Bingo Square (Round 2): This is the End In this final Hugo Award winning novel of The Broken Earth trilogy, Jemisin finally takes us back to the Shattering, the beginning of the Seasons and explains exactly how the world as Essun and Nassun know it came into being. There have already been many reviews singing the praises of this trilogy so I am going to keep it short and basic. Hoa has been the narrator throughout the trilogy but in this one, he finally narrates his […]
Now the third one is out, you can read all three in a row!
I give up on writing an intelligent, thoughtful review of this book. It has defeated me for almost two months, and I now take this opportunity to concede. Perhaps eventually I will be able to write coherently and usefully about this series, but for now, I will say that she stuck the landing, she stuck it good, and I will most certainly be revisiting the series as a whole in the future. For now, I will say that I was happy with the ending because it […]
There’s more than one way to be human
A year ago at this time, in the wake of our devastating presidential election, I reviewed Ta-Nehisi Coates’ Between the World and Me and James Baldwin’s The Fire Next Time, two treatises on racism and oppression in America. As I read N.K. Jemisin’s The Broken Earth Trilogy, it occurred to me that her novels present a perfect fictional account of the same topic. These Hugo-Award-winning stories take place in a world where racial difference leads to oppression, exploitation, and genocide. As a result of this […]