Volume 2 of The Broken Earth trilogy
Picking up immediately after the first, a fifth season has begun, and it has been started by the cataclysmic actions of the powerful orogene Alabaster. Essun is now learning from her former mentor things about the world that she did not know. She gets a glimpse of an ancient grudge between humans and Father Earth that, if set right, could end the fifth seasons. And she begins to see into the roots of orogeny. But she is also still a human, a person, a mother. So amidst her explorations, she is a member of a new community, and still seeking her lost daughter. These relationships she can not put off as easy as Alabaster would have her. Jemison has us deep in this world, but there is so much mystery that we as readers are just discovering what this world is, just as the characters seem to be.
4 stars (out of 4)
