N.K. JEMISIN
★★★✰✰
This review has been written four months after I finished reading all the three books. I picked this series up after I saw that all three books have won the Hugo award for best novel.
(The most prestigious award in Sci-Fi and fantasy, the Hugo is generally good with their nominations and awards)
The broken earth trilogy starts off with The Fifth Season. The planet is called the Stillness (probably an attempt at irony similar to Discworld), is a version of earth that is fraught with natural disasters – earthquakes, tsunamis, volcanic eruptions, droughts and such. Definitely not a world anyone would want to live in. The Stillness is occupied by humans, powered humans, and another humanoid species that you are introduced to in the first chapter called as “stone eaters”. The powered humans (Orogenes) have the ability to “sess” the earth, and control/redirect geological energies or whatever you call them. Earthquakes, lava, tsunamis can all be created or dissipated at will by these users.
Predictably, when you have a bunch of these Orogenes around, the ordinary humans become xenophobic and try to eliminate the Orogenes on sight. The really smart humans though banded together to create and control the Orogenes and called themselves the Guardians. The politics that passes between the Orogenes, the Guardians, the humans, and the humanoid stone eaters happen in the backdrop of all the three books.
The first book follows a bunch of characters of different ages, genders, and professions, and by the end ties them up nicely. There are a few nice and impactful twists in this book, which I felt were executed well. The second book is quite forgetful, with the introduction of the “obelisks”. These objects are explained through sequential exposition and to be honest, I still don’t have a very clear idea about the nature, appearance, and working of these obelisks except that they can give great power to Orogenes capable enough to handle it? The third book follows the lead character who goes by a bunch of different names throughout the series, her companion stone eater, her daughter, and a guardian who accompanies her daughter. Both duos supposedly aiming for different goals; but that is very hard to discern from the way the book is structured.
The main character has been written well, showing growth from her childhood to her becoming a mother. The faults and the strengths have both been written equally well, and you understand some of the choices that the character has to make. The explanation for the existence of both the humanoid species called stone eaters and the Orogenes is given in the final book through the view point of one of the main characters, who is also a stone eater. This explanation makes use of a variety of magical gymnastics to explain away the logical faults in the book.
The series strays farther and farther away from real world logic as we progress through the books. By the third book, we are in a land of magic stemming from life; and a series of flashbacks present a supposedly utopian civilization who abused the earth to take away all its magic, which resulted in the post apocalyptic world that is present now. . There are also a bunch of narratives that add no value but to show that the author is being inclusive and politically correct. More votes for the Hugo I guess.
The book seems to start off as an allegory for the Anthropocene, but the narrative takes a lot of the impact away by deviating so much from reality.
The world building while interesting, is not captivating or inventive enough to justify the three Hugo awards in a row that were awarded. Especially, when the third book competed against Death’s’ End by Liu Cixin which was a far superior book on all counts.
Sai Tejas 