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Has anyone read it? I just finished it minutes ago, and I have no idea how to feel. I know the odds that anyone in my circle has read it are low, but anyone want to have a spoilery as fuck conversation in the comments?
ETA: Comments are now FULL of spoilers that will shift your whole reading of the book if you haven't read it. etc etc.
ETA: Comments are now FULL of spoilers that will shift your whole reading of the book if you haven't read it. etc etc.
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>> I just finished it minutes ago, and I have no idea how to feel. <<
In my opinion, that's because it is a great work of art about devastating topics, and therefore it induces shock in the mindful reader.
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- fantastic world building. I loved the swearing
- people of colour as the default, POV characters. Win!
- Many women! Having concerns about children that are addressed as valid and strong! and also sometimes not having maternal feels towards their kids, also a plus, frankly.
- same-sex attracted characters! (awk phrasing, I know, but I feel legit hesitant to attribute here-now sexual politics to a world that is so clearly not ours)
- A THREESOME rather than a love triangle. THANK YOU.
- A compelling narrative. I was super hooked for the first half, and then the last quarter. Felt it dragged a little in that middle bit, but so do many books, so.
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This is why I will demand that people read this book. Because while it is an amazing freaking book with amazing world building, it is not a book that centers or defaults to whiteness as constructed in the U.S. in any way, and by doing everything it does *so damn well* it proves how totally unnecessary it is for people to read or write generic whitewashed medieval fantasy when you could have THIS. It's completely solid and realistic that people in a very different world would have different physical variations on human bodies and different ways of constructing about that. NKJ's writing here declines unrealistic utopias based on erasure and instead builds a world that is complicated in rigorously logical and emotionally truthful ways. It's also dark, and that bit makes perfect sense given the kinds of complicated she is delving into and the importance of the journey she is sending her characters on.
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I think that the symmetry (death/death) and contrast (hate/love) and symmetry again (orogeny/oreogeny) between the Horrible Thing with Uche in the beginning and the Horrible Thing with Coru at the end is a structural strength.
And that absolutely depends on the way caring about children as individuals is treated as important and not part of a generic good-with-kids attribute.
(Essun as a small-town teacher who basically forgets/is forgotten by former students and student's parents? Is not generically good-with-kids, but is somehow more realistic just by breaking a minor stereotype and necessitating actual description because she isn't everyone's-favorite-teacher nor evil-witch-teacher, and her pain and burnout is entirely unrelated to (that) job she has in backstory.)
Having offspring is treated as different from but related to having/raising children, and having children is different from having a functioning family and community. While I understand why this part was omitted, I desperately wanted more of the good bits with Syen, 'Baster, Innon, and Coru. I didn't want to let them go! But Plot caught up with them.
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I also wanted a whole (sub-book? short story? ... okay, possibly going to nominate this for Yuletide. Woe betide the poor writer who gets me being all "I just want their complicated threesome, damn the earthbending!" Heh) a whole lot more about their relationship, and their child. I mean, I get that at that point she was basically filling in the blank spots to hurtle us to the present-time in the narrative, but wahhhh, want moar! Um, that was a long aside.
I don't really have time to go back and reread, not before the Hugos are done, anyhow, but I 'm thinking that it'll be a gift to myself to curl up and indulge over the Christmas holidays, maybe. I need time to let it all settle! :)
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I feel like the chunk of the story on the island is SO tailor-made for fluff-fic with an undertone of Drama and Doom...I just worry that it'll be too drastically difficult for anyone to pull off while seeming in character...but there are some very talented fic writers out there. The eternal cry of the fanfic reader: I live in hope that somebody will write it. And alongside it: oh gosh I need to go write a thing. :)
>> god, that passing mention of it being Jija who wanted kids, <<
Yes, it retrospect it's absolutely stark. I feel like she was deliberately trying to obliterate her past self/selves and individuality at that point, if she'd been listening at all to her own feelings and need to heal I don't think she would have been willing to have kids because someone else said so. And it seems so innocent the first go-round.
Not innocent on first view but still deeper and darker in retrospect: I keep rereading the scene with Damaya's hand, the layers on layers of twisted motivation and power there are incredibly well done and get more disturbing the more you read it. "Never say no to me" is such a red flag and yet, for me, there's a kind of twisted sympathy for Schaffa too.
>> I need to let it settle <<
Sure.
Thanks for listening to me babble about Hey Listen This Cool Book Is So Cool!
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YES. That was horrifying, and nearly made me stop reading because I feared that dynamic was going to not only keep going but escalate, thankfully it didn't explicitly escalate. But even wanting to stop reading was a complement to NKJ, because it was like... here is a horrifyingly abusive situation presented as a horrifyingly abusive situation. And I'm not sure I should be giving out cookies for that, but given Uprooted... yeah. Yeah we apparently need to.
