In the prologue of The Stone Sky<\/i>, Hoa takes us back. Intrigued? Then it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s time for Mark to read The Broken Earth<\/i>.<\/p>\n
Okay, before I get started: Let\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s talk predictions! I did this entire section before I read a single word of The Stone Sky<\/i>, which I am clearly not ready for. So, how did I do predicting the previous book?<\/p>\n And now, as I face down the final book in The Broken Earth<\/i>, I am going to do my best and attempt to guess what\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s about to happen. Here we go:<\/p>\n All right, friends. With all that said, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m gonna go dive in to The Stone Sky<\/i>.\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n To those who\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve survived: Breathe. That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s it. Once more. Good. You\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re good. Even if you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re not, you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re alive. That is a victory.<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n What a thing to read in September 2020. As I said below, reading this just hit me so fucking hard. Because what an awful<\/i> fucking year of my life, of the collective life of all of us on this planet.<\/p>\n But hey. We are alive, and that is<\/i> a victory.\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Anyway, this prologue is… well, I remain impressed at how frequently Jemisin can shove us all off the cliff, and this opening is something else, y\u00e2\u20ac\u2122all. Stylistic, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s so thrilling to read, and I love how Jemisin has written Hoa. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s very voice-y first person with a little second-person twist, and now, as we enter the final book, we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re given even more context as to why<\/i> Hoa has been narrating as he has. Throughout the series, the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153past\u00e2\u20ac\u009d has been a story told to us. Alabaster referenced lost tablets and lost knowledge, and because whomever was in control wrote history, we don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t actually know what really transpired on the Stillness. We can make conjecture, we can guess, and I suspect that Alabaster was telling what he believed to be the truth of what he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d pieced together. The same goes with Tonkee, who has been researching the hell out of history for a long time.\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Hoa is telling a story, too. He hasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t been the most reliable narrator, either, and we also know he struggles with the notion of time, given that he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s been alive so long. That being said? This is the first time we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve ever had a first-person account of the time of the obelisks, when all two hundred and fifty-six of them were active and being used. Why? To unite the massive city of Syl Anagist. Everything about this is just so beautifully overwhelming, y\u00e2\u20ac\u2122all. Like… yes! I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t understand \u00e2\u20ac\u0153sprawl\u00e2\u20ac\u009d in the way that Jemisin uses it here. This isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t like… a big city as we understand it. It would be like if all of North America<\/i> was just one big conjoined city. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m used to the massive regional differences that come with living on this continent, but as I understand it, this wasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t like that:<\/p>\n Your perception of their connectedness is correct: They have the same infrastructure, the same culture, the same hungers and fears. Each city is like the other cities. All of the cities are, effectively, one city.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n There\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s that extra contrast, too: the Stillness isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t a nation. It might be a single body of land, but they aren\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t connected in the slightest, at least not outside of \u00e2\u20ac\u0153paranoid city-states and communes agreeing to share, sometimes, for survival\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s sake.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d With the unity of Syl Anagist comes a society that is technological advanced beyond anything the current world of The Stillness has achieved. Like… hover technology??? What the fuck? But here\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s the thing: This all came with a cost, didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t it? You can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t develop a world like this without a sacrifice of sorts. Who is sacrificing what to power the obelisks? What price had to be paid to construct them? One of them we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll learn by the end of the prologue. On top of that, Hoa makes it clear that in many ways, Syl Anagist is utopic. It seems<\/i> like this magical, wonderful place, where resonant potential is used to maintain a certain quality of life. And then that utopia is broken by a single image: Hoa inside a prison cell. What sort of prison was this? Why did Hoa say this?:<\/p>\n No need for guards when you can convince people to collaborate in their own internment.\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n Why was he there? Was this before or after what he does at the end of the chapter? There is a direct parallel between the events of this prologue and the prologue of The Fifth Season<\/i>: both feature characters using the Obelisk Gate to utterly change the world. Alabaster opened the rift that brought about the Season that everyone is currently dealing with. But long ago, at what I assume is the start of the very first Season, Hoa helps the people of Syl Anagist suffer the consequences of their action. They constructed their city along a fault line, and I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m guessing that was to exploit something<\/i>, right? More energy, more power for their city, more everything<\/i>. And then:<\/p>\n So now I will tell you the way that world, Syl Anagist, ended. I will tell you how I ended it, or at least enough of it that it had to start over and rebuild itself from scratch.<\/p>\n I will tell you how I opened the Gate, and flung away the Moon, and smiled as I did it.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Fuck. Everything. THIS WHOLE TIME, HOA<\/i> WAS THE ONE WHO FLUNG THE MOON AWAY? Who damned the Stillness to all the Seasons??? WHAT POSSIBLE REASON COULD HE HAVE HAD???\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n As I said: one hell of a way to start this book. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a genius framing device for the story, since this book inevitably has to deal with Essun and Nassun getting the Moon back<\/i>. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122M READY, INJECT THIS SHIT RIGHT NOW.<\/p>\n NOTES<\/b><\/p>\n Mark Links Stuff<\/b><\/p>\n – My second novel, EACH OF US A DESERT, is now out in the world!<\/a> In the prologue of The Stone Sky, Hoa takes us back. Intrigued? Then it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s time for Mark to read The Broken Earth.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[569,576],"tags":[571,413],"class_list":["post-5273","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-the-broken-earth","category-the-stone-sky","tag-mark-reads-the-broken-earth","tag-nk-jemisin"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5273","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5273"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5273\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5273"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5273"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5273"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
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