#the broken earth trilogu

[wutheringmights]

I finished The Stone Sky by N.K. Jemisin last night, then spent all of today digesting it. I really needed time to figure out how I feel about this book, nonetheless the Broken Earth trilogy.

As a whole, I like this series. My biggest praise will always go to the relationship between Essun and Nassun. That Essun, a woman defined by her motherhood, was a terrible mother to her daughter, and that her daughter in turn found solace in her mother's old abuser, is fascinating. It's insane. I would read a hundred books about them.

But even though the series is about Essun and Nassun, it's so just... not. I've complained before that the intricate world building is as fascinating as it is distracting. The narrative is always scrambling to explain something new, so much so that the characters aren't allowed to interact as much as they should.

I'm not even just talking about Essun and Nassun. Tonkee was wasted. She was first introduced in the very first book, and she was very cool and interesting. I kept waiting for the reason why Tonkee is in this story beyond a few lines of needed exposition. But after the first book, she stops being important.

Outside of characters like Schaffa, Hoa, and Alabaster, I didn't really care or know any of the other characters in the large cast. In theory, I'm supposed to have feelings about Lerna and Ykka, but... no. They served a function. And that's it.

The plot of this series just baffles me. Why did we spend so much time with Castrima? Why did Nassun have to keep finding excuses to not go after Essun? Why was this three books? This could have been duology! If I really wanted to, I could put on a tin foil hat and claim that someone outside Jemisin forced her to turn a two-book plot into a trilogy. I'm just utterly baffled that someone would let this story meander like this.

All my griping aside, I don't hate this series. I like it a lot, but on a intellectual scale.

This book is filled with fascinating observations about our society. I bet someone who knows more about the neo slave narratives of the 20th century would be able to write a killer paper on how this series ruminates on the legacy of authors like Butler and Morrison.

I like all of the complicated characters, how they defy dichotomies like good vs evil. Nassun is one hell of a character. I want to study her. I want more of her.

I don't want to pit two bad bitches against each other, but I can't help but compare this series to R.F. Kuang's The Poppy War trilogy. They have little in common, but they are both dark fantasy series I read this year, so bear with me.

The more distance I put between myself and Kuang, the more I struggle with how simplistic her stories can be at times. She doesn't leave a lot of room for interpretation or for the reader to introduce their own feelings to the mix. If you scrape off the overt violence, it surprisingly simple. It's a series that doesn't require a whole lot of input from the reader. But, the plot has fantastic momentum. Each book by itself is a joy to read.

Jemisin embraces uncertainty far more. There are no clear answers. The reader meets these characters and are forced to come to their own conclusions about them. Everything from its world to its themes gets more complex the more thought you put into them. The book demands you think about it. But, each book is kind of a slog. I always had to force myself to pick it up and read the next part. I never regretted doing so, but I also never really fell in love with the series the way I wanted to.

This is a case where I can say that a series is objectively excellent, but not really for me. I'm glad I read them all and I'm going to continue diving deeper into Jemisin's books. But I am so very glad to get the Broken Earth trilogy off my plate.

I also want to talk about the acknowledgements at the end of the book. In it, Jemisin explains that she wrote the trilogy while caring for her sick mother, who died before the last book was finished. I wish I got this context sooner. As Jemisin says, the trilogy is inadvertently an exploration of motherhood and her grappling with her mother's death.

There were a few scenes in this book in particular where I felt her experiences and thoughts echoed my own. I'm not a Hugo Award winning author, but I did notice that after my mother died a few years ago, everything I wrote was about her, even when it wasn't.

"Even that part where--?" Yes, even that. Even now I'm still writing about her and my relationship with her, and in many ways that are and aren't painfully obvious.

It was just an interesting thing to read when her death anniversary just past.

(Do me a favor and don't give me any more condolences. I really don't need them, and I would like to not regret adding that little tidbit about myself to this reflection.)