The Obelisk Gate by N.K. Jemisen

Gods! I’m still reeling and craving and just in a….stupor (more like a coma). Daze. I’m still just thinking up more adjectives.

Aah seriously!!

So I just read The Obelisk Gate today or more like just finished it an hour ago (right before dinner), it’s still fresh in my mind (too much so). I’ve been waiting quite some time for it, since I read The Fifth season, but I’ve kind of been dreading it too. I loved The Fifth season – the complexity of its characters, the world building, the concept. Even so, there was just so much tragedy and despair and no sun on the horizon (no possible happy ending in sight). And the character’s, well I can’t say I wholeheartedly approve them though they aren’t really in the wrong, and they certainly aren’t evil (at least in the normal sense of the word). Their motivation’s are partially known or obscured, depends how you look upon it and certainly not in tandem.

Well, in The Obelisk Gate, you get to see more of the other character’s and more into them. Nassun (Essun’s daughter), Hoa, and even Schaffa (Essun’s once Guardian). And Of course there is Essun. I think I like The Obelisk Gate better, if on nothing else than principle. There’s still that awful despair and impending sense of doom but at least it’s constructive. And there’s the fact that this book is ‘gravitational’, you just can’t help reading further, wanting to know. You understand more about the opposing factions, and who all are involved in or perpetuating the war. And that a lot of these round about concepts of orogeny come to and through the discovery of magic. That’s plenty to think upon, and you should properly discover the rest yourself.

Another thing and this is about both The Fifth season and The Obelisk Gate, since I read M.L.S weech’s post about third person limited omniscient and third person omniscient, I’m wondering, is this book a mixture of those two or is it second person and third person limited omnicient or another writing style. I never thought much about books in these terms, but after having read that post, can’t help but wonder.

It’s a 4.75/5 stars…

Of which I nabbed the .25 because, well, I think you know after reading my review.

The fifth season by N.K. Jemisin

When we say “the world has ended,” it’s usually a lie, because the planet is just fine. But this is the way the world ends. This is the way the world ends. This is the way the world ends. For the last time.

I had known about N.K. Jemisin’s The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms for quite some time except I just couldn’t bring myself to read it. I don’t know why I decided to read her newest book, The fifth season, though I’m glad I did. I’m not a fan of tragedies, and this book is a great big mass of tragedy, so much so that I wonder if there will ever be a happily ever after, but oh well, it’s still interesting. The book simultaneously traverses across three timelines. In the beginning you think that these three are different people, but later realise that they are, all three of them, the same person at different ages.

I won’t say that I really like her characters (sometimes I do), they’re sort of hard to connect with. They’re also somewhat distant though I do sympathise with them. They have, from the beginning of their lives, been brutalized emotionally, manipulated and controlled. The orogenes, people who can control how the plates of the earth shift, creating or stopping earthquakes, are despised and feared. The main character, who we first know only as Essun is an Orogene. She comes home to find her son beaten to death by her husband and her daughter missing along with the husband. This is her Journey.

The novel’s not exactly beautiful, more like brutal and painful, like their world itself but I will also say that never once, was it ever boring.

Summary from goodreads:

THIS IS THE WAY THE WORLD ENDS… FOR THE LAST TIME.

A season of endings has begun.

It starts with the great red rift across the heart of the world’s sole continent, spewing ash that blots out the sun.

It starts with death, with a murdered son and a missing daughter.

It starts with betrayal, and long dormant wounds rising up to fester.

This is the Stillness, a land long familiar with catastrophe, where the power of the earth is wielded as a weapon. And where there is no mercy.