The Stone Sky

The Stone Sky

Softcover edition
Author	N. K. Jemisin
Language	English
Series	The Broken Earth trilogy
Genre	Science fantasy
Publisher	Orbit
Publication date	August 15, 2017
Media type	Print, e-book
Pages	464 pp.
ISBN	978-0316229241
OCLC	995310843
Preceded by	The Obelisk Gate

The Stone Sky is a 2017 science fantasy novel by N. K. Jemisin and the third volume in the Broken Earth series (following The Fifth Season and The Obelisk Gate).

Setting

As with the other books in The Broken Earth trilogy, The Stone Sky is mostly set in a single supercontinent referred to as the Stillness by its inhabitants, as well as an ancient city, Corepoint, in the middle of the single huge ocean on the opposite side of the planet. Historical interludes are set in the distant past in a planet-wide bio-city named Syl Anagist.

The Stillness is constantly wracked by geological cataclysms, and every few hundred years, an event is severe enough to touch off a global volcanic winter, referred to as a Fifth Season. Some characters, referred to as orogenes, have the ability to manipulate geological energies on a large scale, as well as magic itself on a smaller scale. They are a persecuted and feared minority, though it is largely due to their efforts humanity has survived the Seasons at all.

Plot

Following the events of The Obelisk Gate, the former inhabitants of Castrima-under are moving north, after damage incurred during the assault by rival comm Rennanis has compromised the mechanisms of the geode and made it uninhabitable. Essun, who has been in a coma since opening the Obelisk Gate, awakens while being carried on the road to find that her arm has turned to stone as a consequence of the massive magical energies of the Gate. She is nursed back to health by Lerna with the grudging acceptance of Ykka, the comm's leader. Hoa, a stone eater who has shown a fasciation with Essun since the beginning of the Season, informs her that the Moon is approaching the closest point in its long, elliptical orbit, and she has only a few weeks to successfully return it to a normal orbit again and end the Fifth Seasons forever.

Meanwhile, Essun's daughter Nassun is recovering from the shock of using an obelisk to kill her father by turning him to stone, an act of self-defense during his attempt to kill her for being an orogene. Despondent and angry at the state of humanity, she resolves to use the Obelisk Gate (with the help of Steel, an aggressive and misanthropic stone eater) to cause the approaching Moon to collide with Earth and destroy both. Her Guardian, Schaffa, agrees to help her reach the only city on the other side of the planet, Corepoint; from there, the Obelisk Gate can be activated without the need for the central control obelisk that Essun used.

More of Essun's body turns to stone after she uses her orogenic abilities to defend the comm from an attack on the road, and she learns she can no longer safely use magic or orogeny without risking progression of her condition. The comm reaches Rennanis after a costly desert crossing, and the survivors find it well-stocked for the worsening Season. She learns from Hoa that Nassun is planning to open the Gate as Essun did, which would almost certainly mean her death, and resolves to save her from this fate. Hoa agrees to take her and a small group of Castrima citizens (among them Lerna, who has become Essun’s lover) to Corepoint to intercept Nassun. Just prior to leaving, she learns she is pregnant with Lerna’s child; however, as they traverse directly through the Earth (skirting around the core itself), they are attacked by a rival faction of stone eaters and Lerna is killed.

Nassun and Schaffa reach the ancient ruins of a huge city in the Antarctic region of the Stillness, from which Schaffa believes transportation is available to Corepoint. They descend into the ruins and find a still-working bioengineered transport that takes them directly through the core of the planet itself on its way to Corepoint. Here, it is revealed that the Earth itself is a living consciousness, furious with humanity's attempts to control it and the loss of Earth’s moon, which Earth blames humanity for. The core is rich with the magical energy that forms the Earth's consciousness, and Nassun realizes this directly fuels the Guardians' abilities and longevity through an iron shard embedded in their brains. The Earth tortures Schaffa into a comatose state and threatens Nassun, which only increases her resolve to destroy the Earth and Moon together.

