The Stone Sky by N. K. Jemisin
In the shocking climax to the post-apocalyptic, humanity will ultimately be either saved or wiped out. The Moon will appear again soon. Two women will choose if this portends the end of humanity or something worse.
Alabaster Tenring’s power has been passed down to Essun. She intends to use it to locate her daughter Nassun and create a secure environment for all orogene children.
Nassun is too late to benefit from her mother’s mastery of the Obelisk Gate. Because she has witnessed the wickedness in the world, she has come to understand what her mother will not: that sometimes, corrupt things can only be destroyed.
The Stone Sky by N. K. Jemisin
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The book tells three separate stories. Essun and Nassun, mother and daughter orogenes, are the subjects of the two primary storylines, or so we believe. After using the Obelisk Gate from the previous book’s title to eliminate Castrima’s foes, Essun awakens from her coma. She has the unwelcome side effect of partially changing into a Stone Eater as a result of using the Obelisk Gate. Essun has learned that the Moon, in the far reaches of its lengthy elliptical orbit, is rapidly approaching the Earth. To stop the destructive cycle of the Fifth Seasons, she must use Obelisk Gate to seize the Moon and return it to its orbit.
Nassun intends to bring the Moon and Earth together in a collision that would destroy both in order to appease her rage and despair about using an obelisk to kill her father. The guardian Schaffa, who decides to support Nassun on her journey, is with her. In order to manage the Obelisk Gate, Essun and Nassun both travel to Corepoint. They come face to face there in a decisive conflict over the fate of the Earth, the Moon, and humanity. It starts in a region named Syl Anagist, thousands of years ago.
The reader learns how the world came to be in this situation by listening to the story that is interspersed among the other two in this section of the book over a long period of time. We learn how the Stone Eaters were made and how the Moon was pushed off course in this section of the story, which lends the book its science fiction with a dash of magic flavour. Characters are sent to the Moon itself to complete their mission through some hand waving that we don’t seem to mind too much.
The purpose of the plot is to start the Plutonic Engine, and it includes human conductors, Geoarcanity, and other elements. If this weren’t grand enough, the plot also gives the reader a sense of wonder that, with the exception of books like Cixin Liu’s The Remembrance of Earth’s Past Trilogy, hasn’t been seen in these parts in a while. Nassun traveling *through* the planet to go to the City of Corepoint so she can destroy the world is one of the novel’s numerous sequences that leave readers in wonder. The trip includes an incredible “fly-by” of the Earth’s core. Their journey to Corepoint begins in a magnificent, breathtaking arctic metropolis where Nassun discovers some historical truths.
