The Stone Sky

Starred review from July 3, 2017
The earthshaking conclusion to Jemisin’s powerful postapocalyptic Broken Earth trilogy (after The Obelisk Gate) finds the fate of a damaged world in the hands of a mother, who wants to save it, and her daughter, who wants to destroy it. Essun believes she is the only person left alive who has the power and skill to open the magical Obelisk Gate and wield its power to save her cataclysm-rocked planet, the Stillness, which is being torn apart by an ancient experiment that got out of hand. But she is caught between that duty and her need to find Nassun, her 10-year-old daughter. Nassun’s father killed her brother and took her away because both children shared their mother’s dangerous talent; he hoped to “cure” her, but instead she has become incredibly powerful. Essun’s search grows urgent when she learns that Nassun is being guided by a dangerous mentor with plans of his own. Jemisin draws Essun and Nassun perfectly, capturing a mother’s guilt and pride and a daughter’s determination to survive on her own terms. The Stillness, where ancient science is powered by magic, is unforgettable. Vivid characters, a tautly constructed plot, and outstanding worldbuilding meld into an impressive and timely story of abused, grieving survivors fighting to fix themselves and save the remnants of their shattered home. Agent: Lucienne Diver, Knight Agency.

July 15, 2017
Jemisin concludes her Broken Earth trilogy (The Obelisk Gate, 2016, etc.), about a vengeful Earth whose tectonic instability can be controlled by the despised and feared orogenes.Slowly turning to stone as a result of her contact with the Obelisk Gate, Essun nevertheless must repeat that contact to magically grab the long-lost Moon, assuaging the anger of the Earth and ending the devastating Seasons that rock the planet. Meanwhile, her estranged daughter, Nassun, has her own plan to take the Gate for herself and use it to destroy the humans who have responded viciously to the earth shaking and earth-quelling powers of her orogene brethren. Threaded throughout is the story of the stone eater Hoa, who explains his origins from several millennia earlier and how his own struggle to gain his freedom led to the Earth losing the Moon in the first place. Jemisin continues to break the heart with her sensitive, cleareyed depictions of a beyond-dysfunctional family and the extraordinarily destructive force that is prejudice. She wrestles with moral issues at an extreme level: obviously, the cruel discipline and mutilation that orogenes are subjected to violate all standards of decency, and not only is it evil, it's simply the height of idiocy to exterminate the only people capable of calming a constantly tumultuous landscape. But how does one compassionately instill the appropriate discipline in a child who can also casually and inadvertently destroy a village? Can love survive such training? Jemisin deliberately refuses to provide easy answers: they're simply not available, in this world or ours. Painful and powerful.

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July 1, 2017

Essun is now the planet's most powerful orogene, a human in full possession of the elemental powers. Having unleashed the power of the Gate, destroyed the community that took her in, and killed Alabaster Tenring, she now suffers the same effects that Alabaster was succumbing to. Before she completely turns into stone (the result of wielding her full orogene powers), Essun has two goals: catch the Moon and save the human race, and find her daughter, Nassun. Nassun is on her own quest. She travels with the damaged guardian Schaffa to the other side of the world, where Nassun believes she can find the root of the power she feels. The anger and hatred toward her own kind, until now, has shown her life's darker side. For Nassun, sometimes the only way to fix something is to destroy it. VERDICT The powerful conclusion to the "Broken Earth" trilogy (The Fifth Season, The Obelisk Gate) will please the author's many fans with its fully developed world, detailed settings, and complex characters.--KC

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