[SPOILERS] Stone Sky + The Obelisk Gate + Fifth Season by NK Jemisin

[Xray the Enforcer]

18 hours ago, shortstark said:

 i am wondering if this is how the first guardians were created? Father earth gained control of the conductors and it progressed from there.

It used the corestone fragments to take direct control of these most dangerous vermin – but this did not work as it intended. Human will is harder to anticipate than human flesh.

 

This was how I interpreted it.

[.H.]

On 8/18/2017 at 6:24 AM, unJon said:

I'm still not sure I fully understand the Guardians. Are only "corrupt" ones working for Father Earth? I think yes. But if so, who do Non-corrupted Guardians serve and what is their goal? Just a self proposing organization that really was trying to keep humanity alive through control of Orogones?

No, I think they all serve Father Earth, but that there are levels to the control the Corestones exert.  The more direct control Father Earth exerts, the more they serve Father Earth, the more cruel they are.  At "baseline" I think they simply exist in a vampire-like symbiosis with Orogenes.  At maximal, they are cruel punishers of Orogenes for having breached Father Earth's Silver.

Maybe I read to quickly, but it seems that Father Earth wants to punish/torment Orognes.  So vampiring the Guardians to them seems to be something it wants to continue doing, I guess sapping their Silver the way Syl Anagist tried to do with it.

[Michael Seswatha Jordan]

Not finished yet, so haven't read any comments. But man, I love her writing and this story is great. Thank you to whoever recommended it to me. 

[Caligula_K3]

I thought this was a very satisfying conclusion with a powerful ending. I agree that the climax could have used more oomph through greater involvement of the guardians, stone eaters like Steel, and Essun's band. And I think the book has some pacing issues, especially with Essun's storyline (a lot of waiting around until she decides she wants to have the climax of the story). But I loved both Nassun's and How's POV,  was very impressed with how Jenison wrapped up the mysteries, and continue to love her prose and themes she explores. It's a fantastic trilogy all around.

[Xray the Enforcer]

I'm going to be a contrary voice and say that I really like that the climax involved only Essun and Nassun. It fits thematically with the burden of inheritance, and how, in the end, each oppressed individual must see through their own pain to choose to tie themselves back to heritage and hope and eventual grace (Hoa and Shaffa endured similar trials). I loved the ending, loved this series.

Also, the role of Steel and its outlook...and the same situation with Schaffa...that was intense. Imagine being hideously tormented and not being able to die...for tens of thousands of years. 

The acknowledgments made me cry because I just went through a similar trial in my own family and that wound is still very raw. 

[karaddin]

I'm with X-Ray, I felt the ending was very fitting and I loved it. I think this is also why there were not any further attacks - the SE had accepted that it would come down to the wills of these two people they had manipulated into these positions, not one side murdering the tool of the other, which determined the outcome.

Given the times we live in, and some of the conversations that are going on, the themes of this series had already seemed quite poignant, but the Hoa backstory in particular brought it in spades on the subject of slavery and destruction of the master by the slave. That was one of the themes which had been there all along, but cast against a slave revolt I was reading about the other day and contrasted with how it is taught in the south in the US, it was definitely potent.

I hadn't read the Acknowledgements yet, and given some of the emotions I've been wrestling with I'm not sure that's a can of worms that would be a good idea for me to open up from your comment X.

[Xray the Enforcer]

1 hour ago, karaddin said:

I hadn't read the Acknowledgements yet, and given some of the emotions I've been wrestling with I'm not sure that's a can of worms that would be a good idea for me to open up from your comment X.

I think that's a wise choice. Definitely read it at some point @karaddin but wait until you're ready to wrestle with a lot of sorrow. Because there's really no way to avoid that, all things considered. 

[Michael Seswatha Jordan]

I feel the same way Xray and Karradin. Great ending, really gripping and emotional. How Essun destroys the Guardians, I thought was done well and gives the orogenes and stills a chance to co-exist in this new world. Loved when Father Earth actually spoke, cool as shit.

I must say, after TUC, having a series end and not having any huge questions is actually very, very refreshing. Jemesin explains almost everything to the reader. While, I know that doesn't work in all works, it was done well here. Great book and series.

[shortstark]

Have to endorse all the positive reviews of  this book, really thought provoking and emotional and a fitting conclusion.. I can't help but think that essun will be there waiting on nassun to make her transition, future SE will be more humanesque with more memory retention? Really good trilogy ..

[Caligula_K3]

On 8/22/2017 at 9:51 PM, Xray the Enforcer said:

I'm going to be a contrary voice and say that I really like that the climax involved only Essun and Nassun. It fits thematically with the burden of inheritance, and how, in the end, each oppressed individual must see through their own pain to choose to tie themselves back to heritage and hope and eventual grace (Hoa and Shaffa endured similar trials). I loved the ending, loved this series.

