Book Review: The Broken Earth Trilogy

“Well, some worlds are built on a fault line of pain, held up by nightmares. Don’t lament when those worlds fall. Rage that they were built doomed in the first place.”

N. K. Jemisin’s The Broken Earth trilogy is simply the best fantasy series WC has read in the last 25 years. It’s better than the late Roger Zelazny’s Lord of Light or Frank Herbert’s Dune. The first two novels – The Fifth Season and Obelisk Gate – won back-to-back Hugo Awards, the first time ever that an author has won in sequential years. It’s smart money that the concluding volume, The Stone Sky, will win in 2018.

The Fifth Season is a brilliantly structured, beautifully written story, set in an absolute gem of world construction. The world that could be a far future Earth, where geological tectonic forces are so active and so catastrophic that life and human culture have evolved to assume there will be another apocalypse soon. The “extinction events” found in our Earth’s past, where meteors or massive volcanic eruptions happen at intervals of millions of years? In Jemisin’s world, where the single large continent is called “The Stillness,” those extinction events happen every few hundred years. They happen so often they are called “The Fifth Season.” The first novel follows the lives of three women, a child, a 20-something, and a 40-something females, and uses their lives to reveal Jemisin’s richly imagined world. It’s a world as riddled with fault lines as the geology of The Stillness.

In The Stillness, there are a small number of humans who have the ability to control, to some extent, the geologic forces around them. The skill and power of these Orogenes varies from feeble to terrifyingly strong. Orogenes are necessary to humanity’s survival, but deeply loathed and feared by the Stills, untalented normal humans. The Orogenes themselves are managed by a race of Guardians, who both protect the Orogenes from Stills and keep the Orogenes under harsh, almost sadistic control. The Fifth Season is set at the start of another Fifth Season, another extinction event. The writing is brilliant. The plotting impeccable. And the story is shattering.

“They’re afraid because we exist, she says, There’s nothing we did to provoke their fear, other than exist. There’s nothing we can do to earn their approval, except stop existing—so we can either die like they want, or laugh at their cowardice and go on with our lives.”

 

The Obelisk Gate follows two characters, a mother and daughter, separated by horrific events. Both are damaged – there are very few undamaged characters in the trilogy – and their struggles to deal with a broken world and their broken selves frames this middle novel. Jemesin does a slow reveal of the history of The Stillness, and by “history” WC is talking about an author who is willing to write about events over geological epochs. It’s difficult to describe the plot without serious spoilers, but that second Hugo Award was richly deserved. WC will describe it this way: in most trilogies, the middle book is the weakest, a bridge between the reveal of the first book and the conclusion in the third. Obelisk does not suffer this weakness. The Obelisk Gate richly deserved the 2017 Hugo Award.

“It’s just that love and hate aren’t mutually exclusive”

 

 

Which takes us to the third and concluding novel, The Stone Sky. Jemisin not only answers most of the questions raised by the first two novels; she manages to reveal stunning details of The Stillness cleverly embedded in the first two books. And sets up a stunning. tragic confrontation with earth-shattering stakes. The conclusion is moving, revelatory and self-consistent. And brilliantly written. WC’s only regret on finishing the trilogy was that he had finished the trilogy. Again, this is certain to be a nominee and likely the odds-on favorite for the 2018 Hugo.

By the way: be sure to read the acknowledgments at the end.

WC wishes that Ken Philip were still with us; the conversations we could have had about the layers of meaning in these three books…

WC’s more cynical readers will smile knowingly: “Geology and fantasy? No wonder you liked it.”

Sure, WC liked that geology – plate tectonics –  is a premise in a fantasy novel. But as important as tectonics are to the story – Orogenes is a neologism of orogeny, mountain building – it’s Jemisin’s brilliant writing, plotting and characterization that make this trilogy so powerful.

WC has a few tips for readers. Keep your eye on the narrator. The identity and motives of the narrator are important. Context is everything. Pay attention to context. Oh, and it’s pretty good on a re-read, too.

This is literature. This is damn fine writing. This is well worth your time. Read this.