It’s funny–I really liked this book, but find myself struggling a bit to remember what happened specifically in it. I remember the broad strokes and the feeling of finishing it very well, but not so much the details of the plot. As a set up: we’re still focusing on the travails of Essun, orogene par none (maybe), and the counteracting travails of Nessun, her daughter, orogene of renown. What really set this novel apart from the prior entry was the emphasis on ‘how we got here,’ aka […]

Without that twist from the first book–and without having another large twist in this one, which would end up feeling a bit gimmicky–it’s inevitable that this second entry in the The Broken Earth series would be a bit anticlimactic in comparison. And true to form, it sort of is. My hopes that the second person narration would fade away didn’t happen, but the second person narrator (driven by the character’s growing knowledge) does get more omniscient such that it’s less frustrating to read, and at times feels […]