To me, Hoa is the best supporting character. I will attempt to explain the context of me, if not the details. Including me.īut you know so little of me. I liked his characterisation in The Fifth Season as a ‘daddy’ villain, so I am glad we get to see more of him, even if he has become something of malfunctioning droid following his last meeting with Syenite/Essun.Ī dilemma: You are made of so many people you do not wish to be. It’s basically cool, because she loves him, even though she spent a year carefully manipulating her father in order to preserve herself from being murdered by one she loves. With Essun it’s not too difficult to gloss over, but there is a weirdness to Nassun that at times lifted me out of the reading, best seen in her attitude towards Schaffa’s revelation that he could and would kill her. Marrying him is an odd choice in itself, but given that birth control is implied – no one seems to have many siblings – why risk having orogene children with him, and twice ? An example would be Essun’s decision to have further children because her husband, who hates orogenes, wants them. In general, I have some misgivings about the character logic in this series, because there are strange inconsistencies. But she speaks, because in the end she is her mother’s daughter, and if Essun has done nothing else, she has trained her little girl to survive. Another small, quiet tragedy, amid so many others. Her attitude towards the revelation that her father killed her brother is willful ignorance, which makes a kind of sense, but I did not think the self-control realistic for a child, and it conflicts with her reaction to other events later in the novel. Nassun I liked, but found less convincing. I can’t decide if she is a crude hero or a straight-up antihero, but here she leans towards darker shades. Essun continues to be a compelling protagonist. The perspective has shifted to a split between Essun and her daughter, Nassun, with occasional interludes from other characters. In fact, it does exactly what a good middle book should do – raises the stakes, and sets us up for the big finish.
I find middle books in a trilogy can be messy, expanding the plot without tidying whatever was carried over from the first book, but this one does not lose its vision.
The Obelisk Gate is a formidably good read.
I rattled through this 400 page continuation in one sitting, which is always a compelling argument in any book’s favour.
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