The Broken Earth Trilogy by N. K. Jemisin
This is how the world finally comes to an end. It’s the start of an ending season. The sun-blocking ash erupting from the world’s only continent’s vast crimson rift is where it all begins. With a slain son and a lost daughter, it all begins in death. A betrayal sets the stage for festering scars that have been latent for a long time. Here is Stillness, a place where the power of the earth is used as a weapon and where disaster has long been a part of life. Where there is no mercy, too.
The Broken Earth Trilogy by N. K. Jemisin
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The protagonists’ journey is one of endurance through a great deal of loss—much of it caused by the—growth as new information emerges, and sacrifice in an effort to improve things. These ideas still apply today even if they were published a while ago. This is echoed by even minor characters, such as Ykka, who tries to keep a community (“comm”) of various human types who don’t typically mix together and get them to cooperate through mutual interdependence together.
I found that the idea of the earth as a sentient planet at war with its inhabitants was the most difficult to implement. It is only fitting that the beginning of the chain of events that took place over tens of thousands of years to get us to the cataclysm we are currently facing is revealed late in the last volume, if at all.
Jemisin is fascinated by the moral dilemmas that her protagonists face as a result of their immense power, painfully contradictory duties and inclinations, and having to live with the results of any choices they make. She doesn’t coddle her characters, constantly presenting them with harder obstacles to surmount as they struggle under the weight of ever-growing handicaps. Essun and Nassun are orogens, a race of beings with the ability to manipulate seismic activity by reaching into the earth. Despite the fact that orogenous skills are essential for civilization to function, they are despised and feared by the majority of society, and their families disavow or even kill them. Orogenic offspring are taken by a long-lived Guardian race, who raises them in a central area while also controlling them brutally.
While they aren’t killing themselves through seismic disruption or hating orogens, The Stills, who are regular humans, try their best to survive. The enigmatic stone eaters have their own goals in mind. The conflict between these many races, which is set against the backdrop of a collapsing world, gives the plot a lot of paces.
Essun is a mere mortal. She wants to be loved and connected to, yet being an orogene can sometimes lead to behaviours with terrible repercussions. Until she discovers a goal deserving of all her sacrifices, she endures unspeakable suffering. Nassun, her ten-year-old daughter, just wants to feel protected but finds herself in the same predicament as her mother throughout much of the novel.
