The Stone Sky

Book 3 of the Broken Earth trilogy

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So good! This series of books have a similar amount of tension all the way through, which is very unusual in a trilogy. Each book shows us more of the super solid world the author has created and the story never lags.

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Something unique about this series of books is that it’s science-fiction but it’s based on rocks, not space. The story is based on individuals who can manipulate rocks, who eat rocks, and who are rocks.

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All energy is the same, through its different states and names. Movement creates heat which is also light that waves like sound which tightens or loosens the atomic bonds of crystal as they hum with strong and weak forces. In mirroring resonance with all of this is magic, the radiant emission of life and death.

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In this one, the heroines meet for the face-off, and it is so well-written. There isn’t a fight scene, there isn’t a power struggle, there is only love and a change of heart. It’s masterful in that the peak moment doesn’t happen as we expect, but it’s perfect. And it feels satisfying.

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The way the narration is handled is unusual. For the first book, we don’t understand why the story is being told the way it is. In the second book, we finally understand who is narrating it. In the third, the narrator speaks in both second and third person. It’s really clever and effective.

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Thus in the small hours of the morning we are brought to a singular sort of vehimal, doubtless genegineered from grasshopper stock or something similar. It is diamond-winged but also has great carbon-fiber legs, steaming now with coiled, stored power.

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As the conductors usher us aboard this vehimal, I see other vehimals being made ready. A large party means to come with us to watch the great project conclude at last. I sit where I am told, and all of us are strapped in because the vehimal’s thrust can sometimes overcome geomagestric inertial… Hmm. Suffice it to say, the launch can be somewhat alarming. It is nothing compared to plunging into the heart of a living, churning fragment, but I suppose the humans think it a grand, wild thing.

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The six of us sit, still and cold with purpose as they chatter around us, while the vehimal leaps up to the Moon.

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N. K. Jemisin created a Patreon page in order to quit her job to write and finish these books. All three of them won the Hugo award - an unprecedented feat. She is an amazing talent.

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This trilogy is a masterpiece of science-fiction.

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