The Broken Earth Trilogy

The Broken Earth Trilogy

The Fifth Season, The Obelisk Gate, The Stone Sky

by

Completed: December 18, 2021
★★★★★

The dichotomy between his gentle words and cruel actions has confused her too much.

The Earth forgets netiher those who stabbed it in the back… nor those who put the knife in our hand.”

Highly recommend the entire trilogy.

I am not an avid fantasy reader, and this set of novels is definitely more fantasy than science fiction, so maybe the 5 stars is colored by that. But what a set of novels - the world building is incredible; the character development is really great; the plot and story telling is very good; the story is written quite tightly in that I rarely found myself getting impatient or felt that it was meandering; and the quality of writing is very good indeed. There honestly are almost no weaknesses across the board, and the strengths are considerable. If you are someone who enjoys science fiction or fantasy at all, I highly suggest you pick it up if you haven’t already. If you’re not sure you enjoy science fiction or fantasy, but are intrigued by world building, then there’s no better set of novels to start with than this.

Let’s just say that all the considerable hype and plaudits sent the way of N. K. Jemisin are richly deserved. Bravo.

There’s no point excerpting anything from the novels, since it is so tied to world building and character development. But just for my own notes, a few excerpts that stuck with me.

From The Fifth Season:

Imagine that his face aches from smiling. He’s been smiling for hours: teeth clenched, lips drawn back, eyes crinkled so the crow’s feet show. There is an art to smiling in a way that others will believe. It is always important to include the eyes; otherwise, people will know you hate them.

“Don’t look back,” Schaffa advises. “It’s easier that way.” So she doesn’t. Later, she will realize he was right about this, too.

Much later, though, she will wish that she had done it anyway.

You’re smiling, too, though, and it is a bitter, aching thing. You just can’t help acknowledging the irony of the whole thing. Didn’t want to wait for death to come for you. Right.

Stupid, stupid woman. Death was always here. Death is you.

“Wh-why?” Her voice is hitchy. It takes effort to draw breath. It seems impossible that this is happening, on a road in the middle of nowhere, on a sunny, quiet afternoon. She doesn’t understand. Her family has shown her that love is a lie. It isn’t stone-solid; instead it bends and crumbles away, weak as rusty metal. But she had thought that Schaffa liked her.

Schaffa keeps stroking her broken hand. “I love you,” he says.
…
Then he takes her broke hand in both of his. “Brace yourself.”

She can’t, because she doesn’t understand what he means to do. The dichotomy between his gentle words and cruel actions has confused her too much.

She recovers when the door opens again, and another Coaster woman, elderly and portly, comes in with a chastened-looking Asael. The governor’s a man. Syenite sighs inwardly and braces herself for more weaponized politeness.

“I’m coming back. I do like it here, you know. I just get…restless.”

“You’re always restless. What are you looking for?”

She shakes her head. “I don’t know.”
But she thinks, almost but not quite subconsciously: A way to change things. Because this is not right.

He’s always good at guessing her thoughts. “You can’t make anything better,” he says, heavily. “The world is what it is. Unless you destroy it and start all over again, there’s no changing it.” He sighs, rubs his face against her breast. “Take what you can get out of it, Syen. Love your son. Even live the pirate life if that makes you happy. But stop looking for anything better than this.”

From The Obelisk Gate:

A dilemma: You are made of so many people you do not wish to be. Including me.

But you know so little of me. I will attempt to explain the context of me, if not the detail. It begins - I began - with a war.

It’s all so understandable, really, when she thinks about it. The way of the world isn’t the strong devouring the weak, but the weak deceiving and poisoning and whispering in the ears of the strong until they become weak, too. Then it’s all broken hands and silver threads woven like ropes, and mothers who move the earth to destroy their enemies but cannot save one little boy.
(Girl)

Nassun sighs and rubs her face with her hands, as weary as Father Earth must be after so many eternities of hate. Hate is tiring. Nihilism is easier, though she doesn not know the word and will not for a few years. It’s what she’s feeling, regardless: an overwhelming sense of the meaninglessness of it all.

From the Stone Sky:

“Think with something more than the selfishness of a child, little Nassun. And ask yourself: Even if I could help you save that controlling, sadistic sack of shit that currently passes for your adoptive father figure, why would I? Not even my enemy deserves that fate. No one does.”

Nassun’s still shaking. She blurts, bravely, “Sch-Schaffa might want to live.”

“He might. But should he? Should anyone, forever? That is the question.”

None of us got here overnight. There are stages to the process of being betrayed by your society. One is jolted from a place of complacency by the discovery of difference, by hypocrisy, by inexplicable or incongruous ill treatment. What follows is a time of confusion – unlearning what one thought to be the truth. Immersing oneself in the new truth. And then a decision must be made.

Some accept their fate. Swallow their pride, forget the real truth, embrace the falsehood for all they’re worth – because, they decide, they cannot be worth much. If a whole society has dedicated itself to their subjugation, after all, then surely they deserve it? Even if they don’t, fighting back is too painful, too impossible. At least this way there is peace, of a sort. Fleetingly.

The alternative is to demand the impossible. It isn’t right, they whisper, weep, shout; what has been done to them is not right. They are not inferior. They do not deserve it. And so it is the society that must change. There can be peace this way, too, but not before conflict.

No one reaches this place without a false start or two.

All book cover images are from Goodreads unless specified otherwise.

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