Author: N. K. Jemisin

The final book of the Broken Earth trilogy, ridiculously winning the treble: Hugo Award, Nebula Award and Locus Award. Each of the books in the trilogy has won a Hugo. Amazing achievement. Coming from such massive anticipation, however, I can only be immensely disappointed in this book.

I finally finished the book after two full months, and would have taken many more months if it weren’t for two 20-hr flights.

The finale is definitely much worse than what I expected from tons of build-up and from a treble-winner. In the end, it’s still a high fantasy, not a science fiction or a science fantasy, whatever that means.

So many things were left unexplained.

The earth is alive? How and why?
I recalled Alabaster saying there are people living or had lived in the big hole or something. How and why?
Why would the seasons start and end when the moon is gone and back?
Why are the guardians? Who made them?
So tuning is orogeny + magic, then when and how was it separated afterward?
What exactly are the stone eaters?

You can’t just throw a bunch of mysteries and call it a day (you may drown yourself in awards by doing it). You’ll have to explain them either explicitly or implicitly.

This series is definitely nowhere near Cosmere. The perfect setup of book one has led to nothing (except 3 undeserved awards). What an absolute shame.

5/10. Book 1 > Book 2 > Book 3. Eassun died so maybe 6/10, or not.

Overall I think this book was pretty poorly written. I dread reading through it especially the Hoa parts, except maybe that one or two paragraphs where Eassun died. But it quickly collapsed back to dreadfulness when Nassun picked the most obvious and boring route of changing her decision to follow her mama’s wishes. Not that it didn’t make sense because it very much did, but it was just boring.

When speeding through book 2 and surviving through book 3. I’ve completely forgotten the unique culture of the world introduced in book 1. Somehow they are not exploited at all. What the actual f was the author doing? Set up everything perfectly in the first book, and then just throw them all away in the sequels. So dumb. The most ridiculous flop I’ve ever seen in a book series.

One book wonder. Awards scammer. Emergency Skin is another example.

Reading log

The curse of the book of the new sun. Even though you’re barely a quarter into its first entry, you’re still haunted by the shadow of the torturer.

For every sentence you passed, you are paranoid for a second, thinking if it’s actually twisted in a strange way and that you’d have to go through it again to actually grasp it, if that’s enough. And then you realized the text is very straightforward. When you recall, instead of an obscure shade of opaque Alabaster, you find yourself perfectly understanding the sentence.