Posts

Showing posts with the label N.K.Jemisin

The City We Became by N.K. Jemisin: A review

Image
This book is an amazing work of imagination. N.K. Jemisin imagines that we live in a world where cities become living, sentient beings by picking a human to be their avatar and becoming animate through that person. The avatar is assisted in becoming by the previous city that was "born" through this process. That avatar then becomes the protector of its city and when the city is in danger, the avatar can marshall all the resources of the city to fight for it. Does this sound weird and crazy? Only at first. Jemisin seduces us into this fantasy world and we accept it and just go with it. The city of the title is New York and New York's birth is a bit more complicated than some cities because it is made up of five distinct and different boroughs. There is actually a New York City avatar extant at the beginning of this tale, but he had already fought his city's enemies and won temporarily, but it cost him. He is in a coma, hidden away under the city. In order to assist him...

The Stone Sky by N.K. Jemisin: A review

Image
I had problems with this book. Mostly confusion. This is the third book in the trilogy and by now I guess I should be used to Jemisin's method of jumping around between time periods and characters, without warning and without explaining who is what, as well as introducing new characters or concepts with no background or preparation. But this one really threw me for a loop and I spent maybe the first quarter to third of the book floundering and trying to find my feet. In the end though, I was so bowled over by the creativity of her imagination and the uniqueness of the world that she has built for us in these books that I sort of gave her a pass on her confusing method of presenting the story. Her descriptive writing is clear enough that one can see - or "sess" - the overall picture that she is presenting even when individual parts remain baffling. So, Syl Anagist? What's up with that? Has it been mentioned in the other books? Not that I remember. Apparently, it was th...

The Obelisk Gate by N.K. Jemisin: A review

Image
Once again we enter N.K. Jemisin's richly imagined world called Stillness. It's a world that is never still. As we learned in the first entry in this trilogy, The Fifth Season , Stillness is populated by human or humanoid beings called stills, orogenes, stone-eaters, and guardians. And floating somewhere above them all are a series of obelisks. It is unclear who made the obelisks or just what purpose they serve. At the time of events in The Obelisk Gate , the apocalyptic, world-shattering action of The Fifth Season is in the past and the residents of Stillness are trying to find ways to adapt and survive in a world gone mad. In the first book, we had the point(s) of view of Damaya/Syenite/Essun. In the aftermath of everything, we now get Essun once again as she makes a place for herself in an underground comm (community) led by a strong female head. This comm is not without its conflicts and some of the arguments sound very like what we hear in the daily news in our own countr...

The Fifth Season by N.K. Jemisin: A review

Image
I was captivated by the imagined world created by N.K. Jemisin in this novel, first of a trilogy, as I had not been since I first read Tolkien or Herbert all those many years ago. Jemisin's achievement might even be more remarkable because my imagination has grown somewhat deadened and jaded in the intervening years and it probably takes more to "captivate" it these days.  Jemisin's world is called Stillness but it is anything but still. It is Earth but an Earth riven by constant earthquakes and volcanoes and apocalyptic events. The world still has the four seasons known to us, but when one of these apocalyptic events occurs, it can trigger a Fifth Season which may last years, centuries, millennia and which is a near-extinction event. Imagine a world where George R.R. Martin's winter has come - to stay. Jemisin's world-building is amazing in its detail. There is evidence of past civilizations everywhere in ruined cities and in the "stonelore" that is...