61 pages • 2 hours read
The Stone Sky
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Prologue-Interlude 1Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Prologue Summary: “Me, When I Was I”
Hoa, the narrator, provides historical context for what came before the Stillness. He describes Syl Anagist, the dominant nation that existed before the event that caused the Seasons. It was so large, sprawling, and tightly packed that it would be unimaginable to people of the Stillness, whose cities and towns are limited in size and design by the instability of the earth. In contrast, Syl Anagist is a highly advanced and urban society. Its cities are densely populated and use a type of resonant potential as energy. At the center of Syl Anagist sits the amethyst obelisk, still in its socket, a deep hole bored into the earth’s crust. It is connected to a web of other obelisks, with one at the core of each large city—or node—that extends out from the central hub. There are 256 of them around the world in total, each feeding and being fed by the city that houses them.
At the base of the amethyst is a hexagonal complex of buildings. Hoa says that though it looks comfortable, it is a prison. He describes a boy inside one of the cells. Everything about the boy—his skin, hair, eyes, and clothes—is colorless. Hoa reveals that he is this boy and is surprised by how angry the memory is making him. He claims to be the person responsible for destroying Syl Anagist, but that he should not be blamed, as the conditions of Sylanagistine society made its destruction inevitable. He ends the Prologue by stating his intent to give the details of what he did and why he did it.
Chapter 1 Summary: “You, in Waking and Dreaming”
Hoa quickly reviews everything that has gotten Essun to this point (See: Background). After using the Obelisk Gate to repel the Rennanis attack on Castrima, Essun is slowly turning into stone (the same process that happened to Alabaster after he used the obelisks to start the continental rift that caused the current Season). Currently, only her right arm is stone, but from now on, every time she uses orogeny, more of her will turn. She is also in a coma-like state after disengaging from the gate. When she regains consciousness, she is being carried by some of the surviving members of Castrima as they head for the city of Rennanis.
Essun wakes and is greeted by Hjarka, Tonkee, and Lerna, three friends she made as she searched for Nassun and lived at Castrima. Lerna tells her that her stone arm needs to be removed because of the stress it is putting on her shoulder joint. He suggests a sledgehammer could do the job, or that Hoa could eat it. Essun chooses to allow Hoa to eat it, as it appears to be beneficial for him and makes no difference to her. Ykka, the orogenically gifted leader of Castrima, comes over to see why everyone has stopped moving. Essun is excited to see her and surprised when Ykka is very upset with her. Tonkee claims it is because Essun destroyed Castrima in the process of defending it, but Lerna comforts Essun by telling her that the comm would have been lost either way. Essun is also surprised that she even cares that people are upset with her.
Ykka agrees to allow Essun to be carried for a few more days while she regains her strength. When they are back on the road, Essun tells Tonkee that she knows where Nassun is and plans to go looking for her again. That night, Hoa takes Essun away from the camp and eats her arm. The process is more intimate and sensual than she expects, and Hoa tells her that he does everything for her.
Chapter 2 Summary: “Nassun Feels Like Busting Loose”
Nassun’s chapters pick up where The Obelisk Gate left off. Nassun has just killed her father and agreed to help Steel crash the moon into the earth. She is bleeding from the stab wound her father gave her, but she still wields the sapphire obelisk like a sword as she is aware that two of the Guardians at Found Moon, Umber and Nida, have been watching her and are about to attack. She notices how strongly the sliver tethers them to the earth, and how that is not the case for Schaffa. Schaffa tells her to focus on Nida while he engages with Umber. Nida negates Nassun’s orogeny. Just as Nassun is about to be overpowered, Steel steps in and breaks Nida’s neck. Schaffa and Umber are moving so fast that Nassun can barely keep track, but eventually, Schaffa puts his fist through Umber’s head and rips out the small piece of iron embedded in the base of his skull.
Schaffa states that they need to leave before more Guardians come, and Nassun pleads with him not to kill the other orogene children at Found Moon. She also tells him that she knows where they need to go. After connecting to the obelisk, she intuited that there is a control system on the other side of the world. She asks if he will go with her, and Schaffa tells her he will go anywhere with her and agrees not to hurt the other children. Schaffa leaves to help them prepare packs for the road while Nassun heads to her father’s house to collect anything useful and portable, turning her back on Found Moon forever.
Interlude 1 Summary: “Syl Anagist: Five”
As a tuner in Syl Anagist, Hoa’s name is Houwha. A woman named Kelenli is introduced to Houwha and another tuner, Gaewha, by Pheylen, one of the people in charge of the tuners known as “conductors.” Houwha claims that while Kelenli looks like she is from Syl Anagist—she has brown skin and is much taller than the tuners—he can sense that she has abilities like them. While musing on their differences, he claims that tuners are deficient because they have been stripped of many things that would make them “human.”
