This book is an amazing work of imagination. N.K. Jemisin imagines that we live in a world where cities become living, sentient beings by picking a human to be their avatar and becoming animate through that person. The avatar is assisted in becoming by the previous city that was "born" through this process. That avatar then becomes the protector of its city and when the city is in danger, the avatar can marshall all the resources of the city to fight for it.
Does this sound weird and crazy? Only at first. Jemisin seduces us into this fantasy world and we accept it and just go with it.
The city of the title is New York and New York's birth is a bit more complicated than some cities because it is made up of five distinct and different boroughs. There is actually a New York City avatar extant at the beginning of this tale, but he had already fought his city's enemies and won temporarily, but it cost him. He is in a coma, hidden away under the city. In order to assist him, the boroughs will each choose its own avatar and they will form a team to defend the city. And there you have the basics of the plot in a nutshell.
The book can be seen as a love letter to New York. Jemisin writes in the afterword: "I have hated this city. I have loved this city. I will fight for this city until it won't have me anymore. This is my homage to the city. Hope I got it right." I can't really say whether she got it right, but it sure sounds to me, from my distance, that she caught the personalities and the spirit of the various boroughs and of the big city as a whole.
We are introduced first to Manny representing Manhattan, a young black man who appears at Penn Station with no memory of how he got there. He has come from someplace else and he had another life and another name, but all of that is wiped clear and he begins anew, as so many have, in New York.
Next, we meet Brooklyn. She is a black middle-aged city councilwoman and former rapper who is devoted to her family.
Bronca for the Bronx is a Lenape Native American woman in her 60s. She is a lesbian. She works in an art gallery and she is very tough because she's had to be.
Queens is represented by a South Asian graduate student who is something of a whiz at math.
Finally, Staten Island is represented by Aislyn Houlihan, a young white woman who has grown up sheltered by a racist, xenophobic, abusive cop for a father. In time, we learn that she has absorbed his attitudes.
The city will need all of these avatars to survive because there is a powerful Enemy that threatens to devour it. The Enemy comes from another universe and its infectious presence is spreading throughout the city as white, feather-like entities. How each of the avatars responds to this entity, which is represented by a Woman in White, makes for an exciting and thoroughly engrossing story.
Here is the only real problem I had with the story, once I accepted the author's concept. She gives us something of a backstory for the Enemy which seems to be a way of legitimizing its attempt to take over as a way of ensuring its species survival. It tends to distort the clear lines between "good guy" and "bad guy" and sort of undermines the theme of the book regarding the strength of the city when diverse groups work together.
Nevertheless, this is at base an exciting, joyful, fast-paced tale with a lot of humor that was fun to read. One had the feeling that Jemisin also had fun writing it.
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
I had problems with this book. Mostly confusion. This is the third book in the trilogy and by now I guess I should be used to Jemisin's method of jumping around between time periods and characters, without warning and without explaining who is what, as well as introducing new characters or concepts with no background or preparation. But this one really threw me for a loop and I spent maybe the first quarter to third of the book floundering and trying to find my feet.
In the end though, I was so bowled over by the creativity of her imagination and the uniqueness of the world that she has built for us in these books that I sort of gave her a pass on her confusing method of presenting the story. Her descriptive writing is clear enough that one can see - or "sess" - the overall picture that she is presenting even when individual parts remain baffling.
So, Syl Anagist? What's up with that? Has it been mentioned in the other books? Not that I remember. Apparently, it was the great founding civilization on the planet and they created the stone eaters as a kind of bridge - "tuners" - between ordinary humans and the powers of orogeny which the Syl Anagistans sought to control. They created the stone eaters in the image of the Niess, a tribe of people who were proficient at using magic. The Niess were destroyed and dissected by the Syl Anagistans in order to try to understand the source of their magic. (I guess the idea of just observing or asking them never occurred to the "great civilization.")
So, we get all this background on Syl Anagist, as far as I can tell, through the voice of the stone eater Hoa, who was Essun's companion and protector in the previous book. Stone eaters, it seems, live forever. Or at least for a very, very long time. And they have unique powers. For one thing, they are able to travel through the center of the Earth to get from one hemisphere to another or one side of the world to the other. Not only that but they are able to transport humans with them and that is an important factor in the development of the plot.
And the plot here is that Essun is still searching for her daughter, Nassun. Nassun, now ten years old, still has Schaffa, the Guardian, as her companion and protector. Essun continues to travel with the people from the comm Castrima as they look for a new place to live after their last community was destroyed.
Father Earth is a sentient entity and he is still furious with humans and essentially trying to wipe them off the planet in revenge for their many sins against the planet, but especially because they caused the Moon to be flung out of its orbit long ago. Earth has been wreaking vengeance against humans for the loss of his child ever since.
This, then, is the story of the separation of parent and child and of trying to get the two back together again. Essun has a plan. She will harness the power of the obelisks to bring Moon back to its orbit and make Father Earth happy again and make him end the destructive "Fifth Seasons." Meanwhile, Nassun also has a plan for harnessing the power of the obelisks. Like mother, like daughter. And Hoa will transport Essun and some members of her comm through the center of Father Earth to the place where Nassun is. The stage is set for an explosion of powerful forces.
