The Obelisk Gate
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
Essun's missing daughter grows more powerful every day, and her choices may destroy the world in this "magnificent" Hugo Award winner and NYT Notable Book. (NPR)
The season of endings grows darker, as civilization fades into the long cold night.
Essun -- once Damaya, once Syenite, now avenger -- has found shelter, but not her daughter. Instead there is Alabaster Tenring, destroyer of the world, with a request. But if Essun does what he asks, it would seal the fate of the Stillness forever.
Far away, her daughter Nassun is growing in power -- and her choices will break the world.
N. K. Jemisin's award winning trilogy continues in the sequel to The Fifth Season.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
The Obelisk Gate is the Hugo-winning second installment in N. K. Jemisin’s apocalyptic Broken Earth trilogy. Picking up right where The Fifth Season left off, the story follows Essun, an orogene, whose telepathic control of earthquakes and volcanic eruptions makes her part of a feared and subjugated minority. While searching for her abducted daughter, Essun also tries to heal a broken and afflicted world. Like its predecessor, this novel is filled with stimulating ideas about race, gender, and oppression. That, and the emotional bond between mother and daughter, made us care deeply about Jemisin’s characters.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this compelling, challenging, and utterly gripping work that combines elements of fantasy, science fiction, and horror, Jemisin draws readers deeper into the extraordinary setting and characters she introduced in The Fifth Season. In the world called the Stillness which the first book hints may actually be our world, thousands of years in the future orogenes are hated and feared for their ability to control the geological forces that shape the land. Powerful orogene Essun desperately searches for her eight-year-old daughter, Nassun, who was stolen away by her father. He hopes to find someone to "fix" the girl and excise her burgeoning orogene talent. But Essun's search is interrupted by her old mentor, Alabaster. Alabaster is dying, and he hopes to use Essun's powers to end the current "season," a disastrous change in global climate that could destroy all life, by recapturing the planet's long-lost moon, whose absence is the cause of the ironically named Stillness's geological instability. While Essun and Alabaster struggle to save the world, an ancient entity with very different goals begins gathering its own crew of young orogenes and it has Nassun, who in this volume becomes a character as troubled, complex, and fascinating as her mother. The Stillness and those who dwell there are vividly drawn, and the threats they face are both timely and tangible. Once again Jemisin immerses readers in a complex and intricate world of warring powers, tangled morals, and twisting motivations.
Customer Reviews
Love this series
I love the world and character development of this series. Essuns chapters were engaging and I loved learning about her new comm and discovering the magic within the earth. I also enjoyed Nassuns development even though it was so frustrating how she blamed every bad thing on her mother. I’m excited and nervous to read the final book as I know Essun and Nassun are going to be in conflict.
I am me, and you
(To me) this story eloquently traverses growth through the lens of learning or the learner. However, learning—or the learner—was not linear; nor was growth. Book two was about agency and ownership while overlapping with—or possibly adjacent to—trauma and dialogue. I really appreciated this book. Off to book three.
Favorite quote: “Denying what you are didn’t keep people from knowing what you are.”
Master Wordsmith
So delicious to fall into this story. Interesting characters. Fascinating author-methods. I need to learn to pace myself, staying up too late to devour the next page, and the next, and the next.