Oh, what a delight to return to the work of N.K. Jemisin, yâ€all. This was truly one of the very best series I have ever read for this site, and Iâ€m going to be thinking about it for a long time. (I also think that this might be one of the rare set of books I re-read that Iâ€ve covered for Mark Reads. Iâ€ve only ever done that with the Doggy Books by Tamora Pierce, His Dark Materials, and Deep Secret, which I re-read last year just to see how Iâ€d feel about it.) I imagine that these are immensely rewarding works to revisit. 

But this is not about that! I wanted to have a big Q&A party about the series as a whole to wrap it. First, letâ€s go over my predictions for this book, and I already know one of these was EMBARRASSINGLY bad.

 The title is referring to… the Moon?

• We will find out that Alabaster was “resurrected” in a way, but as a stone eater. Donâ€t ask me how thatâ€s possible, I donâ€t know. Okay, yes, totally nailed this, but I FORGOT THIS FOR MOST OF THE BOOK LMAAAOOO
• Weâ€ll get a scene where Hoa eats part of Essunâ€s stone body. Correct!
• I think the stone and the pure magic will spread evenly over Essunâ€s body. I LIKE SYMMETRY. Hereâ€s me completely not understanding how all the mechanics of this work. Theyâ€re not “separate” things, Mark! READING COMPREHENSION, COME ON.
• At some point, Nassun and Essun will be reunited. Iâ€m cry.
• And as much as I hate to say this, I think they will not be (initially) on the same side. WOW HOLY SHIT. I mean, I wasnâ€t even close to the true context, but still!
• I think Steel is manipulating Nassun on behalf of Evil Earth. This was outright confirmed… but not as a means of working on behalf of Evil Earth. Three sides to this war!
• I also think Nassun will reject her mother in some way. In some way??? SOME??? OH MARK.
• We will officially meet Evil Earth in some form on the page. AND IT WAS HORRIFYING
• Schaffa will die. I remain utterly transfixed by his arc, still!!!
• Ykka and Essun will go get drunk together at some point. This is… this is so cruel. WHY DID I DO THIS TO MYSELF.
• We will learn where the Guardians actually came from and the original intent of their creation. We actually did!!!!
• WE WILL SEE THE MOON look itâ€s an easy one. And still HEARTBREAKING.
• The Moon will successfully be returned to the world. Yep!
• But Essun will die in doing so. NO TAKE IT BACK
• And Nassun will be the one to use the Obelisk Gate, not Essun. Actually, I was going to count this as wrong, but… technically, Essun uses onyx, not the Gate, right?
• I think Nassun will also kill Evil Earth. I DONâ€T KNOW HOW THIS IS POSSIBLE, but Iâ€m trying to predict haphazardly here because maybe it will help. It wonâ€t. YOUâ€RE WRONG

So, not the worst, but definitely not a rousing success.

If youâ€ve not attended a Q&A Party before, think of this as a means for me to reflect on the whole series, rather than just on each individual chapter. I love talking about overall themes, favorite moments, and equally love that I cannot be spoiled so BRING ON ALL THE FANART. If there are cool interviews or essays youâ€d love to share about this series, now is the time to link them to me!!! Iâ€ll be around all day answering everything I can.

And with that said, itâ€s time for the last piece of this. Iâ€m sure many of you are wondering what will be covered on Mark Reads next. The truth is that I still donâ€t know. I had intended to begin looking at suggestions and picking something a couple weeks ago, but the truth is that I am very overwhelmed. I have been on non-stop deadline since August 2, and aside from my birthday weekend last month, I have actually not had a day off.

With the urging of my therapist, I am actually going to put Mark Reads on hiatus. I need time, basically, and I donâ€t want anything else in my life to suffer from burnout or being overstressed. This will not affect Mark Watches or Patreon; I still have quite a few shows lined up for Mark Watches that Iâ€ll be announcing soon. Itâ€s just that the end of this series has offered me a clean place to take a break and recoup. I have a number of intense deadlines to conquer in the next month. 

My plan is to reassess in a month, and I will announce Mark Readsâ€s next book AFTER I have written the reviews for it. Deadlines are weird, fluctuating things in publishing. I can go from super busy one week to literally nothing for like ten days. That happened to me in September, and Iâ€m still recovering from having zero deadlines the week before Each of Us a Desert came out to having NINE of them a week later. Itâ€s hard to plan for these things because I never know when edits are coming back. 

All this to say: itâ€s easy to find time to squeeze in a review or two, but I donâ€t want to announce a new book, write a few reviews, and then cliffhanger you because I got busy. So, let me clear up my schedule a bit, and when I have a new book to review, youâ€ll get those reviews without having to worry that Iâ€ll take a long time to complete them.

Thanks for the understanding. This site has been going for just over ten years now, and Mark Reads will be 12 next year. Iâ€m not going away; just re-shuffling things until life calms down a bit. As I mentioned, this wonâ€t interrupt the schedule for anything else. Itâ€s just a workload reduction for the time being.

Thank you for this wonderful ride. Hereâ€s to many more journeys!

Mark Links Stuff

– My second novel, EACH OF US A DESERT, is now out in the world!
– If you’d like to stay up-to-date on all announcements regarding my books, sign up for my newsletter! DO IT.

Trigger Warning: For discussion of slavery, grief, and death

Iâ€m not ashamed of how emotional things make me anymore. And really, after the experience of reading that one chapter of The Shepherdâ€s Crown earlier this year, I feel like I could do ANYTHING. Iâ€m happy that I donâ€t feel shame about being an emotional person! Given my upbringing? It feels like the greatest gift of all. Iâ€m free of that.
So thereâ€s nothing that makes me hesitate to tell yâ€all that this just fucked me up. Itâ€s a beautiful, fitting ending to this trilogy, and it also struck a sad nerve in me.

Iâ€ll explain why, but first, I want to talk about the meaning of the first half of the coda. As I had said in recent reviews, Essunâ€s solution to the Seasons and to the terrible war unfolding between humans, stone eaters, and Earth was to offer recompense and healing to Earth. By returning the Moon, even if the immediate, ongoing Season got worse, ideally, they could begin repairing the Stillness. But this still required work. It was not a fix-everything-at-once solution. No, it was just the beginning. I think that is a vital point to make in a series about a world so broken that some people truly believe that the best option is to throw it all away. Understandably believe, I should say! Because at no point did I not get why some factions wanted destruction. I understood Nassun; I also understood Steel. 

And yet, in the aftermath of her choice, Nassun has to deal with the ramifications of what sheâ€s done. Her mother is dead, and she canâ€t deny that Essun wouldnâ€t have died like this if it wasnâ€t for her. Essun was always planning to die, and I braced myself for this reality. But dying while climbing towards her daughter, uttering her name for the last time? Thatâ€s heavy. So yes, this whole coda is dripping in grief. The loss of Essun. The loss of Schaffa, who passes during the time that the stone eaters negotiate with Earth. The loss of an end for the stone eaters. Because I see grief in Steel/Remwha, who so desperately wanted an end to a life that had none. 

Even in that, there is transformation. In grief and sadness and loss, there is the chance to change. To grow. To imagine something else. With the stone eaters, that starts here:

He says: “I only wanted it to end.”

Gaewha—Antimony, whatever—says, “That isnâ€t what we were made for.” 

He turns his head, slowly, to look at her. It is tiring just to watch him do this. Stubborn fool. There is the despair of ages on his face, all because he refuses to admit that thereâ€s more than one way to be human.

Gaewha offers a hand. “We were made to make the world better.”

And if you look back at what happened that inspired Earth to create the stone eaters… Gaewha isnâ€t exactly wrong, right? The world had sunk to such a low place, and Earth lashed out. So, thereâ€s a choice. There is always a choice. So the stone eaters choose differently. They go down to Earth in the core and offer both a sign that they will do things differently—by returning the moon and destroy all the obelisks but onyx—in exchange for the beginning of peace. Earth, on the other hand, finally lets all those countless souls go.

Itâ€s a start.

Thatâ€s all that it takes, right?

Which Nassun doesnâ€t quite understand. To be fair to her, her grief over the loss of her mother becomes the grief she has over the loss of Schaffa, who dies by the time Hoa returns to her. So when she finds out what the stone eaters negotiated, she isnâ€t really relieved. What practical application does that have to her life? She canâ€t use orogeny again, lest she turn to stone herself. If humans need to cooperate to survive the Season thatâ€s still unfolding, how the hell is Nassun or any orogene ever supposed to undo this system? Wonâ€t people just go back to what they were? How the world was?

And then holy shit, Hoa delivers one of the best moments in the series, a brilliant condemnation of the Stillness and of our world in the process:

“Imprisonment of orogenes was never the only option for ensuring the safety of society.” I pause deliberately, and she blinks, perhaps remembering that orogene parents are perfectly capable of raising orogene children without disaster. “Lynching was never the only option. The nodes were never the only option. All of these were choices. Different choices have always been possible.”

First of all, that reference to Essun… OUCH. But in this, thereâ€s a callback to Meov, right? Wasnâ€t that an entire culture that figured out a different choice? But even more powerful is the stated truth: There was always another choice. All of these things were not simply the way of the world, no matter how stridently a person claims that is the case. In our world, we can choose an existence without the police. Without jails or prisons. Without state-sanctioned violence and extrajudicial executions. Without war. Without imperialism. Without lynching. ALL OF THESE THINGS ARE A CHOICE. 

And Nassun has choices before her. Can she imagine a new future?

“Orogeny,” I say, sharply so she will pay attention, “was never the only way to change the world.”

Jemisin does not give answers. She does not spell out how this change will happen. Indeed, when she finally brings us to the explanation for the entire framing device for this entire trilogy, this is still about possibility. Because Hoa has been telling Essun—not Essun the human, but Essun the stone eater—how she lived and what she went through so that she could have an understanding as she moved forward. This wasnâ€t to mold her into the same person. Essun the human? Sheâ€s gone forever. Thereâ€s no getting her back. As Hoa states: 

There is always loss, with change.

But.

But.

There is more. 

And weâ€ve reached the part that was so hard to read, because Iâ€m still dealing with loss.

You say, in an echo of the voice you once had, “What is it that you want?”

“Only to be with you,” I say.

“Why?”

I adjust myself to a posture of humility, with head bowed and one hand over my chest. “Because that is how one survives eternity,” I say, “or even a few years. Friends. Family. Moving with them. Moving forward.” 

There have been times when this pandemic felt like an eternity. I think most of us thought that March lasted five thousand years. But it all had a particular sting for me because I was alone. My roommate was quarantining elsewhere, I was by myself in a brand new apartment that Iâ€d moved into forty days prior, and I had no friends in the neighborhood.

And every day, it was not lost on me that the love of my life was dead and not there with me.

The biggest thing—of many things, trust me—that Iâ€ve had to learn this year is how to be alone again. Only literally, though. Because Iâ€m not actually alone. Grief is an isolating force, but as Iâ€ve fought my way forward, Iâ€ve strengthened friendships I do have, that grief and depression made me not see. Still, itâ€s hard, because I do think some parts of this nightmare would have been easier to swallow if Iâ€d just had someone by my side. I thought about past relationships while reading this, and itâ€s true that I suffered and persevered while in those, too, and thereâ€s something beautiful about having someone you can turn to in a really intimate way when shit gets rough. 

But there are other ways to love.

Other ways to feel fulfilled.

Other choices available to me.

Iâ€ve spent most of this year learning to be. Not just alone, but to exist as a whole person outside of a relationship, both one that I thought would last for the rest of my life (but obviously didnâ€t) and one that I thought changed me so much that I would never be whole again. Itâ€s not true. As the world has further pitched into a nightmare, Iâ€ve found new friends and old ones. I found my family. And Iâ€m doing my best to move forwards.

So I cried reading this and the acknowledgments, too. Guess I was right, then, about some of the source of this trilogy. But I also cried because Iâ€m writing this just two days from the closing of polls in my country, in which the US will either begin to reject fascism or will welcome it with open arms. 

I donâ€t want to be patient. I donâ€t want to imagine a world without choices. 

So.

Letâ€s get to it.

Because weâ€ve all got work to do.

