The Obelisk Gate by N.K. Jemisin

By -
The Obelisk Gate by N.K. Jemisin

                Here you are. Time has passed and you have stayed in this place you have begun to consider home. Alabaster is with you, but he is dying and he has one final lesson to teach you, so you can understand why he brought on the fifth season. To understand why he is ending the world. Your daughter, Nassun, is alive and it’s been months since you've seen her. She is with Jija. He has not killed her but he hates that she is a rogga. His search for her cure brings him to the person that brought you to the Fulcrum and taught you what it means to fear someone you love.
                Well damn. If you loved The Fifth Season (which I unabashedly did) then you will absolutely love The Obelisk Gate. It is a perfect sequel. It takes up where The Fifth Season ended with little passage of time. But it starts with the past and the death of Uche at the hands of his father. This book fills in some of the gaps. You learn much more about Nassun and what has happened since the beginning of The Fifth Season. You also learn more of Alabaster and how he found himself in his current state.
                All of the things I thoroughly enjoyed in The Fifth Season are replicated within this novel. Jemisin's characters are beautifully detailed and developed. The world building is done to perfection. And this novel is intense. The world is ending and people are dying left and right. The will to survive is strong in the comm that Essun is now a part of.
                I started this one a few months after reading The Fifth Season and honestly it feels like I never left. I fell right back into the story, right back into the season, right back into this crazy world. Jemisin is fantastic. I love that she kept the interchanging narratives, with Essun's still being in second person. I love that we were able to get a better look at the Stone Eaters and everyday life. I'm really excited about the last book which is coming out soon. I give this 5 out of 5 stars.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Enemy of All Mankind: A True Story of Piracy, Power, and History's First Global Manhunt by Steve Johnson

By -
Image
Enemy of All Mankind: A True Story of Piracy, Power, and History's First Global Manhunt by Steve Johnson Bringing to life the story of a notorious pirate to a modern audience isn’t an easy task. We’re too used to the comfort of easy travel, the mythos of pirates and the commercialized imagery produced by movies and television. Images of Jack Sparrow and Long John Silver have been part of entertainment for so long that the idea of true piracy and all it’s ruthlessness has almost been washed away. It isn’t until you’re able to wash away the false images and submerge yourself into the actual history that you can see piracy for it’s truly brutal nature. It also brings up many questions about governments, laws, corporations, scandal, colonization and other factors that allowed piracy to flourish and exist in the manner that it did for so long. Piracy didn’t exist in a bubble. Enemy of All Mankind takes the story of one pirate, who helped usher in the Golden Age of Piracy, and exa
Read more

Odetta: A Life in Music and Protest by Ian Zack

By -
Image
Odetta: A Life in Music and Protest by Ian Zack          In my case it is always the image of Odetta that comes to mind when I hear her name. The tall, undeniably Black woman, hair in an afro, guitar in hand. It must be that I simply did not know enough about her life, her struggle, and even her music to convey more than that image. But her image is memorable and her presence something not easily described. This book fills in the gaps in the story of Odetta that I didn’t know. Looking back at my childhood, her most memorable songs are the ones I’ve known most of my life, singing in my school’s chapel along with hundreds of other Black students, the words having meaning that I can only truly comprehend decades later as a Black woman.          Zack takes his time with this biography, letting the readers learn as much about Odetta as we do the time from whence she came. Her migration from Alabama to California, her feelings of coming from a loveless, forced marriage,
Read more

The Testaments by Margaret Atwood

By -
Image
The Testaments by Margaret Atwood I’m going to cut right to the chase. This book is well written but we didn’t need it. I expected more. I wanted more and this fell flat. I’ve read The Handmaid’s Tale , more than once, and I genuinely enjoyed it. The single narrative of Offred lent itself to the story well and it was genuinely a terrifying society. I watched the first two series of the show and though I have my reservations about it, I still thought it was a good show. It does a great job answering questions that the book could not because of its singular narrative. It filled out the world. This book revolves around three narratives: Aunt Lydia, who we know had a helping hand in stripping women of their sense of self and molded them to be controlled by the men of Gilead; Agnes, raised in Gilead with a Commander as father, privileged and set to marry well; and Daisy, a teenager raised in Canada hating Gilead and the abuses women endured that she’s learned about since she
Read more