Lucas Blogs About The Obelisk Gate

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So what's this book's deal?

Oh, this is The Obelisk Gate, it's the second entry in N.K. Jemison's Broken Earth trilogy.

Wait, did you blog about the first book without me?

I did.

And you expect me to be able to keep up?

I mean, I can write you however I like. Maybe you read the first book but haven't read the second and I don't need to fill you in.

Well, maybe you could just give me a quick recap of the story so far.

Okay. So on this continent called the Stillness there are people called orogenes who can control seismic activity. They are feared and oppressed. An annoying feature of life on the Stillness are Fifth Seasons which are seismic catastrophes leading to conditions not unlike nuclear winter. The main character is Essun, an orogene who tried to escape and live a normal life until her husband, Jija, learned the truth, murdered their son, Uche, and ran off with their daughter, Nassun. All of this happens against the backdrop of a Fifth Season that is probably going to be even worse than usual. While Essun chases after them she encounters a boy named Hoa who turns out to be a Stone Eater, a powerful entity that can take the form of a human made entirely of stone (and do all the things an orogene can but more so) and Tonkee a scientist who turns out to be someone from Essun's past. I mean there's more but I've already written a pretty chonky paragraph here.

Okay, I'll pretend that isn't needlessly complicated.

Then you're ready for a quick synopsis of the next book?

Bring it on!

The Obelisk Gate actually begins back at the start of The Fifth Season, when Essun's husband, Jija, murders their son, Uche. However, this time we see the beginning of that story through the eyes of their daughter, Nassun. In horror at having murdered his son, Jija finds that he cannot do the same to his daughter, so he abducts her and goes on the road. He doesn't seem to have any plan, but he just takes her south, trying to keep both of them alive. Eventually their travels bring them to a community where Schaffa, Essun's former Guardian (not an orogene, but someone with the ability to disrupt orogeny), who should have committed suicide at the beginning of a season, but instead started up a miniature version of the Fulcrum (the former school for Imperial orogenes), where he is astounded by Nassun's ability (bear in mind that he doesn't know that Nassun is Essun's daughter — or that Essun is still alive). Meanwhile, Essun, Hoa, and Tonkee have been taken in by the (literally) underground community of Castrima, which was built in a kind of weird techno-geode where she just so happens to reunite with Alabaster who starts teaching her how he was able to perform such amazing feats of orogeny back in the day. It turns out that orogeny is a form of something that used to be called magic, but magic is a —

Are you really about to explain what magic is in a blog about a fantasy novel?

I guess not. Anyway, it turns out that when the people of the Ttillness anthropomorphize the Earth as a malevolent intelligence, they're not wrong. It turns out that Fifth Seasons are the Earth punishing humans for that time when magic users cast his child, the moon, off into the void of space. The good news is that the moon is actually going to be approaching the Earth again (it apparently remained in orbit around their sun), the bad news is that Alabaster can't help catch it because his magic use has been turning his limbs into stone which a Stone Eater keeps eating.

Is that how someone turns into a Stone Eater?

Shh. Anyway, so yeah, that's the thing. Essun apparently has to learn magic well enough to catch the moon. Oh, also a large community has built an army and is threatening to invade Castrima and steal their stores. So, you know, life in the post-apocalypse won't stand still for something as trivial as returning the moon.

I guess not. I'm assuming that this does not get resolved by the end of the book.

The moon thing or the invasion thing?

Does it matter?

Well, one of them does get resolved. In any case, I felt more engaged with The Obelisk Gate than The Fifth Season. And I'm not sure exactly why. Because it's not like Jemisin's style radically changed between books.  The story is still narrated by Hoa in the present tense, addressed to Essun, who is referred to in the second person throughout. As in the first book, the present tense narration gives a sense of immediacy, and the second person perspective is honestly something that I've grown accustomed to by now.

Actually, I can think of something that's different.

But you weren't in the blog post about The Fifth Season.

We're not about re-litigate that, are we? Wait, are we gonna SPOIL the first book?

Yeah, let's do it.

So in the first book, the three viewpoint characters, Damaya, Syenite, and Essun were revealed to be the same woman at three different stages of her life. So, when did you work that out?

Before it was revealed, but I don't think it's meant to be a surprise necessarily. But I think I see where you're going with this. While reading The Fifth Season I did expend a certain amount of mental energy piecing together the timeline. I think that, combined with the fact that Jemisin had to spend more of the book explaining the setting, lead to me thinking of it as more of an intellectual exercise than something I could engage with emotionally. Also, the first book starts with the end of the world, a problem whose solution was clearly out of the protagonists' control, so it was hard to identify what the stakes of the story were. It was easy to pick up on the themes of oppression and marginalization, but I wasn't sure where the story itself was leading me. Framing The Obelisk Gate around two immediate problems faced by Nassun (how to keep her father from murdering her and learning how to control her powers) and Essun (how to use magic at the same level as Alabaster and how to protect her new community from a numerically superior foe) also helps make the story feel more immediate to the reader. And that's not to say that Jemisin has abandoned the themes from the first book, just that the stakes of the plot are more apparent.

So could someone pick this up if they just want to jump to the good part?

Oh no, they'd be completely lost. Besides, the first book is good, I just didn't connect with it as much as I expected to. This is a good middle book, but it definitely doesn't make any attempt to be accessible to anyone who hasn't read the first.

So then you're recommending this on the condition that someone would like it if they weren't put off by the first book?

Yeah, but I feel like that's a non-charitable way to frame that. I guess I'd say that if you haven't read The Fifth Season you should read that first and then decide if you want to pick up The Obelisk Gate. 

Wait, what is an obelisk gate anyway?

Oh, it's an orogeny thing, see Alabaster is hoping that Essun will be able to tap into the power of the obelisk network to catch the moon. You know, normal magic stuff.

But like, what is it?

Oh, so the obelisks are these big floating gems that—

Nope, I can't take any more exposition.

But you wanted to know—

I take it back, blog over.

The Obelisk Gate by N.K. Jemison, Orbit Books trade paperback edition, August 2016, 407 pages, pairs well with safe, the beverage that changes color when you poi—

No! There will be no more exposition in this blog post!

Links:

Here's the author's website, if you're into that kinda thing.