NOTES

• wait WHAT IS THAT OPENING. 
• wait did hoa
• DID HOA MAKE A STONE EATER OUT OF ESSUN AFTER ALL
• lmao tonkee I LOVE IT
• oh my god the moon is waning!!!
• the niess. holy shit. itâ€s DONE
• “That isnâ€t whatâ€s going to kill him.” FUCK.
• holy shit, hoa meeting with Steel
• “We were made to make the world better” AHHHH OH MY GOD
• oh my god all the original tuners on the moon are here!!!
• the negotiation is happening I AM OVERWHELMED
• ACCEPTED
• OH MY GOD
• FORTY THOUSAND YEARS
• EARTH LET THE SOULS GO
• months. MONTHS PASSED
• okay the wildflowers in the hand… I started crying again
• fuck.
• I did not think I would reach a point where I felt sad about schaffa dying
• but here we are
• oh wow. nassun canâ€t use orogeny again without further turning to stone. I forgot that detail
• as;dlfjkda;fklj just because itâ€s horrible doesnâ€t make it less true. DAMN, HOA.
• ALL. OF. THESE. WERE. CHOICES. YES. YES. FUCK ANYONE WHO SAYS ENSLAVEMENT HAD TO HAPPEN
• OH MY GOD
• THE FORMAT OF THIS WHOLE FUCKING SERIES
• HOA IS TELLING IT ALL TO ESSUN
• TO KEEP HER TOGETHER
• TO PRODUCE A STONE EATER VERSION OF HER
• Iâ€M CRYING AGAIN
• ESSUN, BORN AGAIN
• Because that is how one survives eternity
• I canâ€t
• “I want the world to be better.” 
• iâ€m reading the acknowledgments I HAVE TO
• oh god times of change
• oh oh no. I wrote that whole thing about grief in the last review
• iâ€m crying all over again. ugh, my heart
• the thousand bureaucratic indignities of life after death… yâ€all, that cut so deep. itâ€s so true. 
• wow. wow. this was just… the best. 

Mark Links Stuff

– My second novel, EACH OF US A DESERT, is now out in the world!
– If you’d like to stay up-to-date on all announcements regarding my books, sign up for my newsletter! DO IT.

Trigger Warning: For discussion of trauma, death, grief

Three points of view in one chapter. First, second, and first person.

The end of days. 

Look, I didnâ€t expect that Nassun and Essun would have a hug-filled, tear-jerking reunion. The two of them were too ideologically opposed in their current state; there was too much each of them did not know about the other; time was not on their side. Still, Jemisin crafts a painful, stressful, and electrifying finale to this three-book struggle, one that has worldwide, systemic implications for the Stillness, yet is deeply, deeply personal. It had to be these two at the end of the world, yâ€all, whatever that end might be.

And I really thought Nassun was going to do what she set out to do. 

Thereâ€s a generational commentary here, too, because Nassun isnâ€t just younger, her experiences were nothing like her motherâ€s. Thatâ€s also how the end comes about, but Iâ€ll get to that in a moment. I couldnâ€t ignore how this reunion was complicated not just by their time apart, not just by what had happened in the past two years, but by the simple fact that Essun was now seeing her daughter fully come into her power. It is an awe-inspiring thing, of course, but it broke my heart. So much of this did. Essun was proud. Her daughter was more powerful than Essun ever ended up being. She learned to stand up for herself and what she thought was right. This part specifically felt like a dagger to my heart: 

The biggest changes are immaterial, though. The wariness in her gaze, nothing like the shy diffidence you remember. Her posture: shoulders back, feet braced and square. You told her to stop slouching a million times, and yes, she looks so tall and strong now that sheâ€s standing up straight. So beautifully strong.

Her orogeny sits on your awareness like a weight upon the world, rock-steady and precise as a diamond drill. Evil Earth, you think. She sesses just like you. 

This was Essunâ€s legacy standing before her. This was the product of her parenting style. This was the end result of Nassun spending time with Schaffa, growing close to him and coming to see him as a father. It is a conclusion that Essun both hoped for and never could have ever dreamed of. 

I just… goddamn. When the fight began, it was hard. Point blank. Itâ€s supposed to be. And to Jemisinâ€s credit, not a single thing happens here that is out-of-character for Essun or Nassun. Even though Nassun understands that Schaffa was literally a different person to Essun, she obviously wasnâ€t going to budge on “saving” him. I also knew that Nassun wasnâ€t going to take a single order from her mother. Functionally, sheâ€d given up on her parents; Schaffa now filled that role. There was a moment where I thought the tide might turn: Essun telling her daughter that she wanted to help. I really thought it might bridge the chasm between the two of them, but then, this is followed by a miscalculation. I didnâ€t catch it the first time around, but yâ€all: ESSUN DIDNâ€T REALIZE THAT NASSUN KNEW SHE WAS GOING TO DIE. Thus, itâ€s easier to understand why Essun relentlessly pursues her daughter and makes the choices that she does. She was trying to save her; she believed that Nassun needed her. 

But like I said, after all this time apart, theyâ€re different people. They donâ€t actually know or understand each other like they once did. A great example of that: Nassunâ€s powers have more or less eclipsed Essunâ€s. She can blend magic and orogeny…

Like the tuners used to. 

Essun doesnâ€t even know what her daughter is using the Obelisk Gate for! Her concern is the death of her daughter:

Sheâ€s going to die right in front of you if you donâ€t do something.

Lord. Reading that again… jesus. It was a clue. It was the key to what Essun would eventually do. Because sheâ€s already lost two children. And this singular grief of hers has guided her, pushed her, challenged her, held her back… of course it would matter in the end. So thatâ€s what Essunâ€s focus becomes: stopping her daughter not because sheâ€s concerned about what Nassun is doing, but because sheâ€s worried what will happen to her after.

Hoa warned me. Warrant was important. I DIDNâ€T FUCKING EXPECT THAT ESSUN WOULD USE THE CORESTONES IN LITERALLY ALL THE GUARDIANS TO GRAB ENOUGH POWER IN ORDER TO CALL THE ONYX TO HER. HOLY SHIT. Yâ€ALL!!! The Guardians were crystallized and theyâ€re gone. Thatâ€s it. Forever gone, at least as long as Earth doesnâ€t make anymore of them. So, look, I have no idea whatâ€s in this final chapter, but isnâ€t this a good thing? Isnâ€t this a step towards making the world better? 

All of this builds to the finale. All of it has been. Because it matters that Essun wanted to rewrite the world, to give it a fighting chance to be better, but not with an instantaneous solution. As outlined in the last chapter, humans will still have to do work. It required of them a substantial, soul-shifting change, particularly those in power who have coasted by on top of this rotting, vicious system. 

Nassun, however, wanted to destroy it all. Her solution was complete. All-encompassing. And at the end, as Essun crawls towards her daughter, Jemisin introduces one tiny thing into Nassunâ€s mind: doubt. 

It is nothing more than that. Barely even a thought. But it whispers, Do you really have nothing else?

Is there not one person in this world besides Schaffa who cares about you?

Because what we have here is a struggle of wills based in love: Essun loves her daughter and wants to save her. Nassun loves Schaffa and wants to save him. 

And then thereâ€s Hoa:

I love you both. How can I not, after all this? I am still human, after all, and this is a battle for the fate of the world. Such a terrible and magnificent thing to witness.

This unfolding poetry is part of the gorgeous prose, too. I really cannot praise the writing more, yâ€all. Like I said: There is nothing like this. Jemisin is writing CIRCLES around everyone else in the filed. Look at this set of sentences!!!

It is a battle, though, line by line, tendril by tendril of magic. The titanic energies of the Gate, of the Rifting, whip and shiver around you both in a cylindrical aurora borealis of energies and colors, visible light ranging to wavelengths beyond the spectrum.

This whole scene is breathtaking. On a character level; on a line level; on a story level. 

Because Essunâ€s desire—to save her daughter—clicks into place as she watches the start of Nassunâ€s crystallization, and yâ€all, this whole sequence broke me. It is one of the saddest things Iâ€ve ever read, and I immediately started crying:

Sheâ€s aware of it, you know somehow. She made this choice. She is prepared for the inevitability of her own death.

You arenâ€t. Oh, Earth, you just canâ€t watch another of your children die.

So… you give up.

I ache with the look on your face, because I know what it costs you to give up Alabasterâ€s dream—and your own. You so wanted to make a better world for Nassun. But more than anything else, you want this last child of yours to live… and so you make a choice. To keep fighting will kill you both. The only way to win, then, is not to fight anymore.

Iâ€m sorry, Essun. Iâ€m so sorry. Goodbye.

I knew that if Essun succeeded, she would die. I guess I never thought that if she lost, she would die, too. But she does, uttering her daughterâ€s name with her final breath, turning her face up and into a smile:

So rusting amazing, your little girl. You are proud to lose to her strength.

Yeah, Iâ€m crying again. Because this is what it took for Nassun to realize something Essun just realized herself: She isnâ€t alone. There are other people in the world who care about her. But her mother dies—because of her—in order to save the world, to fix it. 

Because the world took and took and took from you, too, after all. She knows this. And yet, for some reason that she does not think sheâ€ll ever understand… even as you died, you were reaching for the Moon. 

And for her.

An option appears. An ending manifests. I didnâ€t guess it, and I certainly didnâ€t anticipate it. Essunâ€s will is in the onyx because the onyx touched her, knew what she wanted, and then, Nassun does, too. 

The end is here:

Open the Gate, pour the Riftingâ€s power through it, catch the Moon. End the Seasons. Fix the world. This, Nassun sesses-feels-knows, was your last wish.

The onyx says, in its ponderous, wordless way: Execute Y/N?

And in the cold stone silence, alone, Nassun chooses.

YES

Alone.

She was alone when she finally realized that she wasnâ€t.

Just bury me right here, yâ€all.

NOTES

• how does this series continue to devastate me with CHAPTER TITLES
• AND NOW WEâ€RE BACK TO FIRST PERSON
• why is hoa telling us this???
• how does hoa know what nassun has been through?
• the changes in nassun, oh my god
• “She knows you better now than ever before in her life.” goodbye
• CHRIST THIS JUST… OH MY GOD. TOO BROKEN TO FIX.
• THIS IS SO MUCH MORE HEARTBREAKING THAN I EXPECTED
• omg I love the detail about what danel is doing during this scene
• o h m y g o d this is tearing me apart
• SHE ISNâ€T JUST USING OROGENY
• TUNING OH MY FUCKING GOD
• OH MY GOD
• essun realizing that nassun is the student alabaster wanted… this is too much
• I genuinely do not know how essun will get to the onyx. at all.
• that buzzing is warrant, right?
• this is one of the most intense climactic scenes in a trilogy I have ever read
• “You donâ€t hate them; you just donâ€t care.” THE SOUND I JUST MADE
• OH MY GOD I GENUINELY DONâ€T KNOW WHAT IS GOING TO HAPPEN. she does want to make the world better! but what if the onyx doesnâ€t want to help her?
• THE GLIMMER OF DOUBT
• OH MY GOD
• WHATLE;JSA;DFJASD THE ONYX A;DKJF;ALKDSJF;ALDJF;ADFJ
• oh that image of the moon through the onyx like an eye. INCREDIBLE.
• “Such a terrible and magnificent thing to witness” I AGREE. THIS IS TOO MUCH
• oh fuck the guardians got jeweled!!!
• NO
• NASSUN NO
• I AM SO STRESSED OUT
• NO
• NO NO NO NO
• OH MY GOD
• SHE CANâ€T WATCH ANOTHER CHILD OF HERS DIE
• “You are proud to lose to her strength.” iâ€m BAWLING
• this is so fucking much
• EXECUTE Y/N
• Y E S
• OH MY FUCKING GOD
• I DID NOT EXPECT THIS AT ALL
• Iâ€M STILL CRYING

Mark Links Stuff

– My second novel, EACH OF US A DESERT, is now out in the world!
– If you’d like to stay up-to-date on all announcements regarding my books, sign up for my newsletter! DO IT.

Trigger Warning: For discussion of death and grief

I… I donâ€t want this series to end. I know it has to, and itâ€s so clear we are approaching the natural point in this story for it to end, but I just… love these characters so much. And the writing. AND THE STRUCTURE. God, the structure of this entire trilogy is fascinating, and The Stone Sky is no exception to that. Iâ€m not even done with this book, and itâ€s so obvious to me why this won the Hugo for Best Novel after the others. There is literally no one doing shit like this in speculative fiction, yâ€all.

Anyway. Iâ€m going to split this by character at the start, just for ease of talking about it all.

Nassun

Even on the dark side of the world, even at the apparent end, what mattered most to Nassun was love. 

I see this as integral to her arc over the two books she was in. Itâ€s what she craved growing up; itâ€s what she thought she had in her father; itâ€s what faded as her father understood that she was an orogene; it is what she found in Schaffa. And now, Schaffa is dying. There was no reason for Nassun to deviate from her plan: to love Schaffa and the world so much to grant it mercy. To pull the Moon into the Earth and destroy everything, guaranteeing that no orogene would ever be tortured again. No unhappiness, no suffering, no fear, no terror. Ever again. 

“Some things are too broken to be fixed, Schaffa.” Inexplicably, she thinks of Jija. The ache of this silences her for a moment. “I… I canâ€t make anything better. But I can at least make sure the bad things stop.”

But thereâ€s a bit immediately before this that is particularly cutting in its honesty, and I want to highlight it, too:

As big as the world is, Nassun is beginning to realize itâ€s also really small. The same stories, cycling around and around. The same endings, again and again. The same mistakes eternally repeated.

Even as a child, Nassun understands this crucial element of her world, and itâ€s one we see in our world as well. We absolutely cycle through the same mistakes, and itâ€s why we are currently in a period of immense upheaval and strife. We didnâ€t learn. Practically nothing we are seeing in the world—massive uprisings, state-sanctioned violence and extrajudicial executions, complete disregard for science and collective care in the midst of a pandemic—is something we havenâ€t seen before.

