Picking up where The Fifth Season left off, Essun is in Castrima-under getting to grips with comm life and the various personalities within it, trying to understand just what happened to Alabaster, what his relationship is to the stone eater who accompanies him, and why he wants to teach her to manipulate the obelisks that litter the sky.
Meanwhile, we pick up her daughter Nassun’s thread and follow her journey, alongside the father who killed her younger brother for his orogeny, as he takes her to a place he thinks will ‘cure’ her and she learns to manipulate him in order to survive him.
While I devoured The Fifth Season in a day, I did struggle a little more with the pacing of The Obelisk Gate as the action slowed down and instead we focused on the strange comm that Essun has found herself in and just what orogeny might be able to do. Because of that I enjoyed Nassun’s thread a lot more, and am intrigued by what’s going on with the Guardians looking after her as well as by what her apparently slightly different powers might mean for this world and its story.
I’m looking forward to the way that all of the different threads will come together, finding out just what IS going on with the stone eaters and the Guardians, and how all of this will affect the Seasons from here on, but my excitement for the series was definitely tempered a little by the slow pace of this middle outing.
