Words&Dirt

Summary:

N.K. Jemisin’s The Stone Sky is the third and final book in her Broken Earth trilogy. It presents the concluding events of Essun and Nassun’s narratives, revealing how the fate of the world is decided by these two women and their companions. Jemisin also takes us on a journey through Hoa’s memory of how The Shattering occurred, roughly 40,000 years prior. The Stone Sky is a satisfying ending to an incredibly imaginative and thought-provoking series.

Key Concepts and Notes:

• As with the previous books in this series (see here for my reviews of The Fifth Season and The Obelisk Gate), Jemisin’s worldbuilding continues to be the highlight of the series for me. Her descriptions of the history and culture of the Stillness display remarkable creativity, generating one of the most memorable fantasy worlds I have visited. The addition of Hoa’s narrative in this final book gives the story an even deeper sense of being rooted in vast, geologic timescales. 
  
• The Stone Sky also contains really solid character development. Nassun and Essun’s character arcs are emotionally and intellectually satisfying, and Hoa’s history adds a lot of depth to his character as well. In my review of The Obelisk Gate, I lamented the dearth of healthy, trusting relationships in the story, and I’m happy to report that The Stone Sky basically solves this problem. I personally would have liked a bit more direct interaction between Essun and Nassun, but other than that I found their respective relationships with supporting characters to be much more positive and cooperative than in the previous books. The ending was genuinely touching from an interpersonal standpoint.
• There are two central themes of this series that I can really get behind. The first is that humanity’s biggest blunders arise from our inability to recognize and respect other forms of life, including different types of people as well as plants and animals. As Jemsin puts it: “Perhaps these builders of the great obelisk network were not used to respecting lives different from their own…So where they should have seen a living being, they saw only another thing to exploit. Where they should have asked, or left alone, they raped” (247-8). This is an important ethical lesson that we all ought to keep in mind as humanity’s knowledge of the natural world––along with our ability to dominate and destroy it––continues to develop.
• The second theme that really resonates with me is the notion that social connection is what drives us and makes life worth living. “That is how one survives eternity…or even a few days,” Jemisin writes. “Friends. Family. Moving with them. Moving forward” (397). This message is so simple and commonplace that it can easily come off as cliche, but it’s also something we tend to forget when we’re distracted by modern life’s endless parade of challenges and diversions. For a story dominated by loss, suffering, grievance, and social alienation, it was a relief to have it end on this positive note.
• Turning now to criticisms, I have retained a fair bit of skepticism about the political and ethical implications of Jemisin’s narrative. The most important point to make here is that I think this series fails to provide an accurate or desirable allegory for modern politics and social justice ethics. Jemisin does not explicitly state this as one of her goals, but the language and scenarios used throughout the story make it a fair assumption that, like a lot of other fantasy and science fiction writers, Jemisin wants readers to apply her thinking to the real world. But there are just too many material differences between the Stillness and the real world for the allegory to be viable, and someone seeking to connect the dots in this way may start indulging some questionable ideas. These include:

1. Things were much better in the old days before people got “out of balance” with nature.
2. Society is so broken that the only way forward is to burn everything down and start from scratch, even at the cost of countless lives and horrific violence.
3. Saving the world requires a tiny minority of preternaturally powerful people to force their idea of what constitutes social justice on everyone else.
4. It’s acceptable to immiserate or kill people who are on the “wrong side of history” in order to bring about a better world.
5. Members of an “oppressor class” have a desperate need to oppress others in order to validate their own legitimacy, and are motivated primarily by fear that their place of privilege will be threatened.
6. Attempts to use technology to eliminate suffering, scarcity, and death are inherently hubristic and require exploitation of minorities and natural resources.
7. It’s better for everyone to suffer equally in a civilizational collapse than for injustice or inequality to be allowed to persist.

• I absolutely realize that many people in my own country and around the world agree with some or even all of the statements above, I’m just not one of them. That said, I’d like to acknowledge that these books really challenged me to examine and wrestle with these ideas in a way that was both fun and edifying. So in that sense I think these books are a success, even if I’m also worried that some readers will walk away feeling empowered to double down on ideas that I find both dubious and potentially harmful.

Favorite Quotes:

The world isn’t friends and enemies. It’s people who might help you and people who’ll get in your way. (70)

How can we prepare for the future if we won’t acknowledge the past? (216)

Perhaps these builders of the great obelisk network were not used to respecting lives different from their own…So where they should have seen a living being, they saw only another thing to exploit. Where they should have asked, or left alone, they raped. (247-8)

That is how one survives eternity…or even a few years. Friends. Family. Moving with them. Moving forward. (397)

Rating: 8/10