Obelisk Gate

[psocoptera]

Book Two of Jemisin's trilogy. Worldbuilding so good! Writing so good! World so bleak! Cut for spoilers: Seriously, can anyone reading these imagine them ending in a way that isn't going to be devastating? We've got magic swords of opposite colors in the hands of people with opposite goals, now, so *that* all seems inevitable, and, like, the part of me that is sooooo sick of father-son issues is pretty psyched about epic tragic mother-daughter conflict, but it's pretty clearly going to be tragic, right? Essun has to kill Nassun and sacrifice herself to get the moon sorted out, she does so humanity survives, yay*, but she gets turned into a stone eater, and has the rest of eternity to see whether she eventually forgets her dead children or not? Like, I don't think Jemisin is nihilist enough to write the trilogy where humanity is actually so awful they deserve to go extinct, we seem pretty clearly likely to end on "But There Is Always Hope", but not fucking *much* hope, you know? The cycles of abuse perpetuate, every single main character's a mass murderer, darkness, no parents, continued darkness... um. Where was I. The story and how it unfolds is so clever and vivid but I can't imagine ever wanting to come back to this world once I finish the trilogy.

*So I'm giving it about 50-50 right now on whether Essun will also get to make a choice about whether humans continue to have access to magic. I mean, I feel like this topic is in the text, "is it just too dangerous", is the only way to end the war with the evil splinters going to be a really fundamental overturn of the whole premises of the world. I think going by the real-world resonances Jemisin is writing here, if the question does come up the answer has to be "yes", otherwise it'd be like in Lathe of Heaven where they "solve" discrimination by turning everyone grey. But I feel like if she's doing this big serious look at how a magical caste can relate to society, that question has to get asked? (Is anyone else thinking of Pern here, with the whole "magically change something's orbit and permanently solve the cyclical threat that keeps our society from progressing" plotline? Of course in Pern it's easy, there will always be dragonriders in the skies of Pern TM, because Pern books have happy endings, and that's the foundational premise of the whole series. But I think Jemisin is too hardcore to let it be that easy.)

Comments

[sildra.livejournal.com]

I think it's interesting that it's the mother who's on--what we think, with our current information--is the right side, and the daughter who's on the wrong side. That's not something you usually see, which makes me think Essun is going to be able to convert Nassun. Essun will sacrifice herself--is already in the process. But with Nassun's help she might be able to do it in such a way that Nassun survives? That's my current guess.

But yeah, I think they're going to get rid of magic. Which is interesting, because actually even stills have a little bit of residual magic--it's implied a few times that at some point in the distant past everyone had magic, but when it became taboo it was mostly bred out.

[psocoptera.livejournal.com]

Interesting point about the mother being the right side maybe meaning the daughter survives. I would like that? I'm not hopeful for it, but I would appreciate it?

Rereading what I wrote about magic, I think my "yes" was ambiguous, sorry. So I think it can't end with getting rid of magic because you can read orogenes as metaphorically Black? History of enslavement/bodies seen as existing for use by others, seen by non-orogenes as always already threatening and meriting lethal reaction, there's an explicit line about "whose lives matter", the derogatory nickname "rogga". Given that, getting rid of magic might solve the literal problem of the fictional world of the story, but it's unsatisfying/unacceptable metaphorically, like saying the solution for making Black lives matter is for there to not be any more Black lives? Maybe if everyone has a little bit of residual magic, there can be some sort of awakening about common humanity, that fits the metaphor better??