 

I agree that it was a very effective climax, and that it fits thematically to only involve Essun and Nassun. It's just weird that she seems to be setting up a lot more with the Guardians, Stone Eaters and Essun's companions, only for them to all stand around doing nothing when they get to the actual climax.

About the Acknowledgements, I'm amazed she could write such a high quality book so fast while dealing with that death. I feel very sorry for her (and for everyone else dealing with similar circumstances).

[Iskaral Pust]

On 8/25/2017 at 2:18 PM, Caligula_K3 said:

I agree that it was a very effective climax, and that it fits thematically to only involve Essun and Nassun. It's just weird that she seems to be setting up a lot more with the Guardians, Stone Eaters and Essun's companions, only for them to all stand around doing nothing when they get to the actual climax.

I agree, it suited the narrative but felt contrived that the SEs would attack Essun's group en route but then passively stand back for the show-down duel to play out.  

Jemisin did a great job to resolve the central story and the character arcs.  From the very start of tFS, this was very well structured and planned out. 

The tone and focus of the third book felt quite different.  This one took place mostly in the minds of Essun and Nassun, becoming more inward focused.  Events around them faded into the background for Essun, or just (illogically) reaffirmed their impulsively chosen path for a Nassun.  This book also had an even stronger theme of oppressed minorities -- especially with the oppressors being a homogeneous evil, rather than the earlier portrayal of somewhat understandable fear of orogeny -- and the oppressed rebelling by tearing it all down and destroying the world: Alabaster, Hoa, Nassun.  The first two books made a bigger deal about the rise of Sanzed hegemony and how that led to the suppression of orogeny through populist fear-mongering and harnessing a weapon/tool, but the third book made it seem from the Syl Anagalists that even in Utopia there was irrational oppression of racial minorities demonized as "other" (and felt like a slightly heavy-handed metaphor for African-Americans).

The only loose thread for me was the significance of Kelenli's descendants.  Are they the source of orogeny (as a new facet of magic) in the population, or just the genetic source for the group who later resemble the Niess?  It seems improbable that the immortal Hoa would really have just paid no attention to their fate. 

[Altherion]

16 minutes ago, Iskaral Pust said:

The only loose thread for me was the significance of Kelenli's descendants.  Are they the source of orogeny (as a new facet of magic) in the population, or just the genetic source for the group who later resemble the Niess?  It seems improbable that the immortal Hoa would really have just paid no attention to their fate. 

I'm pretty sure Kelenli is the foremother of all orogenes. Hoa explicitly says this when describing the end of Syl Anagist: with the original tuners turned into Stone Eaters, the desperation led to the creation of some more of their kind, but since they were so distinctive, they were eventually wiped out (or perhaps didn't reproduce). Kelenli and her descendants looked normal and were normal in all ways but one so they got away.

[Andorion]

On 27/08/2017 at 1:59 AM, Iskaral Pust said:

I agree, it suited the narrative but felt contrived that the SEs would attack Essun's group en route but then passively stand back for the show-down duel to play out.  

Jemisin did a great job to resolve the central story and the character arcs.  From the very start of tFS, this was very well structured and planned out. 

The tone and focus of the third book felt quite different.  This one took place mostly in the minds of Essun and Nassun, becoming more inward focused.  Events around them faded into the background for Essun, or just (illogically) reaffirmed their impulsively chosen path for a Nassun.  This book also had an even stronger theme of oppressed minorities -- especially with the oppressors being a homogeneous evil, rather than the earlier portrayal of somewhat understandable fear of orogeny -- and the oppressed rebelling by tearing it all down and destroying the world: Alabaster, Hoa, Nassun.  The first two books made a bigger deal about the rise of Sanzed hegemony and how that led to the suppression of orogeny through populist fear-mongering and harnessing a weapon/tool, but the third book made it seem from the Syl Anagalists that even in Utopia there was irrational oppression of racial minorities demonized as "other" (and felt like a slightly heavy-handed metaphor for African-Americans).

The only loose thread for me was the significance of Kelenli's descendants.  Are they the source of orogeny (as a new facet of magic) in the population, or just the genetic source for the group who later resemble the Niess?  It seems improbable that the immortal Hoa would really have just paid no attention to their fate. 

I think the Sylanagist chapters actually showed how there never was a Utopia. The civilization in question was purely extractive and exploitative. In fact its stated pretty clearly that they needed something else to exploit or they would have had to divide their own society. 