Weâ€ve seen it all.

Weâ€ve done it all.

And we are barely, barely changing.

So maybe itâ€s all too broken. Thatâ€s certain one thing at the heart of prison abolition and the demolishment of the police, and theyâ€re both important, personal causes to me. Some systems are too shattered to ever repair, and we need to sweep away the sharp shards before they claim more lives. As upsetting as the thought is in the context of The Stone Sky, I get why Nassun wants to do this. I really do. Jemisin has brilliantly filtered this entire world and its violent systems through the eyes of a child, and thus, thereâ€s a certain purity of interpretation here. She isnâ€t jaded in the way adults are, and she is also far more willing to cast out things that make no sense or donâ€t work. 

Take the scene where she looks into the hole at Corepoint. Sheâ€s not impressed by it:

The hole feeds no one, provides no shelter against ash or assault. It doesnâ€t even scare her—though that is meaningless. After her journey through the underground city and the core of the world, after losing Schaffa, nothing will ever frighten her again.

How could it? How could she ever see Corepoint as anything other than a monument of exploitation? She knows what that place did to Earth. She has seen how this act stretched forward across time and led to the current nightmare: the Seasons. The oppression of orogenes. Endless suffering. So why let it persist?

Because there was not a single reason otherwise, at least not until Earth manipulated Nassun with Schaffa. 

Yâ€ALL. WHAT A WAY TO FINALLY REVEAL WHAT WARRANT IS. Oh my god, I AM STILL REELING. I have some theories about two things in particular, since Jemisin doesnâ€t hand us answers directly. First: LETâ€S TALK ABOUT THIS:

This facilityâ€s corridors were beaten and clawed out of the shield volcano over a period of days or weeks—hurriedly, though it isnâ€t clear why. Nassun can tell the hurried nature of the place, somehow, to her own amazement. Fear has soaked into the walls.

They werenâ€t supposed to survive, remember? And so I see one possible explanation for the hurried construction of Warrant: Earth needed somewhere for these people to go. It wants to use them, right? I believe Earth always controlled the Guardians to some extent as part of the war it waged on humanity. And what better way to do that than to allow Guardians to survive the Seasons, during which, I recall, all orogenes are supposed to be exterminated? Because orogenes add another piece to this puzzle: Theyâ€re the only ones who can stop Seasons. All those quotes at the end of the chapters have built up a new legacy, one that was wiped away by—Iâ€m guessing—both the Fulcrum and Guardians. Average citizens canâ€t know how truly useful orogenes are, right? They have to see them as tools and as monsters. 

So, back to the creation of Guardians. I bet Warrant was created very quickly during the first Season as a way to keep the Guardians alive. That brings me to another theory: 

Strangely, the silver threads in each Guardian are reaching out to the ones around them. Networking together. Bolstering each other, maybe? Charging one another to perform some sort of work, the way a network of obelisks does? She cannot guess.

Initially, I mistakenly thought of the Guardians as individual agents, fighting against Earth, and maybe thatâ€s what the connection does. But no, this place has to be controlled by Earth, give what Earth does with Schaffa. So I think that tiny thread of silver is Earthâ€s continued control of them, keeping them in slumber and healthy, ready to come back out of the Earth when the Season is done. 

Which… might happen. Because holy shit, the REVERSAL. The parallel! Nassunâ€s whole decision was swayed not just by her experience, but by Steel begging for mercy, asking for their suffering to end. And here, Earth pulls one last manipulation: It grants Schaffa mercy. Not out of any sense of goodness, but because Earth knows Nassun is going to destroy everything with the Moon. So, what does Earth give her?

A reason not to end everything. 

That reason is singular: Schaffa. Schaffa very well could die tomorrow, or he could survive for a few years. Or, Nassun could make a different choice, one she thought of before:

Steel never said it couldnâ€t be done, only that it shouldnâ€t. Maybe Steel is wrong. Maybe, as a stone eater, Schaffa wonâ€t be alone and sad forever. Steel is mean and awful, which is why no one wants to be with him. But Schaffa is good and kind. Surely he will find someone else to love.

Especially if all the world is stone eaters, too.

Humanity, she decides, is a small price to pay for Schaffaâ€s future. 

Well, there goes my theory that she was going to do what she originally set out to do. Holy shit, is this going to happen?

Wait. Let me back up again.

Essun

You can look back to Demaya, to Syenite, to Maov, to most of Essunâ€s life, and you can see hard it is to believe that people care about her. Not everyone, of course. She grows close to Schaffa at one point, and I donâ€t doubt that there was love between her and Jija. And yet here, at the end of things, itâ€s still hard for her to believe that anyone would follow her to Corepoint. Loneliness is what she knows. And to use something my therapist tells me all the time, humans often go with what they know and is familiar, even if that emotion or behavior is extremely negative. Itâ€s more comforting for Essun, in her own twisted way, to believe that she is a lone fighter without anyone who cares about her. Hoa knows that this is absurd and even calls her on it:

“Sorry. I wasnâ€t expecting this.”

“Werenâ€t you?”

TELL HER, HOA. 

I also found it interesting how Jemisin contrasts the two solutions for ending the Seasons. Nassunâ€s plan is definitive. You canâ€t have a Fifth Season if the Earth doesnâ€t exist anymore. Essun, however, knows that her action is risk reduction. Itâ€ll end the current season, but “negotiation” with Earth is still required to actually stop the ongoing nightmare over the Stillness. Thereâ€s almost no real certainty here. It would require faith in the future and in other. It would require hope. Is there a whole lot of that? Not necessarily, but I still admired that these people still wanted to try. Trying was better than inaction, right?

And so, with Lerna, Hjarka, Tonkee, and Danel at their side, Hoa and Essun take everyone through the Earth to Corepoint: 

You keep yours open, though, as the world goes dark and strange. You feel no fear. You are not alone.

That sentence was so damn striking, yâ€all. Because itâ€s a direct admission: Essun knew she wasnâ€t alone anymore. I mean, sheâ€s known that for a while, but having it stated so openly? Oh, this was a MOMENT. She accepted it, and my heart grew A THOUSAND SIZES. 

Which was perfect timing for it to break a thousand times immediately after! I should have expected resistance, but I wrongly assumed it wouldnâ€t happen until they arrived in Corepoint. I loved how disorienting the scenes in the Earth were. That was partially due to me believing that Essun would have an interaction with Earth, and then I was distracted by the bizarre, twisting battle, where silver is thrust and flung at everyone as a means of getting any of the humans to let go of Hoa and immediately die.

So yeah. It hurt when Essun slowly realized the truth: Lerna didnâ€t make it. Jemisin handed us a red herring by having Essun express so much guilt about her fate and not being able to see Lernaâ€s child come to life. I just… I didnâ€t expect this. But the shock gave way to something else at this point: 

It isnâ€t what should have happened. Youâ€re the one nobly sacrificing yourself for the future of the world. He was supposed to survive this.

And this line was important, too:

You shake your head in… confusion? “Heâ€s… he was… so much younger than me.” You expected him to outlive you. Thatâ€s how it was supposed to work. 

I canâ€t claim to understand what went into the writing of this series, but I constantly see grief as this major force within the book. It was there from the very beginning, and even the death of Uche is quietly referenced here: Essunâ€s son was so much younger than her; he was supposed to outlast her. So was Corundum. So were any of the children murdered by the Fulcrum or stuck in node stations or kidnapped by Guardians. On a personal level, itâ€s something I continue to struggle with after the death of my ex and my best friend. He was so young. Twenty-eight years isnâ€t enough time on this planet. This isnâ€t how he was supposed to go.

But how are any of us “supposed” to go? Thereâ€s no guarantee at all, and the cruelty of life is that very unknown. At some point, weâ€re just… gone. And weâ€ll leave behind people who will wonder this very same thing. Why them? Why then? 

I was already in a tender state, and then that last scene was like a semi truck plowing me over:

“Nassun!” you blurt, because itâ€s her.

The girl framed by the doorway is taller than you remember by several inches. Her hair is longer now, braided back in two plaits that fall behind her shoulders. You barely recognize her. She stops short at the sight of you, a faint wrinkle of confusion between her brows, and you realize sheâ€s having trouble recognizing you, too. Then realization comes, and she stares at you as if you are the last thing in the world she expected to see. Because you are.

“Hi, Mama,” Nassun says.

I burst into tears. Simply put. Iâ€ve been waiting for this so long, and I donâ€t know how either person will react. Itâ€s scary, too, because I know Nassun does not have the same feelings towards her mother as she once did. But Essun found. She tracked her down. And they have finally been reunited.

At the possible end of the world.

NOTES

• oh. oh my god
• THAT CHAPTER TITLE
• HELP ME
• “She is such a good child, at her core.” well, that broke me. that whole aside was just… wow.
• I mean this imagery: her mother is supposed to catch the moon, while Nassun is going to have the moon smash into earth and destroy everything. GOD THIS BOOK
• hi. what. WHAT. wait a second. I thought the book she was reading was written by Alabaster? Did she find another one? Clearly Hoa wrote it and I assume he meant Kelenli? because
• um
• what
• but now I see why the spare key—those 27 obelisks—are so important!
• the switch in perspective? from third person to second in the same chapter? I LIVE.
• Essunâ€s feelings about Lerna HELP
• lmaaaoooo YKKA IS MY FAVORITE, I LOVE HER SO MUCH
• Wow, so Tonkee thinks theyâ€re coming back? I just assumed this would be death for anyone who would come. 
• itâ€s really hitting me that iâ€m finishing this series in this batch of reviews. I am… sad.
• “Itâ€s a rusting quest.” LMAAAOOOOOOO
• god itâ€s also so fascinating that this solution still requires work. faith. hope. negotiation. whereas nassunâ€s is just YEP, ALL DONE, GOOD BYE
• of COURSE tonkee is excited
• “You feel no fear. You are not alone.” THE SHEER FUCKING MEANING OF THIS LINE, THE WEIGHT, THE GROWTH, THE INTERNATIONAL IMPLICATIONS
• I love that the massive hole in Corepoint doesnâ€t impress Nassun. itâ€s such a great way to distill down her feelings on all this
• the moon. oh my god. OH MY GOD THERE IT IS
• AHHHH THE TWENTY-SEVEN
• THIS IS HAPPENING
• HELP
• wait
• whatâ€s happening
• wait schaffa???? what the fuck!!?!?!?!
• NO
• NMO 
• ASDKLF;LKJSDFKL;AJDSF
• NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
• NO THIS IS A TRAP
• OH GOD essun, I feel like youâ€re about to find out why it feels like there is a giant sun underground
• oh
• oh itâ€s happening now
• shes gonna find out
• WAIT
• ARE THOSE OTHER STONE EATERS????
• is there a battle happening???
• oh my god
• oh shit okay, so they didnâ€t see Earth
• NO
• NOOOOOOO!!!!!
• LERNA!!!!!
• Well, didnâ€t expect this to hit so hard, but once Essun said that Lerna was so much younger than her, I lost it. shit.
• wow, tonkee already figured out something like the vehimal must exist
• OH
• OH FUCK
• THAT BUILDING
• WARRANT
• F U C K
• HOA WARNED ME?????? HE WARNED ME THAT WARRANT WOULD BE IMPORTANT
• why was this place constructed hurriedly
• the guardians. I canâ€t. I CANâ€T. 
• WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS!!!!!!!!!
• is the communicating how they all fight against Earth?
• the node maintainer chairs. no. the chairs they use to install corestones, right?
• what the fuck, he had it removed? or earth did? what is happening????
• iâ€m crying again
• of course this is happening. of course he is dying. but why would earth do this?
• oh
• OH MY GOD
• ITâ€S A MANIPULATION
• what the fuck I… what do I say. NASSUN
• NO OH MY GOD
• Iâ€M CRYING AGAIN
• “Hi, Mama.”
• I fucking burst into tears, yâ€all.

Mark Links Stuff

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Trigger Warning: For mention of grief

Well, they tried, didnâ€t they?

Itâ€s worth something to me. In the greater scheme of this story, the tuners recognized that Syl Anagist was built on a constant source of exploitation—the Niess and the tuners—and that they were created to help exploit another living thing forever. A perpetual machine of exploitation, if you will. Faced with the reality of an existence that would be violent in perpetuity, they made a choice, one that was supposed to be final, one that spoke to how their captors and oppressors misjudged their ability. Because oppressors always do, donâ€t they? They have to. They have to minimize and diminish and insult in order to posit that they themselves are the superior beings. And in doing so, they become unable to see the truth.

And so, the tuners struck.

But Hoaâ€s story loops around, shoots back and forth between the present and the past. In the present, I believe he was referring to Essun: she committed “to the change.” I assume thatâ€s the change in her body? Or maybe this is all a reference to the last Essun chapter. Look, Hoa has outright admitted to us that heâ€s had his own motives in all this, and we know heâ€s been willing to manipulate Essun to reach his endgame. And now, Essun will shortly be on her way to Corepoint, to reunite with her daughter, where the choice will be presented again.

