and each book should be called a “Part” or “Volume” rather than pretending they’re all three separate novels.

As a single narrative, there’s no question in my mind that this three-part novel should be on “best of” lists. It’s when they’re broken into separate books and treated separately that I have trouble, due to issues mentioned above.

(I posted a separate Goodreads review for the trilogy.)

 

Conclusion

Parts of this last book were so good that I couldn’t put it down. Near the end, I enjoyed it less as so much of the climax was predictable by then. And I couldn’t get over the present tense and second person. But it was a fitting conclusion to the trilogy, and the trilogy as a whole is very good.

 

 

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