So this is it?

There's a quote that I think sums up the series pretty well, from one of the characters in the first book, something along the lines of "Who cares about the Obelisks? Just another deadciv ruin."

The story runs on three parallel tracks. Two are familiar, one follow Essun as she journeys with the comm of Castrima across the wastes, and towards her destiny of recapturing the moon and ending the Seasons. A second follows Nassum and Schaffa, heading towards a similar journey and apotheosis. And the third is a prequel starring Hoa, a child bred to be the initiator of a great arcane engine, and who's rebellion starts the war between mankind and a living Evil Earth.

The precision of the language from the first book is kicked over in favor of densely woven descriptions of crystals and magic and chaos, burying the reader in a rockslide of details. The clinical, exacting webs of pain and retribution are tangled into generalized outrage against the universe, and a new system of power that demands sacrifice by transmuting sorcerers like Essun and Nassum into rock.

The first book in the series had an almost magical tension between circumstance and individuality, and an ironic and acid ethos: your story doesn't matter vs one person can break the world; just do what is necessary vs necessity is never just. Great writing is ineffable, and the second book slipped and the third one just fell flat for me, for reasons in the characters, settings, and words. It's okay, I just wish the whole thing ended in a better epiphany.