Whatâ€s the solution? Does Essun return the Moon and try to repair things with Earth, to grant Earth the recompense it deserves? Or will Nassun destroy them all, both out of fury and out of mercy?

I donâ€t know. Yet. 

But letâ€s talk about what is revealed here, because Jemisin has tied up so many questions in this mind-blowing, upsetting, and shocking chapter. I feel… well, first, lemme say that I feel satisfied. Deeply so! The answer to the mystery of the origin of orogenes is given to us. So is the origin of the Guardians and the strangeness of their corestone implants; so is the mystery the sockets and those strange iron needles. The Moon. Kelenli. The tuners. The conductors. THE IRON THING THAT TONKEE TOUCHED IN CASTRIMAâ€S CONTROL CENTER. Why Hessionite was murdered!!! This chapter was like a dose of adrenaline and dopamine and serotonin ALL AT ONCE. 

So letâ€s start with Alabaster. I appreciated that we opened with his story because it grounded the reader in what was to come: the tuners having a similar breakdown as they tried to understand reality. And thatâ€s really what this is, isnâ€t it? I think any person who considers themselves knowledgable and aware in our own world has a moment like this. They realize how fundamentally broken the world is, and the despair and rage settle in. At first, that is. But what do you do with that? What happens, in particular, when Alabaster learns the truth of the tuners and the Moon from Tablet Three? (OH MY GOD WE FINALLY FOUND OUT WHAT WAS ON THAT, TOO.)

He leaves. He abandons the Fulcrum and his Guardian. I mean, who wouldn’t try to run away from an epiphany that horrific? I was fascinated by his Guardianâ€s reaction, but it does explain why they had such an odd relationship. It wasnâ€t hard to see what was happening here: I think this was a way to reference Steelâ€s conversation in the previous chapter. What if Leshet loved Alabaster? What if that was her way of resisting the will of the corestone? And didnâ€t Alabaster visit Leshet as she was dying? I donâ€t know, maybe Iâ€m just connecting dots that arenâ€t actually there, but with the reveal at the end of this about the origin of the Guardians, I canâ€t help but think this was all part of that! 

From here, though, Jemisin gives us another crucial scene. Now that Iâ€ve read it again, I realize that this was the final time that Hoa saw Kelenli. And what a goodbye: a goodbye without words, just a single stare. But a stare that communicated so much:

Kelenli stands gazing after him until he is gone. Then her head turns and she looks right at me. Stahnyn makes a choked sound beside me, but she is a fool. Of course Kelenli will not report us. Why would she? Her performance was never for Gallat.

She gave Hoa the last piece of the puzzle:

I close my eyes, aching as I finally, finally, understand. Kelenli is one of us in every way that matters, and she always has been.

And the tuners always will be the same in the eyes of the conductors. They will never ascend to anything greater because it is impossible within this system. It was designed that way. The interpersonal relationship between Gallat and Kelenli isnâ€t just a matter of a pregnancy that isnâ€t supposed to happen. Both of them cannot escape what this world has decided they are. Theyâ€ll always be damaged goods in the eyes of others, even the people they love. Well, even worse for the tuners and, I assume, Kelenli: they wonâ€t be anything after Geoarcanity. Syl Anagist will have no use for them, and Iâ€m sure that if theyâ€d done as they were ordered, the Sylanagistine would have found a new way to fold the tuners into their genocide of the Niess. 

So they decide, in an act of poetry, to destroy everything with the very engine that was supposed to grant them perpetual magic. Well, perpetual relative to them; it never could have been actually perpetual. But they were too arrogant to ever see that. To ever see that magic comes from life, so something at the core of the Earth had to have been alive. To ever see that this whole venture would always have ended in a terrible, terrible violence.

That being said, no one expected the violence that came to be. First: THE MOON. OH MY GOD, I canâ€t believe I was technically right with my The Obelisk Gate prediction about them going to space. I WAS JUST WRONG ABOUT THE TIMELINE. Zero Site was never on Earth, IT WAS ON THE MOON. Even worse, Jemisin chooses a particularly disturbing means of revealing that Earth uses metal as a means of communication and control. Itâ€s here that the true context and meaning of corestone becomes apparent. Again, itâ€s such an incredible display of hubris. The very thing that leads to the downfall of Syl Anagist is the object they proudly put on display INSIDE THEIR SECRET MOON BASE. Earth spied on the humans through it!!! And even when Hoa warns them all that itâ€s definitely alive and it is DEFINITELY angry, they donâ€t fucking listen. Because the tuners have no value outside of being tools, and tools canâ€t warn those that wield them. At least not in the minds of these people.

I admit to a glee, even knowing that this wasnâ€t going to end like the tuners had planned. Thereâ€s something deeply satisfying about reading this all unfolding with not one of the people in Zero Site even slightly suspicious of the tuners. I accept that glee because itâ€s a power fantasy for me. Wouldnâ€t it be wonderful to turn my oppressors†tools against them? Wouldnâ€t it be great to see the surprise on their faces when they realized just how much they had underestimated me and my people? Yet even for Hoa, itâ€s not that simple, especially once he finds out that Gallat left Kelenli behind on Earth. As promised, love plays a part in this unfolding apocalypse, and Hoaâ€s “love”—whatever that love might be—affects his decisions at Zero Site. Thereâ€s this part, which… whew. THIS HIT HARD:

She should survive the initial convulsion of magic; even if sheâ€s in contact with any of the devices that flux, she has more than enough skill to shunt the feedback away. Then in the aftermath, sheâ€ll be just another survivor, made equal in suffering. No one will know what she really is—or her child, if it ends up like her. Like us. We will have set her free… to struggle for survival along with everyone else. But that is better than the illusion of safety in a gilded cage, is it not?

Better than you could have ever given her, I think at Gallat.

Thereâ€s an elegance here: I see tones of Essunâ€s life, which is fitting given who Kelenli is. The idea of hiding orogeny in plain site… Essun tried that. Twice. Thereâ€s also an echo of what Nassun is struggling with: her love for Schaffa and the ramifications of what she is about to do. Itâ€s part of a long cycle, but Jemisin continues to leave us wondering: Will Nassun or Essun be able to close this loop? Or will they destroy it? Bend its shape into something else? 

And how exactly did Hoa help shape the world we see in the present day?

We learn that here, and again, so very many hints and clues from over the course of the series come to fruition. Like this:

(There is a stutter here, quick and barely noticeable in the heady moment, though glaring through the lens of memory. Some of the fragments hurt us, just a little, when they detach from their sockets. We feel the scrape of metal that should not be there, the scratch of needles against our crystalline skin. We smell a whiff of rust. Itâ€s quick pain and quickly forgotten, as with any needle. Only later will we remember, and lament.)

Because that was Earth. Because Earth communicates and controls through metal. Because in a way, Hoa and their tuner friends were doomed from the start. Sort of, that is, since part of the whole reason this war is ignited is because neither party has a definitive victory. Earth had the advantage in many ways, and the tuners were also ignorant. They didnâ€t know that if you stuff enough magic “into something nonliving,” that it would come alive. And what happens when you have a collective of obelisks, all used as conduits for magic, that remember what was done to them? Yâ€ALL. THE ONYX WANTED JUSTICE SO IT LET HOA CONTROL IT. Even then!!!! Even with that on their side… fuck. I wasnâ€t ready for the sheer chaos of this sequence. Jemisin writes Hoaâ€s narration with a beautiful poetry. He is accepting that heâ€s going to die (but not alone) while eradicating this entire monstrous system.

But.

But. 

Remember. We were not the only ones who chose to fight back that day.

Three sides to this war. Stone eaters. Earth. Humanity. And Earth wrenches twenty-seven obelisks away from the tuners†control, bringing this into a stalemate… until Burndown. That word. That word we heard so long ago. Thatâ€s what Earth wanted to do: to utterly destroy everything. But Hoa was in love. Hoa couldnâ€t fathom a world destroyed with Kelenli still on it. And so, he made a choice, a split-second one, and he shattered the moonstone cabochon. The power flung the Moon out of orbit.

And then.

And then.

The transformation. 

I have said that it held us responsible for the attempt on its life, and it did—but somehow, perhaps through its years of study, it understood that we were tools of others, not actors of our own volition. Remember, too, that the Earth does not fully understand us. It looks upon human beings and sees short-lived, fragile creatures, puzzlingly detached in substance and awareness from the planet on which their lives depend, who do not understand the harm they tried to do—perhaps because they are so short-lived and fragile and detached. And so it chose for us what seemed, to it, a punishment leavened with meaning: It made us part of it. In my wire chair, I screamed as wave upon wave of alchemy worked over me, changing my flesh into raw, living, solidified magic that looks like stone.

Thus, the stone eaters were made in an instance of retribution and justice, at least in the eyes of Earth. Itâ€s poetic, too, to create these beings who, like the Earth, last forever. Who will understand the impossible stretch of time. Who will have an eternity to ponder the long-lasting ramifications of their actions.

Well, thatâ€s not all of it:

We didnâ€t get the worst of it; that was reserved for those who had offended the Earth the most. It used the corestone fragments to take direct control of these most dangerous vermin—but this did not work as it intended. Human will is harder to anticipate than human flesh. They were never meant to continue.

Incredible. That is where the Guardians came from, and based on what we know from what Steel said in the previous chapter, itâ€s easy to connect the dots: Human willpower allowed some of them to resist Earthâ€s control. And these same humans who subjugated the Niess and the tuners started all over again, didnâ€t they? Which leads us to the last piece as it falls into place

Only Kelenliâ€s children, who did not stand out, whose strength hid in plain sight, continued. Only Kelenliâ€s legacy, in the form of the lorists who went from settlement to settlement warning of the coming holocaust and teaching others how to cooperate, adapt, and remember, remains of the Niess. 

Because they had one hundred years before those 27 obelisks burned down to the core. Because they had time to prepare for the very first Fifth Season. And in that time, Kelenli gave birth to the very first orogenes, or at least what we now understand as orogenes. 

I donâ€t think this explains everything about the origin of both the orogenes and the Guardians, but itâ€s enough. Itâ€s enough to get a portrait of that time, back when both groups came into existence. I am certain that there are Guardians who donâ€t even know what their original purpose was: a punishment. Instead, they became part of yet another system of theft. They stole orogenes, and they stole from orogenes.

No more, right? Thatâ€s what weâ€re leading to. As Hoa notes, itâ€s time for Essun to end the world again. Or Nassun? Or both? OH GOD, WHATâ€S GOING TO HAPPEN IN THESE LAST THREE CHAPTERS????

NOTES

• the name of this chapter activated a deep and terrible fear in me
• WHY ZERO
• WHAT WAS THIS COUNTING DOWN TO
• I imagine the Moon thingy???
• (iâ€m an adult and I know words)
• wait
• what is the present??? where is hoa telling this story from
• iâ€m so nervous
• oh wait
• gaewha???? what is she doing here???
• FUCK YOU
• FUCK YOU
• THATâ€S W
• ANTIMONY
• I CANâ€T FUCKING BELIEVE IT
• HOW DOES JEMISIN KEEP TRICKING ME OVER AND OVER
• committed to what change????
• oh my god is hoa referring to nassun? essun????
• oh god, this whole bit about being betrayed by your society MIND EXPLOSION
• THIS WHOLE BIT IS DESTROYING ME
• okay, right, for a long time, alabaster always spoke of knowing more stonelore, but never explained it
• the original tablet three said WHAT?!?!?!?!
• NO ONE WAS READY TO ACCEPT OROGENES
• oh my god LESHET. HOLY SHIT
• oh god hessionite OH MY GOD
• so now we know why hessionite was murdered
• “life is sacred” whose???? oh god this fucking book
• AAHHHH HOA REALIZING HOW UNDER VALUED THEY ARE!!!!
• w;lakjt;lekjr;lj;ljasd;lfj;sdlkfja;lsdkjfasd;s HOA JUST PUT HER BUSINESS ON DISPLAY!!!!
• the fact that hoa literally never considered running away
• I canâ€t
• I am literally on the edge of my seat reading this
• oh
• oh 
• oh kelenli
• OH
• THIS WHOLE SCENE
• WHAT THE FUCK
• “the ember catches fire in all of us” this line has me VIBRATING
• oh my god, they wanted to use the Gate to destroy everything??? but… they didnâ€t? Or did they? I DONâ€T ACTUALLY KNOW
• oh my god this is happening
• feeding upon the life of the planet, forever. 
• WE SHOULD HAVE GUESSED fucking hell, this book
• kjn.n.sdf.m,nzxdmn,.sdfmn.fsdmn,.fsadasdfknasdfkljsafdlksafdkljsdfajkfsda
• I CANâ€T 
• I CANâ€T FUCKING BELIEVE
• ZERO SITE IS ON THE FUCKING MOON
• OH MY GOD HOW DID I NOT GUESS THIS
• WAIT
• DIDNâ€T I PREDICT THEM GOING INTO SPACE FOR BOOK 2 ;ADJF;AFDKADSJ;KSDAJFASDKLFJAS;LKDFJ;ALSKDFJA;SJASJDFL;KASDJF
• look at me being right in the wrongest way possible
• thereâ€s a whole fucking facility. ON THE MOON.
• the test bore???
• “I immediately hate her.” RIGHT. THE WAY SHE DRIPPED ALL THAT IN CONDESCENSION
• “itâ€s angry” HI WHAT THE FUCK
• OH MY GOD
• IS that
• corestone????
• OH MY GOD IT IS
• aahhhhahsfdljakdshflasd IS THAT EARTH SPEAKING TO HOA???
• no??? where is kelenli???
• OH NO. NOPE
• OH shit, he spared her???
• THE ABSOLUTE POWER OF HOA CLAIMING THAT THEY ARE PEOPLE AND SAYING THEY WONâ€T BE ABLE TO DENY THIS AND YET
• THE TRAGEDY OF WHAT COMES IN THE FUTURE
• OH MY GOD THAT QUICK FLASH OF PAIN
• so. alive. it was all alive
• OH. OH SHIT. THEY REMEMBER HORROR AND ATROCITY
• j u s t i c e 
• this is truly amazing, yâ€all.
• “but for a society built on exploitation, there is no greater threat than having no one left to oppress.” I believe this line has completely sent me into the ether. 
• “it will be good not to die alone.” I… I am speechless at this book
• BUT
• BUT!!!!
• WAIT WHAT THE FUCK
• what are the needles????
• HELLO LITTLE ENEMIES!!!!!!!
• WHAT DID THOSE IRON SHARDS DO!!!!
• wait didnâ€t that almost happen to tonkee??? in castrima????
• oh god I feel like the word “contaminated” is intentional!!!
• OH MY GOD.
• BURN FOR ME
• I love the poetry of that test bore being the thing that led to the downfall
• oh
• oh the needles
• METAL
• INSTRUMENTS OF EARTH
• BURNDOWN!!!!! OH MY GOD
• hoa warned us that love would matter in the end
• oh
• oh thatâ€s what he did
• he redirected the power
• and the Earth made them all part of IT
• and it created fucking GUARDIANS
• whose own willpower and humanity were strong enough to resist corestones… until they contaminated
• oh my god. twenty seven wounds
• wait
• WIAT
• KASDKJF;LKSDAK;LASDJFADS
• WAIT
• KELENLI GAVE BIRTH TO OROGENES
• DIDNâ€T SHE
• IS THIS ALL MEANT TO ESTABLISH THAT ESSUN IS KELENLIâ€S DESCENDENT?? 
• oh my god KELENLI GAVE BIRTH TO THE OROGENES SHE TOTALLY DID
• fuck
• holy fuck, the guardians make so much sense now
• THIS BOOK HOLY SHIT

