02 May 2018

Hugos 2018: The Stone Sky by N. K. Jemisin

Trade paperback, 416 pages
Published 2017

Acquired October 2017
Read November 2017
The Broken Earth, Book Three: The Stone Sky
by N. K. Jemisin

I found the conclusion to the Broken Earth trilogy way less satisfying than the two books that preceded it. Maybe I was in the wrong mood, but it just felt like the first two-thirds or so was a lot of wandering around without clear narrative purpose. Neither Essun nor Nassun's stories were as captivating as they were in the previous volume; how much of Essun trying to integrate into a community and not doing too well at it do we have to see? I don't think a point was made in this part that wasn't better made in a previous part. Plus the interstitial parts about the history of the world I found disruptive, with a lot of what we might call thaumababble: I found it difficult to follow or care about the minutiae of how orogeny worked, especially once a second system of magic was introduced. The first two books were very strong, and the conclusion to this one was decent, but I was nowhere near as into it as I was its predecessors.

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