The Stone Sky by N.K. Jemisin (The Broken Earth, book 3)
Started: 13 June 2020
Finished: 12 July 2020
14 June update: I’m only 100 pages in writing this, BUT: I was sitting up at 2AM just marveling at how this trilogy is a worldbuilding MASTERCLASS. Jemisin gives the reader exactly what they need to understand at the exact moment they need it. She uncovers the layers of history and lore with such slight of hand you hardly even notice how brilliantly it is done. There are no info dumps. Let me repeat: there are NO info dumps, with a world that is ceaselessly interconnected and complicated and unfamiliar from our own (yet also very familiar, in heartbreaking ways). It is astounding.
12 July update: Just finished. Yessss, I procrastinated. As happens for unknown reasons with books and other media, I put them down when I feel like I won’t be able to give them proper time. It’s not a sign of how much I was liking the thing, it’s just a thing I do.
In this case, I think my subconscious sessed (yup, I’m using this verb in everyday speech now, DEAL WITH IT) the end was going to be an emotional rollercoaster I’d want to finish in one go, which was absolutely rusting correct. No spoiler here: but, these books are devastating. They are beautiful. The words on the page are raw emotion. I’m not even trying to be superfluous by saying this is the heightened form of fiction: truth so sharp it cuts to the bone and makes you bleed. A world removed just enough from our own to show us our true colors, ugliness and all.
“Where there is pain in this book, it is real pain; where there is anger, it is real anger; where there is love, it is real love.”
N.K. Jemisin, The Stone Sky
2020 Reads:
- The Institute by Stephen King
- An Absolutely Remarkable Thing by Hank Green
- Turtles All the Way Down by John Green
- Starsight by Brandon Sanderson
- Every Heart a Doorway by Seanan McGuire
- Rosemary and Rue: An October Daye Novel by Seanan McGuire
- The Kingdom of Copper by S. A. Chakraborty
- Crescent City: House of Earth and Blood by Sarah J. Maas
- Girls of Storm and Shadow by Natasha Ngan
- The Fifth Season by N.K. Jemisin
- The Obelisk Gate by N.K. Jemisin
- The Stone Sky by N.K. Jemisin