Mark Links Stuff

– My second novel, EACH OF US A DESERT, is now out in the world!
– If you’d like to stay up-to-date on all announcements regarding my books, sign up for my newsletter! DO IT.

Nassun

It almost feels trite to try and analyze this in any way because itâ€s… itâ€s like…

Iâ€ve been trying to put my finger on it, and it took sitting with this chapter for an hour or so, just laying about and letting it marinate in my brain. And Iâ€m realizing how much this feels like something I shouldnâ€t be seeing, in the sense that this is such a deeply personal, intimate, and shattering moment for Nassun. I almost feel like a voyeur, witnessing Nassunâ€s epiphany about herself, about the fate of Schaffa, about the true intent for much of Corepoint. 

I think thatâ€s because Jemisin does not let us ever forget that Nassun is a child. She may be experiencing awful things; she might very well be more mature than most of the adults around her. But sheâ€s had these things thrust upon her, and itâ€s more obvious than ever that this world never allowed her to simply have a childhood. Here she is, on the literal other side of the Earth, learning just how much these people exploited and drained magic from the core. All for what? Some fancy technology? For an existence that caters to every possible comfort? (Well, comfort for those who were allowed access to these very devices and tools.) 

And then, on top of it all: the stone eaters. 

Theyâ€re an eerie presence throughout this, and I love that they remain so. Even when theyâ€re being supportive in their own way, they still act as an unnerving force. But even as I type that, I have to admit that EVERYTHING here is unnerving: the buildings. The stone eaters. The way magic is used for literally everything. Schaffaâ€s state. THE CASUAL REVEAL THAT ALL THE UNDERGROUND FACILITIES IS WHERE WARRANT IS LOCATED. Oh my god??? And we donâ€t even get to that yet, though Hoaâ€s narration promises weâ€ll come back to it. Instead, Nassun despairs. Thatâ€s her state for most of this chapter. Schaffa is clearly dying, and after some time in Corepoint, he begins to show the telltale signs that his corestone is no longer operating. Throughout it all, Nassun does what she can, though I found it heartbreaking that she felt guilt that she couldnâ€t do more. But it wasnâ€t a surprising reaction. Her relationship with Schaffa is intense, co-dependent in some ways, and itâ€s the only thing sheâ€s really clinging to on Earth. Sheâ€s given up on her parents, literally and figuratively. She has no friends, especially not after leaving the other orogene children behind. (And even then, as we saw earlier in this book, they never felt all that close to Nassun anyway.) What did she have left?

More on that at the end. Because I did want to talk about how Jemisin does a phenomenal job giving us a slice of the life in Corepoint, and it also links very wonderfully with what Steel says to Nassun later. As Nassun explores Corepoint, she observes the stone eaters, which is all she can do, since none of them speak her language (or choose not to) and none of them stick around whenever she approaches them. But what does she see? Behaviors that only make sense when you accept that stone eaters have a much different experience with time than literally every other living beings on the Stillness. If time has no end for them—as long as they still have the Earth, that is—then what do they do with that time? 

Jemisin gives us snippets, these glimpses of what it is that the stone eaters do. Thereâ€s the one who holds up a tree branch so it will grow in a particular direction; another catches a fish and then waits for a blind ocean mammal to arrive and eat it. The obvious reason for this is to help us understand the sheer scope of time as the stone eaters see it. Helping a tree grow in a particular direction is not something a human would ever consider doing in this way, but for someone who canâ€t ever die? Why not stand in one spot, holding up a branch? Their time isnâ€t “wasted,” since time is immaterial to them. But it also speaks to their view of their place within the world, doesnâ€t it? They care. Why else would a tree branch matter? Why feed a blind animal? Why do any of this?

It fascinates me because I think itâ€s easy to dehumanize stone eaters in the sense of denying them emotions or feelings simply because they donâ€t express them like other characters do. It would be easy to think of Hoa as an exception, but now, Iâ€m thinking thatâ€s not the case at all. The stone eaters are deeply emotional, and they express themselves in ways that arenâ€t necessarily easy to notice. But caring for that blind creature? Yâ€all, that is… whew. My HEART. Itâ€s so heavy thinking about what other things the stone eaters do, especially at Corepoint.

That leads me to the Moon, Schaffa, and Nassunâ€s choice. Iâ€d argue that as harsh as Steel is regarding Schaffaâ€s mortality, he is this way because it is also a demonstration of how much he cares. Well, cares in his own way, I suppose. Itâ€s interesting to compare the conversation on the creation of a stone eater with what Hoa says in the previous chapter. He spoke about how Alabaster has to choose to come to Essun, and itâ€s clear choice matters so much here. That makes me think that Alabaster chose to become a stone eater via Antimony. As it stands, Schaffa canâ€t consent to this himself, can he? He is barely able to interact with Nassun throughout this chapter.

So what does Steel ask of Nassun? To consider the weight of what she is going to do. Why?

The Obelisk Gate doesnâ€t do small things. Just as Nassun feels, sesses, knows that the Gate makes her temporarily omnipotent, she knows, too, that she cannot use it to transform just one man. If she makes Schaffa into a stone eater… every human being on the planet will change in the same manner. Every comm, every commless band, every starving wanderer: Then thousand still-life cities, instead of just one. All the world will become like Corepoint.

Which inspires this question in Nassun:

But is that really so terrible a thing? If everyone is a stone eater, there will be no more orogenes and stills. No more children to die, no more fathers to murder them. The Seasons could come and go, and they wouldnâ€t matter. No one would ever starve to death ever again. To make the whole world as peaceful as Corepoint… would that not be a kindness?

Well, first of all: Sheâ€s wrong, isnâ€t she? Didnâ€t Hoa just admit that younger stone eaters are often weaker and require sustenance in a way the older stone eaters donâ€t? Thatâ€s a logistical issue, though, and thereâ€s a bigger problem: This wouldnâ€t solve anything, would it? I think Nassun sees things as relatively peaceful. Sheâ€s comparing Corepoint to the rest of the world, and she thinks this place is ideal. But is it? Corepoint is constructed around the greatest act of violence against the Earth, and turning all humans to stone eaters doesnâ€t solve that. I mean… isnâ€t this the same thing Earth once did??? Thatâ€s where the stone eaters came from. And whatâ€s going to happen once all these humans realize theyâ€re stone eaters? Does she think all strife will simply disappear? 

Steel makes this personal, though. He has to. Because the thing Nassun cannot understand about this decision is time. She has no way to grasp the concept of immortality. As long as the Earth exists, stone eaters will, too. And this is how Steel makes his grand argument: To doom people to a life of immortality is lonely. He knows it because he has lived it, unable to make connects with any humans he meets because he knows that he will always outlast them. It also seems clear that the stone eaters donâ€t have any need or desire to pair off or group up with one another. Yet even this argument is one that Steel personalizes. He makes it clear to Nassun that Schaffa, against the impossible odds, kept loneliness away, which is why he is so damn old, which is why he was able to stay human and not decay as quickly as the other Guardians. And what will happen when Nassun opens the Obelisk Gate, catches the Moon, and chooses to save Schaffa? 

She will die.

Just like her mother is.

And what life will Schaffa have without her? God, this whole part was SO MUCH:

“So here is my theory: I believe your Schaffa survived by loving his charges. You, and others like you, soothed his loneliness. He truly does love you; never doubt that about him.” Nassun swallows back a dull ache. “But he also needs you. You keep him happy. You keep him human, where otherwise time would have long since transformed him into something else.”

Itâ€s an astonishing thing to read, especially since it sheds a new light on the events of The Fifth Season. I enjoy that nowhere in this is an exoneration for the pain and trauma that Schaffa caused, nor does it justify his participation in an oppressive system. Rather, it adds a layer to the interactions we saw between Schaffa and Damaya in that book. It was love. His version of love, his version of pain, his version of a warped fatherhood, but… love. 

What is left to her, then?

The world burns. Right? Itâ€s the plan that Steel pushed Nassun towards, only now, thereâ€s an odd sense of mercy to it all. Donâ€t destroy the Earth out of spite, but rather, do it for this reason:

“You achieve nothing by keeping any of us alive,” he says, “except cruelty. Put us broken monsters out of our misery, Nassun. The Earth, Schaffa, me, you… all of us.”

Fuck.

I think sheâ€s gonna do it, yâ€all. I think this might very well be the endgame of this series: to put all these monsters out of their misery.

Alabasterâ€s Entries

I just… HI. HELLO. I love that I never expected this. I thought weâ€d gotten all we were going to get from Alabaster about what happened after Antimony took him to Corepoint. First of all: his entries made me miss him. FIERCELY. Heâ€s so damn funny, and I wonder: Will his stone eater self be anything like that? I donâ€t know. Maybe? Thereâ€s a very real chance that we wonâ€t find out, or maybe Nassun will succeed and it wonâ€t matter. 

But holy shit. These entries provided necessary context, not just for the world of Corepoint, but as a means of understand what it was like for Alabaster to be there for so very long. Itâ€s crushing, of course, since he was aware of Essun and what she was doing, yet he couldnâ€t see her. Thereâ€s so much grief in these entries, like how Alabaster worries he wonâ€t remember Innonâ€s scent the more the wind blows on Corepoint. Or all the times he thinks of Corundun. But thereâ€s also Alabasterâ€s horror as he discovers more and more about the “crime scene” that is Corepoint. It works as an interesting parallel with Nassunâ€s discovery, too! Like that moment where Alabaster correctly guesses whatâ€s in the massive hole, which Nassun learned about in the most horrifying way possible. OR ALABASTERâ€S WARNING ABOUT BEING BURIED, WHICH NASSUN ALSO UNDERSTANDS NOW, TOO. 

But thereâ€s the big parallel:

Iâ€ve decided.

Itâ€s wrong. Everythingâ€s wrong. Some things are so broken that they canâ€t be fixed. You just have to finish them off, sweep away the rubble, and start over. Antimony agrees. Some of the other SEs do, too. Some donâ€t.

Except Nassun sees many of the same problem and has come up with a different solution: Finishing the world off, and thatâ€s it. There will be no sweeping away of the rubble, no starting over. She thinks that wiping the slate clean of everything is the most effective answer, whereas Alabaster just broke the world further, hoping that Essun could fix it. 

But can you fix a broken Earth? Is there anything left to repair, or will it remain shattered forever? 

