"The Stone Sky"

 

Three Hugos in a row!
What are the odds?

 

"The Stone Sky" is the final installment in N. K. Jemisin's fantasy trilogy, preceded by "The Fifth Season" and "The Obelisk Gate" (also featured on this blog).¹ I originally discovered the series on a list of recommended dystopian novels, and the first two books are fascinating examples of worldbuilding. The story takes place during an eponymous fifth season, or climate apocalypse, and the characters struggle to survive while their dystopian society denigrates into a collection of warring city-states. In this final volume, the society's origins are revealed, and the main characters must choose which ancient wrongs to right and which to let stand.

Brief thematic discussion below.

"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.

"Station Eleven"

Just a scenic Great Lakes camping trip

(First, an editorial aside. I've read many books since my "Bobos in Paradise" review and I don't think I'll ever get caught up if I keep expecting myself to write longer compositions, so I'm switching to a shorter format. If I'm really feeling it I may still put up an essay, but the length of a review does not reflect my enjoyment of a book.)

"Station Eleven" is one of my favorite works of fiction in years. It's quite an understated novel, following a troupe of actors as they travel down the shore of Lake Michigan years after a flu-pocalypse caused the collapse of modern civilization. A few chapter one plot details below.

"The Fifth Season"

Anagram: Eons shift aft, eh?

"The Fifth Season" is another of the books I discovered¹ while reading the NYT series of mini-articles discussing prescient works of science fiction. The story is set in "The Stillness," an ironically-named world whose exceptional seismic activity regularly causes extinction-level events, known as fifth seasons: supervolcanoes, fissures across continents, sky-blotting clouds of ash, and so on. Jemisin explores the society that arose to cope with these fifth seasons and weaves the beginning of the worst fifth season yet into a very human story of striving and loss.

Minor spoilers below.

"Fahrenheit 451"

Yes, another dystopia book

My education in classic dystopian literature continues¹ with Ray Bradbury's classic novel about a society incapable of recognizing its own degeneration. Yes, the book is about censorship, but it's also about what it means for something to be important as opposed to immediate, and remains surprisingly relevant today, over sixty years after its 1953 publication.

Minor spoilers below.

"The Giver"

The Giver's bearded face

While visiting a friend some time ago, we got on the topic of dystopian novels, and it came out that I'd somehow missed reading "The Giver" – 1994's Newbery Medal winner – while growing up. I immediately recognized the cover art so I'm sure I'd seen his bearded face at the school library, but for whatever reason I never pulled the book from the shelves.

When I finally got around to renewing my library card late last month, I glanced over my one-day reading list and saw that "The Giver" was by far the oldest item on it, so I checked out the ebook version and was quickly hooked¹.

Minor spoilers below!