N. K. Jemisin: The Stone Sky

[bibliogramma]

Stone Sky is the final volume if N. K. Jemisin’s Broken Earth trilogy, and the moment when all the narrative lines and all the themes come together in the voice of one storyteller, the one who has been there from the beginning, who was created as a tool for humanity’s overweening arrogance, in the image if a despised and forgotten people, the stone eater Hoa. It is Hoa who tells the stories, the one about the beginning and way the Earth was first broken, and the stories of Essun and Nassun, the orogenes, mother and daughter, who have the power to end the horrors that have gone on and one since the Earth was broken.

If, like me, you have been reading the trilogy, not quite understanding how it all started, how the whole complex history of humans and orogenes and stones eaters fits together, how there can be a Father Earth, how the Moon was lost, why the Seasons go on and on, punishingly, but trusting that Nemisin will bring it all together, then The Stone Sky is your reward, and it is a great and wondrous one.

If you have been seeing the levels of meaning, the dynamics of oppression and power, then The Stone Sky lays it all bare, all the arrogance and brutality and misuse of power of every kind that humanity is capable of. And it gives a warning, too. That for every action there will be an equal and opposite reaction, no matter how long delayed. You cannot destroy a people without being yourselves destroyed. You cannot mutilate the planet without being yourselves mutilated. You cannot steal life and autonomy from others without having it wrenched from you in return. We reap what we sow. It has always been this way, unless there is the interpolation of grace.

And if there is grace in The Stone Sky, it is in the efforts of Ykka and the people of the Comm of Castrima, where human and orogene and stone eater struggled to co-exist without destroying each other, to survive the enemies that sought to destroy them, to find a new way of living together.

And in the love of a mother for her daughter, so great that she would give not only her life, but the world, to save her. And in the understanding, at last, of a daughter, who turns away from hate and pain to fulfil her mother’s second-greatest wish and save the world.

And if there is ever grace, it lies in the fierce desire for true justice, to end the rifts, restore the lost, to make the world better.

The first two volumes of The Broken Earth were powerful stories and each rightfully was awarded a Hugo. The Stone Sky is the culmination of what has gone before, and in bringing this story to its end, and a new world to its beginning, it fulfils and illuminates them both.