NOTES

• oh, that chapter title has to be a reference to what essun just realized!!! maybe?? or is it something worse
• HELP
• wait what is this whole separate pov? 
• WAIT
• INNON?
• oh
• oh my god
• NO THIS IS ALABASTER
• A = ANTIMONY
• THIS IS BREAKING ME
• WHAT
• THE A;KDFJ;DSJF;ASJKFAS;KLDFJ
• WARRANT
• HELP ME
• AHHHHH A CITY OF STONE EATERS
• these journal entries from alabaster are RUINING me!!! I never thought weâ€d learn about what happened while he was in corepoint!!!
• anniemony LMAAAOOOO
• OF COURSE they wanted to siphon more magic
• HEY STEEL, COULD YOU HELP
• “miss everyone” “miss voices that come out of rusting mouths” shit, me too, alabaster
• NOPE. NASSUN FOUND ALABASTERâ€S GARDEN
• THAT IMAGE AS NASSUN FALLS ASLEEP. NO.
• ahhhhhh that fucking drawing, iâ€m LOSING IT
• OH. RIGHT. OH GOD OF COURSE ITâ€S FULL OF MAGIC
• thatâ€s the world these people wanted to design!! they didnâ€t care about cost; they cared about their endgame
• JESUS THIS ENTRY FROM ALABASTER
• ahhhhhhh ALABASTERâ€S WARNING ABOUT BURIAL. HE FOUND OUT ABOUT THE CORE
• oh my god, the stone eater fed that creature
• oh wow, weâ€re getting to experience why Alabaster made the decision he did at the beginning of the first book!!!!
• holy shit this is amazing. the parallels between nassun and alabaster!!!
• THE MOON
• what the fuck, thereâ€s a hole in it???
• oh my god the allusion to her hand being broken HELP ME
• oh god, schaffa isnâ€t immortal anymore. right??? oh god. 
• OH
• OH MY GOD
• IS SHE
• IS SHE GOING TO DO THAT
• HOLY SHIT
• “Do you know what it feels like to live forever?”
• HOW DID I NOT SEE THIS COMING
• OH MY GOD HE IS PROBABLY 3000-4000 YEARS OLD
• OH NO
• HEâ€S MUCH OLDER
• OH MY GOD
• THE SHEER IRONY OF HIM STILL CLINGING TO HUMANITY BEING WHAT KEPT HIM ALIVE FOR SO LONG
• oh my god
• love
• forty
• fucking
• thousand
• BUT I DO
• help me I canâ€t
• OH MY GOD Yâ€ALL 
• ahhhhhhhh THATâ€S WHY THE STONE EATERS ARE IMMORTAL. ITâ€S THEIR PUNISHMENT
• fuck
• fuck
• that
• that is why they want the end
• I fucking cannot believe this
• WHAT IS POSSIBLY GOING TO HAPPEN NEXT

Mark Links Stuff

– My second novel, EACH OF US A DESERT, is now out in the world!
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Trigger Warning: For discussion of grief, death of a child

This came full circle, didnâ€t it?

It is impossible to engage with the greater meanings of The Broken Earth trilogy without talking about dead children. Itâ€s at the core of Essunâ€s struggle. The book opens with Ucheâ€s death, which is later made even more tragic when we find out about Corundum and what Essun chose to do as Schaffa came to take him away. And now, the final truth has settled in place: Essun is pregnant once again, and Hoa is using her to reproduce, to create another stone eater as Antimony did with Alabaster as he died. 

Is that what the chapter title is referring to? Has Essun accepted her role in all of this? Will her home be found in Corepoint as she goes to reclaim the daughter she recently let go?

Maybe. Thereâ€s such an intense emotional depth in this chapter, and indeed, so much of this book is about stories set up long ago coming to a close. (Which is exactly what a trilogy should do!) In a way, Essun had made peace with her choice: Nassun would be better off without her and with someone she chose as a guardian, as a parent. Essun would use the Obelisk Gate to catch the Moon, and in the process, she would die. But as this chapter unfolds, epiphanies motivate Essun to shift. Change is inevitable in this world, isnâ€t it? Nothing is static in the Stillness, especially as the Earth moves beneath their feet. Even when Castrima makes it to Rennanis, thereâ€s no guarantee or certainty. As I said in the notes below, my sense of relief over the group finally making it to Rennanis was immediately shoved off a cliff and replaced by dread. But thatâ€s just life now, isnâ€t it? The Season is unfolding, and unless Essun stops it (or Nassun ends everything), not one person will outlast the Season. Theyâ€ll all die before it ends. Sure, there will undoubtedly will be a generation born during the Season, but will they outlast it? 

And if they do, what price will they pay? Thereâ€s a terrible tragedy here, but itâ€s one that has a new context. Prior to getting to Rennanis, the group stops at a node maintainer facility. Turns out that Essun had suggested to Ykka that they use the already-existing nodes to help stave off the worst of the Rifting. Practically, it makes sense, especially given how limited the orogenes are in Castrima. Itâ€s fucked up and thereâ€s no way reasoning away that truth. But Essun does something different here: She forces Ykka to know what these facilities are and what price must be paid for comfort. I do wonder how many people across the Stillness ever knew the truth. Were node maintainer facilities spoken of openly? I assume not, since Essun, who worked for the Fulcrum, didnâ€t even know the truth. But thatâ€s not what she wants to do for Ykka:

Because if sheâ€s going to make this choice, then she needs to know exactly what price she—and Castrima—must pay.

You will do this—make her see these things, make yourself face it again, because this is the whole truth of what orogenes are. The Stillness fears your kind for good reason, true. Yet it should also revere your kind for good reason, and it has chosen to do only one of these things. Ykka, of all people, needs to hear everything.

And survival is everything to Ykka, isnâ€t it? So it wasnâ€t surprising that she chose to go along with this, but at least she didnâ€t choose this out of ignorance. She knows the price these children are paying to keep Rennanis safe. And itâ€s also not presented as this wonderful thing, either. Like… itâ€s still fucked up, even though Ykka knows! 

At the same time… wow. Everything is fucked up. The scene where everyone showers in the node facility? Fucked up. Lerna casually dropping that heâ€s noticed that Essun hasnâ€t menstruated and is probably pregnant? Fucked up. Lerna posing the question of what Essun would do if he asked her not to go to Corepoint? THE STATUES IN RENNANIS??? Jesus, itâ€s a lot. IT ALWAYS IS. I mean, Rennanis as a whole fascinates me because I truly didnâ€t expect it to be as large as it is. Thatâ€s comforting on one level—all of the survivors of Castrima will have actual HOMES. Thereâ€s more than enough food and supplies. After the hellish journey across the Merz, I couldnâ€t HELP but be relieved.

And yet.

Thereâ€s always something else. Like I said: everything is fucked up in the Stillness. The very nature of this world—what people made it, how they are responsible for this nightmare—is that there will always be some form of strife. Generally speaking, too, itâ€s orogenes who bear the brunt of that strife. But what about this circumstance? Ykka has flipped the dynamic, sure, and out of necessity and survival, stills have to look to her and the other orogenes in order to survive. But thatâ€s even more extreme in Rennanis because itâ€s actually too big. Granted, no one might come from the north because of the Rifting, but what happens if another comm decides to attack them from any other direction? ITâ€S BACK TO BEING FUCKED UP AGAIN. 

So, Jemisin gives us this grand view of Rennanis and the potential problems Castrima will face in their new home, but then closes in on a more personal angle in the final moments of the chapter. It starts when Essun does some exploring and notices that a significant number of the Rennanis statues are just missing. From there, Hoa admits that the stone eaters have opportunistically devoured many of them, which is how Essun puts it all together:

“Youâ€re making another one now. Arenâ€t you? From—from me. If itâ€s not about food for you, then itâ€s… reproduction.” 

Let it be known that I ACTUALLY KNEW THIS. Sort of! Because there was that strange stone eater at the end of the last book that I wondered if it might be Alabaster? And it sort of is? Except not quite? Hoa shares an important distinction with Essun, explaining why she canâ€t talk to him: 

“More importantly, because we are fragile at the beginning, like all new creatures. It takes centuries for us, the who of us, to… cool. Even the slightest pressures—like you, demanding that he fit himself to your needs rather than his own–can damage the final shape of his personality.” 

First of all, I love the terms Jemisin chooses here: fragile. Cooling. Pressures. Shape. Theyâ€re all in metaphors of rock formation! But I also love that this moment is what finally pushes Essun out of reluctance, out of not caring, out of not recognizing what she has. Essun has lost so much; thatâ€s undeniable. But itâ€s always easier to focus on what was lost rather than what was gained, and here, Jemisin reminds Essun of that through this interaction with Hoa. She has friends. REAL friends, which isnâ€t something sheâ€s had… shit. In ages? If ever? Not just friends, but a home:

Which reminds you that you have Castrima, too, if you want it. This ridiculous comm of unpleasant people who are impossibly still together, which you have fought for and which has, however grudgingly, fought for you in return.

That leaves one last piece of the puzzle, too:

And maybe it means youâ€re choosing one of your children—the one who has the best chance of survival—over the other. But thatâ€s no different from what mothers have had to do since the dawn of time: sacrifice the present, in hopes of a better future. If the sacrifice this time has been harder than most… Fine. So be it. This is a motherâ€s job, too, after all, and youâ€re a rusting ten-ringer. Youâ€ll see to it. 

And thatâ€s when this all falls together. Essun has been trying to control how people love her. She pushes them away or shuts them out, and Hoa pushes her to accept that some people want to be in her life, even if that means they will accompany her to the end of her world. Even if that means that Essun will seek out her daughter. Even if that means death. Because:

Maybe Nassun isnâ€t the only one you needed a home for. And maybe not even you should try to change the world alone.

AHHHHHHHH I LOVE THIS SO MUCH. SO VERY MUCH. Yâ€all. I… still donâ€t know what this ending is going to look like. Iâ€M SCARED.

NOTES

• what… what does that mean. Almost home????
• oh shit. WHERE is her new home? is this title ironic? 
• ha! a goat!!!
• oh god WHAT PLAN
• UM
• WHAT
• THE RIFTING
• OH MY GOD
• HOLY SHIT
• OH
• that plan.
• oh shit. the node maintainers. Yâ€ALL. SHIT. 
• this is so fascinating because how many people who benefitted from the node maintainers never knew what they were?
• I donâ€t know why, but triple guards on the goat is so FUNNY to me
• oh okay, the shower sequence broke my heart
• HOA. that… that was a LOT.
• UGH THIS SCENE WITH LERNA
• OH
• OH IT TOOK A TURN
• I WAS READY TO WRITE ABOUT AFFECTION AND BOUNDARIES
• FUCK
• FUCK THIS WAS A LOT
• wow. rennanis. they fucking made it!!!
• love how I experienced relief that was immediately bulldozed by dread
• “castrima must live amid the corpses of its conquered” good BYE
• THAT MOMENT WHERE ESSUN THINKS IN THE VOICES OF SYENITE AND DAMAYA. OH MY GOD
• OH
• WAIT
• WAIT
• did…. did hoa eat some of the statues??????
• NOT HOA
• LOTS OF STONE EATERS
• OH MY GOD
• oh
• OGH MY ALK;DFL;ASFDKLFADSJKLAFSDLAFSD
• THATâ€S HOW THEY REPRODUCE????
• oh my god I technically knew this the whole time!!! that weird stone eater that Antimony made!!!!!
• OH MY GOD SHE CANâ€T TALK TO HIM
• THIS IS SO PAINFUL
• I AM CRYING AGAIN
• oh god
• SHE IS GOING TO GO FIND NASSUN
• “I think that if you love someone, you donâ€t get to choose how they love you back.” I want you all to know iâ€m in pieces. this fucking book.
• the final line of this chapter… I just burst into tears agin
• what is that letter at the end!!!!

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Trigger Warning: For slavery, consent, torture, body horror, genocide.

You know, I was warned. And back when it was mentioned that the Niess werenâ€t exactly gone, I knew. And yet? There was no way I could have braced myself for the true depth of the horror. 

What a fucking nightmare, yâ€all. 

I did my best to piece this chapter together as it was unfolding, but as youâ€ll see by the notes below, I missed the mark a couple times. First, I assumed the opening was for a specific reason: Kelenli was taken away from the tuners because they figured out what she was doing. But not only do I now know thatâ€s off-base, I can also see how this wasnâ€t ever really an option. From Gallatâ€s interactions with the tuners, itâ€s clear he has bought every bit of propaganda and myth around them and their abilities. In particular, I donâ€t think he believes that they are capable of the sort of thought that would lead them to the epiphany that we get at the end of the chapter. So why would he and the other Conductors even consider that Kelenli is trying to radicalize the tuners? To further make this case: the conductors only see the end results, which is that the tuners are becoming more efficient, that they will assuredly be able to work together better for the final project. 

My interpretation of this is that Kelenli did everything to provide the tuners not just an understanding of where they came from, not just what is being done to them, but to hint at what they can be: 

Unified. 

But letâ€s back up to talk about Conductor Gallat, whose behavior wasnâ€t as clear to me at the start of the chapter. Thereâ€s a line that made no sense to me, but definitely does now:

We have wondered if Gallat has feelings himself. He does, I see when he draws back now, expression all a-ripple with hurt, as if Kelenliâ€s words have struck him some sort of blow “Iâ€ve been good to you,” he says. His voice wavers. 

