What do you think?
Rate this book
416 pages, Paperback
First published August 15, 2017
“Some worlds are built on a fault line of pain, held up by nightmares. Don't lament when those worlds fall. Rage that they were built doomed in the first place.”
“They’re afraid because we exist, she says, There’s nothing we did to provoke their fear, other than exist. There’s nothing we can do to earn their approval, except stop existing—so we can either die like they want, or laugh at their cowardice and go on with our lives.”
“But for a society built on exploitation, there is no greater threat than having no one left to oppress.”
“…if you love someone, you don’t get to choose how they love you back.”
“It’s just that love and hate aren’t mutually exclusive”
“We could’ve all been safe and comfortable together, surviving together, but they didn’t want that. Now nobody gets to be safe. Maybe that’s what it will take for them to finally realize things have to change.”
“How can we prepare for the future if we won’t acknowledge the past?”
“I think,” Hoa says slowly, “that if you love someone, you don’t get to choose how they love you back.”
“She has seen him fight his own brutal nature, and the Earth itself, in order to be the parent she needs. He has helped her learn to love herself for what she is.”
“I definitely haven’t been in the best place while working on this book, but I can say this much: Where there is pain in this book, it is real pain; where there is anger, it is real anger; where there is love, it is real love. You’ve been taking this journey with me, and you’re always going to get the best of what I’ve got. That’s what my mother would want.” – N. K. Jemisin
“I think,” Hoa says slowly, “that if you love someone, you don’t get to choose how they love you back.”
Now they’ll all know. Every season is the Season for us. The apocalypse that never ends.
And I will tell you everything of how, later, as the quiet of death descended, I whispered:
Right now.
Right now.
And the Earth whispered back:
Burn.
So where they should have seen a living being; they saw only another thing to exploit. Where they should have asked, or left alone, they raped.
For some crimes there is no fitting justice – only reparation. So for every iota of life siphoned from beneath the Earth's skin, the Earth has dragged a million human remnants into its heart. Bodies rot in soil, after all – and soil sits upon tectonic plates, plates eventually subduct into the fire under the Earth's crust, which convect endlessly through the mantle... and there within itself, the Earth eats everything they were. This is only fair, it reasons – coldly, with an anger that still shudders up from the depths to crack the world's skin and touch off Season after Season.
Some of them we can see breathing, though the motion is so very slow. Many wear tattered rags for clothes, dry-rotted with years; a few are naked. Their hair and nails have not grown, and their bodies have not produced waste that we can see. Nor can they feel pain, I sense instinctively; this, at least, is a kindness. That is because the sinklines take all the magic of life from them save the bare trickle needed to keep them alive. Keeping them alive keeps them generating more.
They keep such lax security on us. […] Some of the sensors monitor our magic usage – and none of them, not one, can measure even a tenth of what we really do. I would be insulted if I had not just been shown how important it is to them that we be lesser. Lesser creatures don't need better monitoring, do they? Creations of Sylanagistine magestry cannot possibly have abilities that surpass it. Unthinkable! Ridiculous! Don't be foolish.
Fine. I am insulted. And I no longer have the patience for Stahnyn's polite patronization.
*Spoilers*
You know there's something wrong when a major character dies yet it leaves you unmoved.
Having cruised through the preceding serials, I was underwhelmed by this conclusion.
Not helping was the Info-dumping, likewise the glaring plot hole of the Onyx and Garnet Obelisk (read book one again to sess the inconsistency).
Additionally, the author's attempts at bringing some social issues to the fore was heavy handed, which is a shame really since the reader already caught on to these nuances right from the start of the series.
Overall, I didn't dislike how the story ended, I just didn't love it as much as the first two.
آخر قصه معلوم است، نیست؟ اگر اینطور نمیشد، چطور امکان داشت اینجا نشسته باشی و به این قصه گوش کنی؟ گاهی چگونگی یک اتفاق خیلی مهمتر از سرانجامش است
“I think,” Hoa says slowly, “that if you love someone, you don’t get to choose how they love you back.”
“How can we prepare for the future if we won’t acknowledge the past?”
“To those who’ve survived: Breathe. That’s it. Once more. Good. You’re good. Even if you’re not, you’re alive. That is a victory.”
“I think,” Hoa says slowly, “that if you love someone, you don’t get to choose how they love you back.”
I’m tired, and overwhelmed, and perhaps a little angry. This day has upended my sense of self. I’ve spent my whole life knowing I was a tool, yes; not a person, but at least a symbol of power and brilliance and pride. Now I know I’m really just a symbol of paranoia and greed and hate. It’s a lot to deal with.
(She is such a good child, at her core. Don’t be angry with her. She can only make choices within the limited set of her experiences, and it isn’t her fault that so many of those experiences have been terrible. Marvel, instead, at how easily she loves, how thoroughly. Love enough to change the world! She learned how to love like this from somewhere.)
“This isn’t what you think of it,” Hoa says, and for an instant you worry that he can read your mind. More likely it’s just the fact that he’s as old as the literal hills, and he can read your face. “You see what was lost in us, but we gained, too. This is not the ugly thing it seems.”
It seems like he’s going to eat your arm. You’re okay with it, but you want to understand. “What is it, then? Why …” You shake your head, unsure of even what question to ask. Maybe why doesn’t matter. Maybe you can’t understand. Maybe this isn’t meant for you.
So where they should have seen a living being, they saw only another thing to exploit. Where they should have asked, or left alone, they raped. For some crimes, there is no fitting justice—only reparation.