Interspaced with Nassun and Essun's stories is the story of Hoa’s early life, which takes place approximately 40,000 years prior to the story, at the height of human civilization in a globe-spanning supercity called Syl Anagist. The entire civilization uses magic as a power source, and their technology depends heavily on highly advanced bioengineering, since life itself generates magic. Hoa is a "tuner," a being engineered to have extraordinarily sophisticated orogenic and magical abilities. He, along with his other tuners, were designed as tools to operate the newly-contstructed Obelisk Gate, a worldwide network of obelisks that have been under construction for decades. With it, the citizens of Syl Anagist intend to tap into the seemingly limitless source of magical energy at Earth's core, not realizing that this represents the consciousness of Earth itself and that the Earth is angry over their efforts. A few days before the planned activation of the Gate, Hoa and the other tuners are taken outside their compound for the first time by a woman named Kalenli, an early "prototype" tuner who possesses only sensitive orogenic/magical abilities without the tuners' strange physical appearances and limited emotional affect—she thus sems outwardly normal, though she is still looked down upon by normal humans. She reveals to them that the obelisks are based on the technology and advanced magical capacities of a race that was brutally conquered by Syl Anagist in a war driven by racism and prejudice. The surviving members of this race are kept alive to this day as a living fuel source to prime the obelisks. The tuners themselves are a bioengineered version of this race, and this is why they (as well as Kalenli herself) are not regarded as people. Deeply shaken by these revelations, Hoa and the other tuners decide to turn the Obelisk Gate back on itself, which will destroy Syl Anagist and return its citizens to a pre-industrial civilization. However, the Earth has corrupted a small group of obelisks that it uses to take control of the Gate through a back door mechanism, intending to use it to completely sterilize the surface of the planet. Hoa and the tuners manage to avert this apocalypse at the cost of flinging the Moon from orbit. They are unable to prevent the Earth's small group of obelisks from creating dozens of supervolcanoes across the globe, however, setting off the first of many Fifth Seasons to come and leading to the downfall of human civilization, though not its extinction. In retaliation for foiling its plan, the Earth transforms Hoa and the other tuners into immortal beings of living rock, creating the first stone eaters. The descendants of Kalenli become the world’s first orogenes.

In present-day Corepoint, the Earth takes control of the comatose Schaffa and removes the iron shard from his brain, freeing him from the Earth's control but dooming him to an early death without Earth’s magic to sustain him. Unwilling to kill Schaffa, who has become a father figure to her, Nassun decides to use the Gate to transform everyone on Earth into stone eaters rather than destroying the Earth and Moon outright. She begins to activate the Gate using the same small group of obelisks that the Earth used long ago. Essun arrives and attempts to seize control of the Gate using the central control obelisk in order to return the Moon to orbit, end the Seasons, and save Nassun from certain death that would result from fully activating the Gate. They struggle, but neither can gain an upper edge; therefore, Essun gives up to allow her daughter to complete her task, rather than risk her destruction. She releases control of the Gate and is completely turned to stone. Nassun, moved by seeing her mother struggling for a better future even after all the prejudice, heartbreak, and betrayal she has endured, decides to complete her mother’s task and use the Gate to return the Moon to orbit.

In the aftermath, Schaffa dies a natural death finally at peace, Hoa confirms a truce with the Earth that will result in the cessation of the Fifth Seasons, and Nassun prepares to journey back to the Stillness. Hoa has one last conversation with Antimony and Steel, revealed to be two of his former co-tuners, and then sets about transforming Essun’s remains into a new stone eater. The book ends as she awakens in her new form, and her and Hoa set out to make the new world better than it once was.

Reception

The Stone Sky's release was anticipated on several "best of" upcoming science fiction and fantasy lists, including the Washington Post and io9, and reception around its release was laudatory, with reviewers from Tor and The Verge asserting that it was likely to win Jemisin a third consecutive Hugo Award for Best Novel, behind The Fifth Season and The Obelisk Gate.

In starred reviews, Publishers Weekly summed up the novel as having "vivid characters, a tautly constructed plot, and outstanding worldbuilding" that came together in "an impressive and timely story of abused, grieving survivors fighting to fix themselves and save the remnants of their shattered home," and Kirkus Reviews noting that "Jemisin continues to break the heart with her sensitive, cleareyed depictions of a beyond-dysfunctional family and the extraordinarily destructive force that is prejudice." RT Book Reviews gave the book five stars, higher than the first two books in the series. Library Journal did not give The Stone Sky a star, but called it a "powerful conclusion" with a "fully developed world, detailed settings, and complex characters."

Tor's reviewer Niall Alexander, who was critical of The Obelisk Gate, said that The Stone Sky was a "comprehensive confirmation of N. K. Jemisin as one of our very finest fantasists," and that as a whole, the series is "one of the great trilogies of our time." Barnes & Noble's Joel Cunningham agreed, asserting that it "reshapes the face of epic fantasy." The Verge's Andrew Liptak agreed, praising the book as "a triumphant achievement in fantasy literature." He concluded:

Every now and again there comes a work that seeks to redefine the face of genre literature, from Ursula K. Le Guin's The Left Hand of Darkness to William Gibson's Neuromancer. With the Broken Earth trilogy, Jemisin has made a place for herself among these greats, pulling off a landmark story that blends fantasy, science fiction, and post-apocalyptic tropes. Finishing The Stone Sky left me utterly breathless by the scale and scope of what Jemisin accomplished in these three books—narratively, technically, and thematically.

External links

• Barnes & Noble interview