Good to her? Once I also realized that this wasnâ€t about disrupting Kelenliâ€s lessons and more that she was needed elsewhere, a new portrait began to form of Gallat. Itâ€s not until late in the chapter that the tuners spell it out to me: Gallat has been hurt by this whole system, but not nearly as much as Kelenli has. He sees himself as a savior or a protector of Kelenli, who he grew up with. But how can you be a savior of someone if you ultimately keep them within the machine that actively exploits them? How can you see yourself as a liberator when youâ€ve liberated no one? Remwha goes a step further when Gallat tries to justify how heâ€s never “mistreated” Kelenli, much like heâ€s mistreated the tuners:

He doesnâ€t want you to hear him say “like one of you,” Remwha signals, humming with irritation at my obtuseness. And he doesnâ€t want you to know what it means, if he says it. He reassures himself that he is not like the people who made his own life harder. Itâ€s a lie, but he needs it, and he needs us to support that lie. 

Whew, THAT HURTS. And it hurts because I think most of us have assured ourselves in someway that we donâ€t uphold this system that we live in that so openly exploits people. But thatâ€s not true, is it? We just lie to ourselves, even when this system hurts US. Thereâ€s a specific context here, too, that I donâ€t want to ignore: Gallat has “undesirable ancestry,” and it doesnâ€t matter if he is or is not genetically descendent of the Niess: 

We were made this way, but he was simply born with pale skin and icewhite eyes—traits common among the Niess. He isnâ€t Niess; the Niess are gone. There are other races, Sylanagistine races, with pale skin. The eyes suggest, however, that somewhere in his familyâ€s history—distant, or he would not have been permitted schooling or medical care and his prestigious current position—someone made children with a Niesperson. Or not; the trait could be a random mutation or happenstance of pigment expression. Apparently no one thinks it is, though. 

Just… fuck. I feel like Iâ€ve had to say the same thing a million times while reading this trilogy, but Iâ€m just so enamored with how Jemisin mixes real-world history and social terror with the speculative. This is a fully-realized secondary world, but part of the reason it comes across as so full is because Jemisin is so fucking talented at drawing conclusions like this one. She writes about physical appearance and prejudice in a way that speaks to people who recognize their own lives in this character. Yet she also isnâ€t ignoring how people who can be harmed by a world like this can also be complicit in upholding it. 

Because Gallat has been. No matter how much he might have protected Kelenli or supported her or found ways for her to have small freedoms… he still upheld this world. A world, I might add, that has exploitation built into its very framework, an exploitation that is undeniable and inescapable! I didnâ€t comment on it in the past review, but I have to bring up this line here as I transition to talking about the final location Kelenli wanted the tuners to see: 

We have reached the restricted zone around the base of the fragment—a three-tiered park with some administrative buildings and a stop on the vehimal line that (we are told) does a week run to Corepoint. Itâ€s all very utilitarian, and a little boring. 

First, this is why I thought that the fragment would reveal the connection to Earth. Thereâ€s that line in Nassunâ€s chapter where she comments on the violent arrogance of running the vehimal track through the core. Like, it wasnâ€t enough to siphon the Earthâ€s silver, but their weekly transportation pierces the core. Here, that line from Hoa really hints at how deeply fucked up this world is: the vehimal line is “utilitarian” and “a little boring.” Well, I get why Hoa would think that, but thatâ€s also because he has no idea what it actually is. How many others do? How many people ever knew that the Earth was alive and aware, that they were hurting it? Ignorance is not an excuse for harm, either, and thatâ€s also applicable to anyone living in Syl Anagistine who isnâ€t aware of where their power comes from. Question, though: Is it even a secret? Like, I think itâ€s awful either way, but something tells me that the people in charge have no reason to hide the truth. Theyâ€ve successfully sold and maintained the story of the Niess in order to oppress them and commit genocide. Somehow, then, the idea that this ISNâ€T a secret is way worse. That would mean most people know and donâ€t care.

But now the tuners know. I wonâ€t quote the details of the briar patch. It is evocative of what weâ€ve already seen in the node maintainers, which means that history is simply cyclical. The current overlords just found a new story to tell and a new people to exploit and a new way to view people not as people but a body to use, a tool to utilize, a resource to plunder. It feels like the worst thing in the whole series, and it affected me so much reading the details of the briar patch that I just started crying. Granted, I cry over everything and the past year of my life has been the fucking worst, but I donâ€t think my response is all that dramatic. Itâ€s horrifying looking over this again, and the cruelty is just so… open? Unhidden? Right there in front of literally anyone who looks upon the briar patch? Which is the point, I guess. If you strip a people of their personhood, you can do anything to them, right?

And thatâ€s what leads to that final line:

So we go home.

And we begin, at last, to plan.

Iâ€m reminded of what Hoa told us. Two things, mind you. First, he revealed at the beginning of this book that he flung the Moon away. I think weâ€ve now been given, through these Syl Anagist chapters, the basis for that action. Not everything, and I canâ€t claim to fully understand why he did that. But I really think weâ€re getting parallel storylines: Long ago, the tuners tried to end this vicious system. They failed. And now, Nassun is trying to end it again. (And I think sheâ€ll succeed, whatever that means.) 

I also donâ€t want to ignore another hugely important line:

But they also dismiss us more easily when we do not look at them, and I donâ€t want to be dismissed in this moment. I want him to feel this conversation, even if his weak, primitive sessapinae cannot tell him that my jealousy and resentment have raised the temperature of the cityâ€s water table by two degrees.

Weâ€ve been witness to Hoa falling in love (or whatever this might be, love or infatuation or affinity) with Kelenli, and weâ€ve also been given a warning in another chapter that love will be very important to Hoaâ€s past. I am much less certain where this is going, but I wonder… is that why he flings the Moon away? For Kelenli? How does this attachment come to affect the decisions he made? I think thereâ€s also something to be said about his feeling being the first time he has ever experienced love, which means he also wonâ€t know how to deal with it. He raised the temperature of AN ENTIRE WATER TABLE BY TWO DEGREES. That takes an immense amount of power!!!!

What happens if he uses that power for something else?

NOTES

• I… thatâ€s the opening line???? WHY MUST YOU DO THIS TO ME
• oh god, I really shouldnâ€t be surprised that the conductors likely figured out what she was doing? at least that is my guess
• wow. their pain or discomfort is “incidental.” WHEW.
• what kind of conversation are they having if theyâ€re not using tuning/vibrations???
• oh god NOPE. GALLAT. NOPE. THIS IS BAD.
• the amethyst?
• THE SOCKET??????
• OH MY GOD WHAT IS SHE DOING.
• god, the way he talks about the tuners is… he really sees them as parts of a machine. shit. 
• though I get a sense of something else. does he have feelings of some sort for kelenli?
• OH. OH SHIT. “undesirable ancestry” OH. SHIT.
• oh my god, hoa is so forward???? he is just asking gallat about kelenli???
• they are changing because they have context. they are changing because—hereâ€s a guess—they are starting to see themselves as both individual people AND as a collective unit with power
• that whole bit about what love feels like for hoa… MOOD. ETERNAL MOOD. 
• OH 
• OH NO
• A HUMAN CONTROL
• EVERYTHING IS FUCKED UP ALL THE TIME 
• WOW REMWHAâ€S WORDS. THIS BOOK. HOLY SHIT. 
• “Then Syl Anagist must stop being Syl Anagist” AAHHHHHH THERE IT IS AHHHHHH
• which.
• oh god
• are these parallel storylines
• did someone try to end it all in the past, but failed? and now, nassun is on her way to try again?
• a weekly run to corepoint!!! WEEKLY!!!!
• immortality. galactic travel. they thought this would grant them unlimited energy
• IT DID SOMETHING SO MUCH WORSE
• HOA. thinking about what they would do if their life was theirs
• NO
• SOMETHING STRANGE
• I KNOW WHAT THAT IS
• NO
• ITâ€S NOT SINKLINE FEEDBACK
• ITâ€S FUCKING EARTH, ISNâ€T IT
• “And there… we are destroyed.” no. I am. itâ€s me. this is gonna destroy me, isnâ€t it? 
• nope
• no
• nope
• I was warned
• I knew it
• I even basically guessed it
• “Some of them we can see breathing”
• I just. burst into tears. this is terrible. the worst thing. 
• god, now Iâ€m just realizing the node maintainers were just a cycle. a repetition of the past
• sent to the briar patch. jesus fucking christ
• millions. millions of bodies exploited for decades
• “And we begin, at last, to plan.” 
• I knew it I KNEW THIS IS WHY SHE WANTED THEM TO SEE THIS. 
• hey. that rhyme. that rhyme is..
• look, there is a long history of “innocent” childrenâ€s rhymes being based on a nightmare.

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Trigger Warning: For discussion of death, body horror, sexual assault/rape, slavery

Holy shit. Yâ€all. Holy SHIT. I mean, I should have known from that opening that this chapter was going to completely devastate me, but oh my god. You know, throughout the book, the characters refer to Earth as Evil Earth. Itâ€s a common phrase, too, a means of communicating anger or frustration. And from the perspective of some people, I understand why Earth is viewed as an “evil” thing.

And this chapter definitively flips everything on its head.

Itâ€s not a surprise, nor is it shocking, as Jemisin long ago hinted at or outright said that Earth was furious for what was done to it. We also knew that Earth was sentient because of Schaffaâ€s POV chapters; Earth spoke to him! 

That being said: All these pieces come together in a scene that is deeply uncomfortable, that is terrifying, that is emotional and intimate, and it hits so damn hard. Itâ€s because Jemisin rightly chose to compose this scene so weâ€d see it through Nassunâ€s eyes. Which character would be uniquely positioned to understand what Earth felt?

The same one who had everything taken from her. 

So, let me back up, because I do want to talk about the vehimalâ€s journey to the core. Even in that, Jemisin links this to a deeper metaphor of exploitation and hubris. It would be easy to be impressed the vehimal, and indeed, itâ€s designed in a way to impress. Of course, it was easy for me to remember how Hoa, all those years ago, realized that things could be built for comfort. Here, Nassun experiences Sylanagistine technology for the first time, which both intrigues her and frightens her. Itâ€s a bizarre experience for someone who has virtually nothing to compare it to. There is nothing like a vehimal on the Stillness… at least not anymore. So, as Nassun sinks into this experience, she is both full of wonder and anxious. I canâ€t ignore that her anxiety is only made worse by Schaffaâ€s behavior, and I correctly guessed that as he got closer to the core, the more intensely he felt Earthâ€s willpower on him. There is, of course, another angle: 

He bares his teeth suddenly, and thrusts his fingers into his hair. “Familiarity, but no, no… context! No meaning! Something about this journey is wrong. Something is wrong and I donâ€t remember what.”

This echoes the warning that Steel gave: it was a mistake to bring Schaffa along on the journey. Because if Schaffa had kept his memories from his time before his contamination, he would have remembered that his corestone came from the center of the Earth. I have like… a million questions about that. Who the fuck harvested it? I think itâ€s clear that the same people who exploited the Earth must be the same who managed to make these devices. Oh god, the socket from The Fifth Season!!! Oh shit, of COURSE a Guardian would become corrupt near a place that was a direct conduit of sorts to the core. I FEEL LIKE I UNDERSTAND A WHOLE NEW THING HERE. (I know Iâ€ve said this before, but this series has to be a TRIP to re-read.) I bet the Guardians were given these implants to curb their orogeny, but were always told to avoid any possible connection to Earth, since their corestones were LITERALLY from the core. (Can we also acknowledge how I didnâ€t figure this out despite that the answer is LITERALLY in the fucking name. Good bye. GOOD BYE.) 

So, we have Schaffaâ€s anxiety, which Nassun is empathetic to, making her anxiety worse as the vehimal crawls along the tunnel, descending into the Earth. All this became my anxiety when Jemisin introduced the chasm: the massive hole that I assume was carved out by the Sylanagistine in order to reach the core. Knowing the endgame of this chapter, I now feel a different type of horror. Before, it was the unknown. As the vehimal approached the chasm and then tipped over the side, this was like if I boarded the MTA near my house and then forty minutes later, it turned into a roller coast that was just a drop and nothing else. THIS IS TERRIFYING. But knowing that this was all constructed—that the original builders tore up the Earth and siphoned away the life of the core—makes this so much more upsetting. Nassun is pitching into a nightmare of many layers. 

Which is the perfect time for Schaffa to say this:

“I have done this before,” he says, but he sounds uncertain. “I have survived it.”

This truly did not comfort me in the SLIGHTEST. Okay, sure, you survived. MOTHERFUCKER. HOW. HOW DID YOU SURVIVE. (This is all the more ironic because… fuck. Did he survive it this time? And at what cost to himself?) 

And then they launch.