Well, this is fantasy after all. The laws of physics do not apply. Anything goes. One just has to suspend disbelief and hang on tight for the ride. And enjoy the fantastical artistic vision and exquisite writing.
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Once again we enter N.K. Jemisin's richly imagined world called Stillness. It's a world that is never still.
As we learned in the first entry in this trilogy, The Fifth Season, Stillness is populated by human or humanoid beings called stills, orogenes, stone-eaters, and guardians. And floating somewhere above them all are a series of obelisks. It is unclear who made the obelisks or just what purpose they serve.
At the time of events in The Obelisk Gate, the apocalyptic, world-shattering action of The Fifth Season is in the past and the residents of Stillness are trying to find ways to adapt and survive in a world gone mad.
In the first book, we had the point(s) of view of Damaya/Syenite/Essun. In the aftermath of everything, we now get Essun once again as she makes a place for herself in an underground comm (community) led by a strong female head. This comm is not without its conflicts and some of the arguments sound very like what we hear in the daily news in our own country, especially those arguments which seek to set one group against another.
Essun is searching for her daughter, Nassun, who is an orogene like herself. Nassun was spirited away from her home by her father, Jija, and Essun is concerned for her safety and for her further training and education as an orogene.
We meet Nassun and Jija and learn that Essun is right to fear for her safety. Jija is taking her to a place where he has heard that she can learn how to not be an orogene and that is what he fervently wishes for.
Fortunately for Nassun, she meets Schaffa, her mother's former Guardian at the Fulcrum. Schaffa takes over the training and protection of Essun's daughter.
The action in this book is slower than in the first book. The apocalypse becomes a slow-moving disaster and we see how different groups position themselves to try to survive. Meanwhile, Essun's friend/lover/teacher, Alabaster Tenring, the world-destroyer, is present in the same comm with Essun and he continues her instruction, including urgently trying to teach her how to utilize the obelisks.
I found the narrative in this book somewhat confusing. For example, it wasn't entirely clear to me just who the "you" addressed in the narratives at the beginning of chapters was. Best guess: Essun. But it seemed unnecessarily ambiguous.
And what's the deal with the Moon being flung out of orbit and into space at some point in the past? And that's why Father Earth is angry and is taking it out on the inhabitants of Stillness? He wants his Moon back and apparently Nassun and/or Essun will attempt to deliver it. Maybe in the next book? Stay tuned.
In short, I think this book suffered just a bit from "second book syndrome." It didn't seem quite as fresh and powerful as the first one. Still, overall, it was a compelling story - good enough to win the Hugo Award just like the first one, so what do I know?
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
I was captivated by the imagined world created by N.K. Jemisin in this novel, first of a trilogy, as I had not been since I first read Tolkien or Herbert all those many years ago. Jemisin's achievement might even be more remarkable because my imagination has grown somewhat deadened and jaded in the intervening years and it probably takes more to "captivate" it these days.
Jemisin's world is called Stillness but it is anything but still. It is Earth but an Earth riven by constant earthquakes and volcanoes and apocalyptic events. The world still has the four seasons known to us, but when one of these apocalyptic events occurs, it can trigger a Fifth Season which may last years, centuries, millennia and which is a near-extinction event. Imagine a world where George R.R. Martin's winter has come - to stay.
Jemisin's world-building is amazing in its detail. There is evidence of past civilizations everywhere in ruined cities and in the "stonelore" that is handed down from one generation to the next. There are also strange, unexplained obelisks that float in the atmosphere like satellites. What purpose do they serve? Are they from another world, another civilization?
The Stillness civilization that exists as we encounter it is called the Sanze Empire and it has learned to survive by harnessing the power of special humans called orogenes. Orogenes are born with an innate ability to control their environment. They are able to start or stop earthquakes and to save cities. The Empire has developed a caste called Guardians who serve as controls for the orogenes and can neutralize them if they become a threat.
In spite of their power, orogenes are held in contempt by ordinary humans (called stills) and orogene children, when discovered, are often abused or killed by them. Moreover, the stills have a derogatory name for orogenes. They call them roggas. If the children are discovered or sussed out by the ruling power, they are sent to a place called the Fulcrum (think Hogwarts) to be trained.
We learn all of this through the experiences of three female characters: Damaya, a child who is given to a Guardian and taken to the Fulcrum when she is discovered to be an orogene; Syenite, a powerful Fulcrum-trained orogene; and Essun, an orogene mother in a post-apocalyptic world who is searching for her lost daughter. It took me longer than it should have to figure out that all three of these characters are actually personas of a single individual. (There, I hope I haven't spoiled it for you!)
In my defense, let me say that the three intertwining narratives are confusing at first and they don't match up because they are not told in sequential order. The writer jumps back and forth in time. I can see how this might be irritating and even daunting to some readers but my advice is just to stick with it; after a while it all begins to make sense. Well, a kind of dystopian sense anyway.
The writing is quite visionary and creative and it is not at all surprising that the book was nominated for so many different awards and actually won the Hugo Award for Best Science Fiction Book of 2016. Overall, I found it to be a very rewarding read with a lot to tell us about the darkest human motivations, a story quite applicable to what may be the beginning of our own "Fifth Season."
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
