2020/112: The Stone Sky -- N K Jemisin

...some worlds are built on a fault line of pain, held up by nightmares. Don’t lament when those worlds fall. Rage that they were built doomed in the first place. [loc. 218]

This is the culmination of the trilogy that began with The Fifth Season and continued with The Obelisk Gate. All three volumes have won the Hugo Award for Best Novel. I should probably have reread the first two volumes before starting The Stone Sky: there's no gradual easing-in, and it took me a while to remember who was who (especially as some characters go by multiple names). 

 Essun wakes from a coma to discover that, as a result of wielding the silvery power that isn't orogeny, she has begun to turn to stone. She doesn't waver from her goal: she's determined to catch the Moon, which is approaching fast on its irregular orbit, and thus end the devastating Fifth Seasons that threaten the survival of the human race. (Though: define 'human'.) Meanwhile her daughter, Nassun -- a precocious ten-year-old -- has had enough of the iniquities and abuses of the world, and would rather burn it all down. 

 Woven through the stories of mother and daughter is the history of how this world, with its Seasons and orogenes and Guardians and obelisks, came to be. This is the story of the global city Syl Anagist, and the hubris that created the orogenes' ancestors in order to harness 'geoarcanity', the magical power of the Earth. Recounting the catastrophe that led to the Shattering, the narrator's identity becomes clear, and the second-person voice of Essun's narrative is explained. 

 The timespan covered by this novel is epic, the cosmic events equally vast. Yet it's made immediate by the human stories within it, and especially by the examination of oppression, inequality, slavery. “Would’ve been nice if we could’ve all had normal, of course, but not enough people wanted to share. So now we all burn.” [loc. 2221] Everything can be traced back to a refusal to treat a particular class of person as non-human, and therefore property, and therefore tools to be used. That mindset has persisted in the form of Guardians and orogenes -- the latter essential to the survival of the human race, the former ensuring that orogenes are tools (and, worse, batteries). One can hardly blame Nassun for not wanting to fix it. 

 I didn't engage with the characters as much as in The Fifth Season, but I found their stories compelling and horrific. Jemisin's writing is so powerful, full of rage and compassion and pain, and rich with concepts and images that will stay with me for a long time. This is not necessarily a happy conclusion to the trilogy, but it is right and real and hopeful.