March 7, 2023
I am increasingly convinced that every worthwhile story is, in some form, about love. In this finale to her award-winning Broken Earth trilogy, NK Jemisin explores love at its most powerful, and its most terrible. Not romantic love, per se, but something deeper and more base. The foundational connectivity between humans is on full display, between mothers and daughters, teachers and students, friends, enemies, lovers, rivals, blood family, found family, and the shadows of people we once knew. The two heroines of this story, an estranged mother and daughter with a veritable chasm of experience between them, are forced to cope with an apocalypse and an apocalyptic responsibility in whatever way they can. Jemisin does a beautiful job exploring these two disparate experiences and their implications for a world in crisis.
After a brief reprieve in volume two, Jemisin once again plays with narrative structure to enhance her storytelling. She uses compelling parallel narratives, exploring how the past shapes the present, and the present in turn reflects the past. This double story not only provides insights into the implications of the “present” characters’ actions and beliefs, but also dramatically deepens the lore of this already fascinating world. Where in the first two novels of the trilogy Jemisin works to show life in a divided society, her continued discussion of the lives and attitudes of the oppressed remain nuanced, but become less and less subtle as she drives toward the inevitable outcome of any systemic oppression: revolution.
Not all of the story’s content is systemic in nature. Jemisin balances broad, institutional philosophy with deeply personal conflict, pairing slavery and prejudice with grief and betrayal. Much of the inner monologues of the protagonists are descriptions of how ordinary humans in times of extreme crisis grapple with emotional turmoil, which, while painful, is often inevitable. Loss is a constant theme in the story, but added in this volume are discussions of adult companionship, abandonment, conditional and unconditional love, the gulf between children and their parents, and selfishness in the face of responsibility. Each character is presented as both completely whole and inherently flawed, as all humans should be, and never do a person’s flaws imply that they have less objective worth.
A secondary theme prevalent in the series (especially in this final entry) is an ever-present discussion of the nature of power to seek power, and by extension take said power from the most plentiful resource available: the Earth itself. Conquerors are never satisfied, and while a great deal of this novel deals with the human cost of this ideology, there is also a fairly major theme of how that behavior affects the Earth itself. In a not-so-subtle nod to present-day environmental issues, Jemisin comes out strong on the side of conservation, and responsible and ethical resource consumption. The overuse of the Earth itself as a resource is a major plot point that lead to the catastrophic “seasons” that give the first book in the series its name. Again, not subtle, but a very strong point.
Perhaps less culturally important but still fascinating is the way in which Jemisin pokes at the difference between fantasy and science fiction. The line between genres is always thin, and as per Arthur C. Clarke’s third law, “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” As Jemisin reveals more and more of the history of the fictional world, it becomes clearer and clearer that what constitutes “magic” is not quite so supernatural after all, and the ancient civilizations that have left ruins all across the world were, in fact, believable as our own future.
NK Jemisin’s reputation as a world-class, boundary-breaking author is more than well-deserved. She has here a brilliantly constructed, wholly unique world filled with deep, complicated, fantastically human characters dealing with all of the best and worst bits about being alive. The series as a whole is excellent, and this finale serves as a wonderfully satisfying conclusion. Riveting, heartbreaking, and surprisingly more hopeful than the first two installments, Jemisin’s legacy is a broken earth, ready to be healed.
9/10
Comments