The Stone Sky

The Broken Earth Trilogy takes place on an earth-like planet where the landmasses have all combined to form one supercontinent known as the Stillness. The name is ironic because the Stillness experiences high levels of geological activity, including frequent, serious earthquakes. The Stillness also experiences regular, large-scale climate catastrophes known as the Fifth Season (or just Seasons). These Seasons last anywhere from years to centuries and often threaten to destroy the prevailing civilization. When the first novel begins, the current civilization has survived much longer than any previous ones on record. This is largely thanks to its exploitation of orogenes, people who have the ability to control and manipulate kinetic energy. What sets orogenes apart from non-orogenic humans—colloquially called stills—is an enlarged organ at the base of the cerebellum called a sessapinae. Untrained orogenes are perceived as a threat to society because when they use their abilities instinctually, they can cause great harm and damage. To combat this, orogenes are gathered up by Guardians—a group of powerful individuals dedicated to controlling orogenes and eliminating them when necessary—and taken to the Fulcrum, where they are trained to use their abilities to negate seismic activity to protect the property and lives of civilians.

The first novel in the series, The Fifth Season, follows three orogene characters—Damaya, Syenite, and Essun—who are eventually revealed to be the same person at different points in her life. Damaya, Syenite, and Essun are each introduced in a moment of crisis, and their stories depict the ways orogenes are abused, controlled, and exploited by society. The novel opens with an earthquake so large it has split the continent in two and will surely engender a Season so severe humanity may not survive it. Shortly after this, Essun’s husband, Jija, discovers that their son is an orogene and kills him. He then abducts their daughter, Nassun, and Essun spends most of the novel navigating a world in crisis while trying to catch up to Jija and Nassun. Essun’s sections of the novel are written in the second person, and it is revealed toward the end that Hoa, a strange boy she meets on the road who turns out to be a stone eater, is narrating.

The second novel, The Obelisk Gate, sees Essun struggle with reintegrating into a new community after a year of surviving by herself on the road. The new comm, Castrima, is led by an orogene—unthinkable in Essun’s experience, given that orogenes were treated as pariahs—and aims to build a future where orogenes and stills can live together in harmony. The Obelisk Gate also follows Nassun’s experience on the road with her father as he takes her to a place called Found Moon where he has heard they cure children of being orogenes. Nassun has a traumatic relationship with both her parents. Essun, trying to protect Nassun from a world that would hate her for her power, used the often-cruel methods used on her at the Fulcrum to teach her control. Though Essun acted out of love, Nassun only experienced pain, and she learned to hate and fear her mother. She has always preferred and loved her father, but his fear and rejection of her orogenic abilities cause Nassun a lot of self-doubt and self-hate. At Found Moon, Nassun meets Schaffa, who accepts her and encourages her to embrace who she is, and she distances herself from her father. Ironically, Schaffa is the Guardian who enacted the cruel control tactics on Essun that Essun then used on Nassun in return. When Nassun kills her orogeny-hating father, Jija, by using an obelisk, she literally and symbolically severs her relationship with her biological family, transferring her love and loyalty to Schaffa. The novel ends with Nassun deciding she wants to destroy the world while Essun becomes tasked with trying to save it.

Three of the most salient themes explored in the first two novels are ideology and systemic oppression, parent-child relationships, and the cause and effect of climate catastrophe. These are all picked up and expanded upon in The Stone Sky. While the first two novels focused on the ways that the current civilizations oppress orogenes, The Stone Sky reveals the roots of their systemic oppression in an ancient civilization called Syl Anagist and a people called the Niess whom they exploited and eventually wiped out. The final book also expands upon the series’ interest in parent-child relationships, as The Stone Sky considers the role that community plays in this dynamic—especially as a support system and source of purpose when the family fails. Finally, while the question of climate change and the environment has always been central to the series, it takes on even more significance in the final novel, as the root cause of the ongoing cycle of climate catastrophe is revealed to be Syl Anagist’s unchecked exploitation of the earth as a natural resource.