The Fifth Season had me in a chokehold, and The Obelisk Gate let me linger in the brilliantly-crafted world that N.K. Jemisin has created.

I adored the first in the series more than words can express, and this was a smooth continuation of the story. Though there weren’t as many events, narrators, or general movement across the land, I was still gripped by each page & read it in one sitting.

Jemisin continues to expertly weave real-world pain and struggle into a rich fictional society with an even richer magic system. But it’s never without a small ray of hope. Even when the narrative shows the lowest of ways that humans treat other humans - there are moments of connection, and love, and fierce optimism (from some of our less-beaten-down characters) for the way the world could be.

And the characters … oh, the characters. Essun is such a great lead. She stumbles and she sails, and I felt like I had a much better sense of her intuitions and motivations. And Nassun’s journey here is so rich and horrifying as well – you both want to hug her and redirect her darkening thoughts. 

I love a good complicated mother-daughter relationship (with a generous helping of generational trauma and how cycles of abuse continue), and getting that second POV helped frame so much of Essun’s story from the first book. They are in for a messy clash.

It’s not often that a book makes me feel like a kid again. And I don’t mean that in a sort of childlike wonder and whimsy way - I mean that this book swallowed me up and enveloped me so completely that I forgot I was reading. I mean that I had such a burning desire to know this world, darkness and horror and all, that I dismissed my real life until I turned the final page. I mean that I’m about as obsessed as possible.

CW: child abuse & death, violence, murder, body horror, grief, injury, gore, blood, terminal illness, racism, war, abuse, genocide, xenophobia, hate crime, slavery, kidnapping, cannibalism (discussed), ableism

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