After the introduction, Pheylen and Kelenli argue over the most recent test data. Pheylen leaves the room, and Gaewha, speaking through the earth rather than out loud, tells Houwha that they will be changing formation because Tetlewha has been moved to the “briar patch” (or decommissioned, in the conductor’s parlance) by a man named Conductor Gallat. Kelenli joins the conversation, both out loud and through the earth. Out loud, she tells them she is a part of the project. She reveals that it has been decided that the Plutonic Engine is going live in 28 days and that she is there to help since she is specially tuned to work with the onyx obelisk. At the same time, through the earth, and undetected by the conductors watching, she tells them that she is there to teach them who they really are.
At the end of the chapter, Hoa claims that tuners are not orogenes, but that orogeny is what became of them after generations of adaptation to the world. Tuners were designed to be part of the obelisks—fragments of a larger machine—whose opinions and experiences were carefully crafted so that they accepted their status as tools rather than people.
Prologue-Interlude 1 Analysis
Hoa opens the novel by ruminating on memory. While he has retained fragments, images, and ideas about what happened, his memories are not complete because he is not the same person he was when he experienced them. Not only has he been transformed from a tuner into stone eater, but his experiences over the 40,000 years he has existed have also changed him drastically as a person. As he suggests, “[the] person who witnessed these things firsthand is me, and yet not” (1). The novel opens with this exploration of memory, identity, and transformation because it is of critical importance on a planetary and societal level, but also on smaller, individual levels as well. Hoa’s reflections show that real, meaningful change is possible, but that even the most radical change does not completely overwrite what came before. Nearly all of the main characters—Essun, Nassun, Schaffa, and Hoa—have undergone or are undergoing significant transformations that fundamentally change who they are. Yet, at the same time, each of them is haunted by their past, and they must reckon with the harm they have done if they are to truly move forward. The same is revealed to be true for society at large. Syl Anagist was fundamentally broken and needed fixing, yet many of its sins were simply given a new coat of paint and repeated by the subsequent civilizations that followed, largely because it benefited those in power to do so. Thus, The Stone Sky illustrates how Systems of Oppression and Autonomy play out on societal and individual levels and examines the steps that are necessary to dismantle those systems.
The flashbacks to Houwha’s origins in Syl Anagist illustrate the interconnections between Systems of Oppression and Autonomy and Empire, Climate Catastrophe, and Systemic Oppression. Houwha frames his differences from non-tuners, such as the fact that he is more comfortable speaking through the earth than verbally, as signs that he is deficient in comparison to “normal” people. Houwha is confused and resistant at first to Kelenli’s mission to teach the tuners the truth of their existence because he has internalized his dehumanization and accepted his categorization as a tool rather than a person. This interaction demonstrates how the limitation of knowledge and information can be used as a means of social control—a practice subsequent civilizations will employ against orogenes. Furthermore, Syl Anagist has constructed the systems of exploitation and oppression that the tuners suffer under in pursuit of unlimited resource extraction that would make their empire omnipotent. Their arrogance and greed make them dismiss both their crimes against humanity and the impending climate catastrophe wrought by their own actions.
While Essun took large strides in shifting her worldview and questioning her false assumptions about the world in The Obelisk Gate, the first chapter in The Stone Sky demonstrates that she still has a long way to go before she will be ready to change the world. When she awakes from her obelisk-induced coma, one of her first thoughts is of her runny-sack—a survival pack that has been with her since the beginning of the series and a symbol of her ability to survive on her own. Because of the loss and trauma she has experienced, Essun is focused exclusively on her own short-term survival, but this attitude is incompatible with the community of mutual support that Ykka is trying to build. Though Essun is searching for her daughter and protected Castrima from its enemy, she has yet to internalize The Importance of Family and Community.
Finally, the scene in which Hoa eats Essun’s arm raises questions about the objectivity of Hoa’s narration. Hoa tells her that everything he does, he does for her, and that he wishes to eat her to ensure there is no “loss of data” when she eventually becomes a stone eater (282). Essun finds the process “surprisingly sensual,” akin to nursing an infant, reinforcing the implication that this is a sort of reproductive process for stone eaters. However, it is difficult to overlook the fact that Hoa loves Essun and wants to preserve her for eternity so that he is not lonely. When he tells Essun stories of his life and hers, he is narrating a version of events that will both shape the stone eater she becomes and inform the decisions she makes thereafter. Hoa acts from a place of love, but also from motivations that serve his own needs and his opinions about what is best for Essun and the world.
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