 

[Iskaral Pust]

16 hours ago, Andorion said:

I think the Sylanagist chapters actually showed how there never was a Utopia. The civilization in question was purely extractive and exploitative. In fact its stated pretty clearly that they needed something else to exploit or they would have had to divide their own society. 

 

Of course there's no true Utopia, that would be a boring story.  Every flawed Utopia must contain the seeds of its own destruction.  But this Utopia seemed to me more hubristic than exploitative.  They didn't see tapping geothermal magic as exploitation of a non-renewable resource (unlike our own awareness of our exploitative and extractive society).  Even today IRL we laud Iceland for tapping geothermal energy as an eco-friendly renewable energy.  If some Gaia spirit caused a cataclysm tomorrow out of anger at the Icelandic people, would we really say their behavior had been rapacious rather than oblivious?

Aside from unforeseeable hubris (who could really predict Revenge Of The Gaia?), their original sin is their simultaneous genocide and enslavement (via genetic engineering) of the Niess, which seemed deeply contrived in this story, mainly as a way to introduce an original sin and to deliver a more direct metaphor for African-Americans through the description of the Niess and their culture.  And the briar patch was absolutely cartoonish levels of evil.  Did this advanced society with magic energy suffusing its entire world really need the equivalent of modern day Germany burning Jews at Auschwitz just to generate heat?  

It wasn't enough that orogenes were oppressed by the Sanzed -- similar to an X-Men narrative -- suddenly the story needed a racial & cultural oppression too that becomes original sin from which all wrongness flows and which must be messianically redeemed by one of the oppressed.  As to why this advanced, wealthy Utopian society needed to improbably oppress and extinguish another race, this we are assured stems from their inability to tolerate an "other" with a beautiful, misunderstood, free-spirited, less rigid culture: basically the puritanical squares obsessed with science cannot accept the presence of hippies (with different skin/eye coloring and hair texture) intuitively connected to the universe and therefore must commit genocide. 

So I accept that the author decides it should be in the narrative, and original sin redeemed by a messiah-like sacrifice is an inarguable archetype for a story like this, but that original oppression is reported as fact by the oppressed (Hoa) without ever being adequately supported.  So I call it contrived.  It was needed for the story and for the story's wider cultural metaphor.  It's like the inverse of plot armor.  The Syl Angalists acted evilly because the story needed them to, not from any internal motivation established in the story.  

[Xray the Enforcer]

It was stated very clearly in the text (maybe halfway through the book) that Syl Anagist was exploitative of different human populations; the exploitation was not just of the Earth's magic. 

[Iskaral Pust]

4 hours ago, Xray the Enforcer said:

It was stated very clearly in the text (maybe halfway through the book) that Syl Anagist was exploitative of different human populations; the exploitation was not just of the Earth's magic. 

I don't remember that.  Thanks for correction. 

[Maia]

I, too, thought that it was fitting that the climax was just Essun and Nassun. It makes sense given who Steel used to be - so he'd manipulate Nassun, but he wouldn't take away her choice completely. I was surprised that there were any attacks on Essun at all.

[jurble]

Read the series over the past 2 weeks.  Really good.

 

I do wonder who Hoa angered enough to get stuck in an obelisk though.   He must have been in there for the bulk of the 40,000 years, since he surely would've succeeded fixing the world earlier had he been free.  Otherwise, I can't imagine he would retained his enthusiasm for making a better world over the course of 40,000 years of failure.

[HexMachina]

On 23/08/2017 at 2:51 AM, Xray the Enforcer said:

I'm going to be a contrary voice and say that I really like that the climax involved only Essun and Nassun. It fits thematically with the burden of inheritance, and how, in the end, each oppressed individual must see through their own pain to choose to tie themselves back to heritage and hope and eventual grace (Hoa and Shaffa endured similar trials). I loved the ending, loved this series.

Also, the role of Steel and its outlook...and the same situation with Schaffa...that was intense. Imagine being hideously tormented and not being able to die...for tens of thousands of years. 

The acknowledgments made me cry because I just went through a similar trial in my own family and that wound is still very raw. 

Agreed entirely. The acknowledgements also made me cry though not for such personal reasons as you (my sympathies by the way  ). Knowing what Jemisin was going through only now that i’ve read the full trilogy it’s very clear how this influenced the books. Terribly sad, but she really gripped those emotions and channeled them into something beautiful.

 

eta: there were so many utterly beautiful and captivating passages in this novel by the way. The ones that really enthralled me were those involving the Evil Earth though - Nassun confronting him in the Core of the Earth; Father Earth revealing himself to Houwha and the others on the Moon are two prominent examples. But really, I loved the personification of the Earth here