"The Obelisk Gate"

 

That's two Hugos in a row

 

 

"The Obelisk Gate" is the follow-up to "The Fifth Season" and I believe the only sequel I've written about on this blog.¹ I read the previous book back in 2016 and consider it a great example of effective world-building, so I'm a bit surprised that I forgot about the series until this year.

A couple plot points from the first book are mentioned below.

The series is set in the ironically-named Stillness, a world in which mysterious extinction-level events (fifth seasons) regularly threaten civilization and even humanity itself. In the first novel, the main character's primary motivation was the search for her daughter, taken away during an earthquake that demolished their settlement.

Like the previous novel, "The Obelisk Gate" switches between viewpoints each chapter, but in this book the primary narrators are Essun and her daughter, providing two perspectives on the same events. Tensions rise as each character attempts to survive while strange forces attempt to push them to opposite sides in an ancient conflict that may end the cycle of fifth seasons once and for all.

Verdict: "The Obelisk Gate" is a worthy follow-up to "The Fifth Season" and raises the stakes in a believable way, setting up each character for a collision in the finale. Recommended if you enjoyed the first book.

1 Previously reviewed here: "The Fifth Season" (back)

2021-12-31 update: I've reviewed the sequel "The Stone Sky" here: https://phives.blogspot.com/2021/06/the-obelisk-gate.html