The Obelisk Gate

Bei "Endzeit"-Romanen bin ich mit dem Kauf eher zurückhaltend, aber nachdem jeder Roman der Trilogie mit dem Hugo ausgezeichnet wurde, habe ich mich doch entschlossen, die Trilogie zu bestellen, und dies hat sich gelohnt. Der Aufbau ist etwas gewöhnungsbedürftig, trägt aber durch die verschiedenen Persprektiven der Protagonisten dazu bei, die Erzählung spannend zu machen. Die Gestaltung der Welt, in der die Romane spielen, wie auch die der handelnden Personen, ist völlig neuartig und großartig gelungen. Auch die beiden Fortsetzungen warten mit immer neuen Wendungen auf und wurden zu recht ebenfalls mit dem Hugo ausgezeichnet. In jeder Hinsicht lesenwert!

Cette trilogie est juste extraordinaire. Un de mes plus grands plaisirs littéraires depuis un bout de temps, les récompenses reçues sont bel et bien méritées même si l'aspect science-fiction est un peu difficile parfois à cerner.Notre personnage principale a fui pour se réfugier dans une communauté qui accepte (et est dirigée par) des Orogènes (ces gens qui contrôlent plus ou moins bien les mouvements violents de la terre). Elle y retrouve son ancien amant qui lui révèle qu'il faut rendre la lune à la terre et utiliser les obélisques à cette fin. Pendant ce temps sa fille et son père trouvent eux-mêmes refuge dans une communauté dirigée par des Gardiens dissidents.C'est blindé de rebondissements, toujours si bien écrit, si dense. Le rythme est bien plus rapide que dans le premier tome et on se demande vraiment ce qui va se passer ensuite. La forme assez littéraire du texte m'a parfois rendu certaines scènes difficiles à comprendre d'autant que le vocabulaire est assez fourni pour un lecteur non natif.En tout cas je recommande chaudement, c'est juste génial.

A new Fifth Season has fallen on the world, the worst one in history. It may last a thousand years and forever end what vestiges of civilisation remain in the Stillness. One orogene, battered and dying, has a plan to end the Season and indeed all of the Seasons: to recapture the Moon, which was moved out of its traditional orbit more than a thousand generations ago, unbalancing the world. Recapturing the Moon requires that Essun find and harness the powers of the Obelisk Gate. But this may be harder than she thought, as enemies are moving against her new-found home and, in the distant south, her daughter discovers that she herself has an unforeseen destiny.The Obelisk Gate is the sequel to the excellent The Fifth Season and the middle volume of the Broken Earth trilogy, N.K. Jemisin's critically-acclaimed take on the venerable Dying Earth subgenre. The Fifth Season was a highly accomplished novel, describing a brand new world with skill and intelligence and blending together elements of fantasy, post-apocalyptic fiction and a dash of the weird to create something compelling and interesting.The Fifth Season was also helped by its structure, in which we follow the same character at three different points in her life. The story rotated through each version of the character in term, gradually giving the readers all the pieces to assemble the full narrative. It was a great literary conceit, well-conceived and executed, which allowed the reader to really get to grips with the character.The Obelisk Gate can't use the same structure, so instead adapts it by moving between Essun's story and that of her daughter Nassun. Whilst the first book was an extended road trip, the second book alternates between Essun's static story and Nassun's long journey across thousands of miles into the far south. This changes things up nicely and means that Essun, now a guest of the community of Castrima, has to actually stay put, learn what's going on from Alabaster and help defend the community.It does mean a slightly more uneven book than The Fifth Season. Not actually a huge amount happens in this novel, especially for Essun's storyline, and some implausibility creeps in when you realise she is spending months and months hanging around in Castrima (to allow Nassun to travel many, many thousands of miles from almost the equator into the Antarctic region) but doesn't seem to really learn a lot of new information despite Alabaster being right there. That said, there is quite a decent amount of character building and atmosphere here and Castrima, a subterranean city suspended in a giant geode, is a terrific piece of worldbuilding.Nassun's storyline is more dynamic and disturbing, as her father tries to take her to safety but instead brings her into an even more dangerous and unstable situation, with her own burgeoning powers to contend with. There's a dark mirror here to Essun's childhood upbringing as related in the previous novel, with the feeling that Nassun is what Essun could have become if she was indulged more instead of tortured.The result is a sequel which expands on the world and the story but, in a common failing of middle volumes of trilogies, can't quite match the relentless pace and sense of discovery from the first book. There's a lot of introspection in this novel which is beautifully written, but risks redundancy later on. However, the book ends with an explosive confrontation between Castrima and a rival community which once again shakes things up and leaves them in an interesting place for the final book in the series to pick up on.The Obelisk Gate (****½) is a readable and strong sequel to The Broken Sky, if a slightly less original and relentless one. It is available now in the UK and USA. The story concludes in The Stone Sky.

Fascinating. The perfect continuation of book one and introduction for book three. If you arr a fantasy fan you cannot miss it!

Having struggled though The Fifth Season, I was hoping for better with this one, and I have to say I did like it better. The narrative was more straightforward timeline-wise, and the story itself was more interesting, and I started to engage more with some of the characters. Still too much pointless swearing, but I just about managed to ignore most of it, so that it came to resemble an annoying fly that wouldn't go away.I am liking the "world-building" more, and can relate more to the atmosphere she has created. I also like that she hasn't put much effort into describing what happened in volume 1 for people who started with volume 2. If you're gonna read a trilogy or whatever, then start at the beginning.Now hoping to find the final volume at least aas good as this one.