God, the sequence is… beautiful. Scary. Bizarre. And it contains another of my favorite passages in the whole series, which comes from Schaffa as the unbearable pain mounts in him with each passing moment:

“The Leadership families of Yumenes believed that orogenes once ruled the world,” he says. “That their duty was to keep your kind from ever regaining that much power. That you would be monstrous rulers of the world, doing back to ordinary folk what had been done to you, if you ever got the chance. I donâ€t think they were right about any of it—and yet.” He gestures, as she stands there illuminated by the fire of the earth. “Look at you, little one. If you are the monster they imagined you to be… you are also glorious.”

What a fucking MOMENT. Nassunâ€s response… look, itâ€s not that I ever doubted her love for him. I understood it was complicated and affected by so many various factors. But yâ€all… she loves him. Because he understands her, deeply and truly and unconditionally. Isnâ€t that what sheâ€s wanted this whole time? 

Which is also why the next sequence of events is so brutal and devastating. Nassun does not link the silver to Earth until the vehimal is plunging toward the core. Her epiphany is fucking horrifying, yâ€all, and Jemisin does such a fantastic job grounding us in her fear, reminding us that she is both immensely powerful and a young girl who is essentially watching her father figure suffer in front of her. She canâ€t even excise the corestone or cut off the silver from it, and then… oh lord.

And here, within the sanctum of its heart, the Evil Earth notices her back. 

hi HELP. This whole exchange was just… one of the wildest things in this whole fucking series. The faces. THE FUCKING FACES. Oh my god, the warnings earlier in the book about burial:

Obligation, the Earth returns, in wavelets of heat and crushing pressure. Nassun bares her teeth, struggling against the weight of its contempt. What was stolen, or lent, must be recompensed. 

Jemisin uses three very particular words in this section: “recompensed,” then “raped,” and then “reparation.” I donâ€t believe for a second that she used any of these lightly, and in the reality she has constructed here, they each feel apt and necessary. This is what happened to Earth when people harnessed magic and greedily wanted even more. As the text notes, itâ€s clear that those who made the obelisks never thought Earth was aware or sentient or alive, and they just saw another resource to be plundered and drained. It is an act of violation, a gross destruction of consent, and an act so vile and violent that only reparations can truly begin to repair what has been done. It is through this, too, that Jemisin writes Nassun as the empathetic child, the one desperate to understand the world around her because she wants to be understood, too. At least thatâ€s one reading I really enjoy of this text, and also: perhaps I am projecting because I RELATE TO THAT NARRATIVE A WHOLE LOT. But even if thatâ€s way off base from the intent, Nassun still sees a parallel struggle within her own life and what is unfolding on the Stillness in the present time: 

And oh. Does Nassun not understand this? Her hands tighten in Schaffaâ€s shirt, trembling as her hatred wavers. Can she not empathize?

For the world has taken so much from her. She had a brother once. And a father, and a mother whom she also understands but wishes she did not. And a home, and dreams. The people of the Stillness have long since robbed her of childhood and any hope of a real future, and because of this she is so angry that she cannot think beyond THIS MUST STOP and I WILL STOP IT—

—so does she not resonate with the Evil Earthâ€s wrath, herself?

She does.

Earth eat her, she does. 

Itâ€s a moment that diminishes the very idea that Earth is… well, evil. Can you say this entity is evil when something so horrible has been done to it for such an absurdly long length of time? Earth was exploited and drained; their child was flung away. (Which makes me think that the Moon is also a sentient being, too.) So even though Schaffa may be hurt beyond healing, and even though Nassun may never consider herself an “ally” to Earth, she comes to the same conclusion, to the same end: 

“This has to stop. I will stop it.” She closes her eyes and the lashes stick together, wet. “I promise.”

She does not know to whom she makes this promise. It doesnâ€t matter, really.

You know what? I think Nassun is going to accomplish this goal. I think that even if Essun makes it to Corepoint, even if she initially tries to stop her daughter, her daughter will convince her to let it all burn. I FEEL THIS. DEEP IN MY SOUL. I also know it is risky as hell to put a prediction out like this because I have been so very wrong about this series before. Not all the time, but a LOT of the time.

Oh, I am also excited because the next chapter is in Syl Anagist GIVE IT TO ME.

NOTES

• that… that opening. itâ€s rude. unfair. it is a PERSONAL attack.
• a thing just struck me: Hoa, back when he was just a tuner, realizing that things could be made to make a person comfortable. and now, nassun is in a vehicle created by a sylanagistine that is designed for comfort.
• omg six hours!!!! thatâ€s not too bad for a trip THROUGH THE LITERAL EARTH. 
• oh, right, everything is living!
• HEY, DONâ€T LIKE THAT. Why is something wrong?????? 
• also I want you to know that this is literally what my anxiety feels like: Familiarity with no context, but I definitely know something is wrong LMAAAOOOOOO
• is it because heâ€s moving closer to Evil Earth???
• wait WHAT
• OH.
• OF COURSE
• If everything is living, then EVERYTHING is alive
• “experience”?
• oh
• oh no
• nope
• say no
• please stop
• oh god
• I am SHAKING what the FUCK is happening!!!!!
• oh my god it was a window the whole time????
• oh what is this????
• “I have survived it” WHY THE FUCK IS THIS NOT THE SLIGHTEST BIT COMFORTING.
• launch
• LAUNCH
• never has a single word instilled such a bone-deep fear in me
• WHO WOULD HAVE LIVED DOWN THERE??????
• HOLY SHIT, sheâ€s actually touching it?????
• “If you are the monster they imagined you to be… you are also glorious.” WHAT A LINE, Yâ€ALL.
• oh shit, so magic is responsible for the vehimal!!!
• OH
• OH GOD
• THAT SINGLE THREAD
• NOPE
• I KNEW IT AND YET
• ITâ€S STILL
• TOO MUCH
• OH
• OH MY GOD
• THE LITERAL NAME
• CORE
• STONE
• HOW DID I NOT PUT TWO AND TWO TOGETHER
• OH MY GOD
• what
• WHAT
• OBELISKS??????
• STEELâ€S WARNING
• HELP ME
• OH MY GOD THEYâ€RE IN THE CORE????
• I CANâ€T BREATHE
• EVIL EARTH
• “Hello, little enemy.”
• I canâ€t
• I canâ€t deal with this book
• oh oh oh my god sheâ€s going to remove it???
• SHE CANâ€T.
• OH SHIT
• THE MOON OH SHIT. EARTH IS TALKING ABOUT THE MOON
• THIS IS INCREDIBLE
• HOLY SHIT 
• REPARATION
• OH GOD THE WARNINGS ABOUT BURIAL 
• THAT CLUE WAS PLANTED SO LONG AGO
• THE EMPATHY. MY MIND IS BLOWN.
• I donâ€t know what else to say. this chapter was… wow. I thought chapter 7 was my favorite, but maybe this one is. wow. what an amazing, amazing thing.

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Trigger Warning: For talk of death

Hey, so! Brief little thing that I just canâ€t go without saying: I love that Iâ€m reading this just a few weeks after publishing my secondary fantasy book thatâ€s set in a post-apocalyptic environment and involves a long trek across the desert. Itâ€s an odd and delightful coincidence. Well, not the only one: both this series and my book deal with the weight of storytelling, and I also toy with first- and second-person narration. I mean, itâ€s all surface level similarity, as my book is vastly, vastly different, and also I wish I could write at like…. half the level of this series. A TENTH OF THE SKILL AND CRAFT MASTERY.

Anyway, just wanted to mention that as I dive into this NIGHTMARE because I weirdly know more than the average person about how to survive long walks across the desert? I did months and months of research for Each of Us a Desert, which included a trip to the Sonoran Desert, where I gave myself (with supervision) the initial stages of heat exhaustion because of course I did. Iâ€M FINE, I DONâ€T RECOMMEND IT. This helps me appreciate the immense thing that Jemisin accomplishes in a chapter thatâ€s not nearly as long as it could have been. Which is the point, one which Hoa will make later on. This chapter has a visceral feel to it, and Jemisinâ€s prose brings us into this hellish experience. So, on that level, I do appreciate that we donâ€t get every detail, that this isnâ€t an hour-by-hour journey. Over the course of a few weeks, the people of Castrima suffer, all in the hope that theyâ€ll reach the other side of the Merz and enter the Rennanis territory. 

Hope is literally the only thing that keeps these people going, because lord, there is not much else. However, itâ€s important to note that while Castrima as a whole has a specific goal, Essunâ€s is slightly different. We know she is still going to separate from Castrima to attempt to “catch” the Moon, so her journey across the Merz is devoted more to the survival of this comm. Plus, she doesnâ€t have to worry about herself. If things go bad for her, Hoa can always just nab her and take her to Corepoint. However, she commits herself to staying and helping, and itâ€s a sign that she is genuinely taking Ykkaâ€s words about community to heart:

Except youâ€re going to help as much as you can—and because you wonâ€t die, youâ€re going to watch a lot of other people suffer. Thatâ€s the least you can do, now that youâ€ve committed to the cause of Castrima. Bear witness, and fight like earthfires to keep death from claiming more than its share. 

Which she does. Like I said, it displays a new thinking: Essun is trying to see herself as part of a whole, something that does not come natural to her. Over the course of chapter nine, she does what she can. Unfortunately, sheâ€s also limited because of her brush with the Obelisk Gate in the last book. If she uses her orogeny, more of her body will turn to stone. Thus, sheâ€s thrust into a role thatâ€s less active than she might normally take! She doesnâ€t use orogeny; she isnâ€t in a leadership position; so she must persist, and she must observe. Itâ€s very, very different for Essun, and even from a narrative perspective, itâ€s a jarring change. She mostly walks, rests, seeks some comfort and warmth from Lerna, and watches. She bears witness. 

That makes Hoaâ€s interruption so much more powerful. Itâ€s almost like heâ€s doing this out of courtesy to her, knowing how much suffering she went through, how much she saw in other people. I say that because he definitely did what he could to help the others. God, I loved those reveals, yâ€all. Hoa is not heartless, and he gave small mercies to those who needed it. Of all the things he did, though, this one RUINED me:

Ontrag, who had not told Ykka about the growing pain in her side and chest, or her shortness of breath, did not live long after the comm left her behind. I went back to her on the night that she died, and tuned away what little pain she felt. (You heard the song. Antimony sang it for Alabaster once. Iâ€ll sing it for you, if… ) She was not alone, at the end. 

LIKE. OKAY. FIRST OF ALL. Even if this didnâ€t explain a HUGE thing from the last book, it still would have destroyed me. Itâ€s just so intimate? And kind? But it DOES have that extra bit of context! Now we know what Antimony was doing in the last book, which means that all stone eaters still possess their abilities as tuners, right??? 

Thereâ€s one other thing I didnâ€t address, and I want to loop back to talk about it. I am SUPER into the idea that Essun will take both Danel and Lerna with her on her journey. I made a joke below about them being a ragtag band of human disasters, but honestly? I love when this trope crops up! Thereâ€s so much potential here for growth, for plot twists, for interesting character dynamics to pop up. What will Essunâ€s journey look like if she actually accepts help? Because we all know sheâ€s the kind of person who thinks doing it alone is necessary, and in this specific context, she has no reason to seek out people to come with her. Yet both Lerna and Danel make it clear that if Essun allows it, theyâ€ll be there with her. 

I donâ€t know how thatâ€s going to work. Will Hoa take all of them to Corepoint, one at a time? And once theyâ€re there, how will the others help? I donâ€t know yet, but I sure as hell want to find out. 

NOTES

• omg dew-catchers! I love it! 
• oh. snow. OH.
• oh thatâ€s why you donâ€t go in deserts. OH THIS SHOULD BE FUN
• jesus, this is gonna be real intense, isnâ€t it
• on a positive note, I really wanna bake some cornbread soon
• wow. itâ€s wild that sheâ€s at ten rings now. like, in another context, maybe it would be something to celebrate
• who am I kidding, the whole system is rotten, WE ARE CELEBRATING NOTHING
• OH SHIT DANEL WANTS TO HELP
• wait sheâ€s a lorist????
• oh man this feels so, so important after the last syl anagist chapter!!!!!!
• “the hero of the story never does” Iâ€M SCREAMING THIS IS AMAZING
• hahahahaaha oh my god I love this so much
• oh. oh no. does danel know something about rennanis that no one else does
• Iâ€M AFRAID
• “hardening in more ways than one” good bye to my heart
• oh my god so… lerna. danel. essun. hoa. Iâ€m already into this ragtag band of human disasters traveling together
• NO. NO MORE GREATER HARDSHIP. STOP IT
• HI THAT ACID RAIN STORY IS HORRIFYING
• “itâ€s probably not menopause yet” oh god then…. oh GOD
• jesus this is fucking AWFUL
• man, ykka breaking for even the tiniest moment? that broke me. BROKE ME.
• FUCK. they lost nearly three hundred people. 
• “Was this too fast?” THAT WHOLE BIT. THAT WHOLE SECTION IS SO GOOD
• “Suffering is your healing, at least for now.” MY MIND IS BLOWN
• hoa. HOA HELPED
• OH
• OH MY GOD
• THE SONG
• THE SONG IS TUNING
• HOLY SHIT.
• “You survive. For now, at least.” why is this book like this.

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