We like the moon, 'cause it is close to us
I borrowed N. K. Jemisin's The Obelisk Gate from Andrea after we read The Fifth Season, and vowed I'd finish it before The Stone Sky comes out this summer. And for once in my life, lo and behold, I did.
The Obelisk Gate continues the story of the orogene Essun, formerly Syenite, formerly Damaya, as a devastating Season wreaks havoc on the Stillness's civilizations. Essun is temporarily staying in a community house in a giant underground geode, where she has temporarily had to suspend her search for her daughter Nassun, who is traveling southward with her orogene-phobic father, in order to continue being trained by her former mentor Alabaster, the guy who started this apocalypse. Alabaster is slowly turning into stone and being eaten by his companion, a Stone Eater named Antimony. Before he's entirely gone, he needs to teach Essun to control the giant obelisks that float around in the sky, so that she can open the Obelisk Gate and catch the moon. According to the myth told at the end of the last book, returning the Moon to its proper orbit will stop the tectonic shenanigans that characterize life on the Stillness.
Most of the story is still in the second person, narrated by the "young" Stone Eater Hoa and addressed to Essun. Interspersed are chapters in the third person about Nassun's journey south with her father Jija, who had killed her little brother upon finding out he was an orogene. Nassun learns to manipulate her father into mostly only psychologically rather than physically abusing her, as he brings her to a sort of training camp for young orogenes run by rogue Guardians, near the continent's antarctic. The lead Guardian that takes Nassun under his wing is Schaffa, who was also Essun's Guardian. Jija thinks it's a camp where young orogenes go to be "cured," because sending your children to camps because you're a bigot is a sadly not unheard-of occurrence with humans.
In this book we learn more about the world and its history and how orogeny works (which turns out to be not quite how the Fulcrum thinks it does), including the great mystery of what's on the other side of the planet from the Stillness. We also explore a lot about power and danger and fear and morality and responsibility, and about if it is ever OK to hurt people, especially when there's no way to avoid hurting people, and about bigotry and family and love. So it's deep. But it's also exciting and weird and terrifying and sometimes hilarious. Even the terrible characters are sympathetic but not in a saccharine way, and the good characters are abrasive and dangerous and kind of creepy.
I hope in the next one, Essun and Nassun catch the fucking moon and live happily ever after, but I'm sure Jemisin's got something unpredictable in store for us.