ETA: ALSO a tiny thing but So Important -- before that she's attracted to him. He's safety and comfort and she's starting to be attracted to him. And then he does the hand thing and NOPE she never trusts him again. See above 'not sure I should be giving cookies And Yet, still worryingly cookie worthy'
*mentally adds point to the + comment*
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Yep. That was a point where I reeeeeaaallly had to check my level of trust in the author that this wasn't going to devolve into normalizing/celebrating Awful Things.
>> because I feared that dynamic was going to not only keep going but escalate, thankfully it didn't explicitly escalate. <<
Rather, it was mostly off-stage, deliberately, but the effects were clear and the ways in which it was a functional component of an abusive system working as intended, rather than one person's private evil, became clear. I think having that stuff be on-stage and physical towards the start of the story, moving to more off-stage and psychological/systemic, worked well to imply just how bad things are without making the reader numb or losing the audience.
>> But even wanting to stop reading was a complement to NKJ, because it was like<<
How scary something feels is often more a function of how it is presented and how much empathy we feel for the characters rather than the actual severity of the situation. Or entire genres of comic, video games, etc would be totally nonviable. I think we defensively, subconsciously refuse to empathize fully because there is too much pain and awfulness in the world, and a clever author gets around that my getting us to identify with the characters.
>>... here is a horrifyingly abusive situation presented as a horrifyingly abusive situation. And I'm not sure I should be giving out cookies for that, <<
I understand the reluctance. But! This is a good example of exploring a difficult topic rather than exploiting or trivializing it. Which is needed for many reasons...
>>but given Uprooted... yeah. Yeah we apparently need to. <<
...one of the biggest of which is the pervasiveness of tropes that glamorize or normalize some really awful ideas. The "Stalking = Love" meme is so toxic and it's everywhere. In part because it serves the interests of many people who are fine with abusive, nonconsensual power dynamics as long as they get what they want out of the situation. And many more people don't realize or care that it is chipping away at their capacity for positive human interactions, or just the creativity to come up with their OWN good and bad ideas, every time they mentally apply that template to real life.
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Who are neither Utterly Gay TM (option on Tragically Utterly Gay) nor Utterly Bisexual TM (option on Hedonistically Indiscriminately Utterly Bisexual).
>> I feel legit hesitant to attribute here-now sexual politics to a world that is so clearly not ours <<
That's a triumph of the world-building. Talking within the book, we can't use our terminology because it so clearly doesn't apply. Talking about the book as a book within our current politic landscape, though, I can be really ridiculously happy at the queer representation. And trans representation! NKJ made a point of that, and Binof is a well-written supporting character.
>> A THREESOME rather than a love triangle. THANK YOU. <<
And it's not even a perfectly-symmetrical threesome, where all the relationships are either (a) equally perfect or (b) equally fraught! It's sort of but not quite a V, with some of the characters in the trio leading on some matters and connecting more strongly on some topics, with outside obligations and relationships, and everyone being an individual. A+ for realism and for avoiding stereotyping and queering the default literacy construction of both functional and dysfunctional families (that family is neither functional nor dysfunctional in itself - it has the ingredients for either, but not the time to settle into functioning or fall apart on its own before the world intervenes and breaks it because dead people and running and betrayal and more dead people).
I'm so sick of love triangles I want to not read/watch most stuff with romantic love and/or sex. Which is a shame because I love complex character development and legit interpersonal conflict and opportunities for growth and models of successful and unsuccessful life choices within fiction. And I'd miss that if I went to entirely gen, friendship or problem-solving centered fiction or to nonfiction. Fortunately there is so much good stuff now accessible if you go digging that my real problem is forgetting to check back in with the mainstream and wave signal flags for Good Stuff Here. Unfortunately it's still buried in a mountain of things that aren't necessarily bad but are less thorough. NKJ basically said "F YOU" to ALL the sucky normative (subtly patriarchal/racist/etc) tropes in Sf&F and made the fans like it. I love her work so much.
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The bits that I don't know how to feel about!
- ugh. ugh. I don't know how to feel about the three "different" characters. I don't know how to feel at ALL. Like, on one hand, far more compelling to weave it like that. On the other, I feel faintly... cheated? taken advantage of? I DO NOT KNOW HOW TO FEEL *more flail*
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Re: The bits that I don't know how to feel about!
I didn't think he wanted her to make a moon. I think there probably was one in the past and it was destroyed - Father Earth's only child, killed by orogenes - and the deadcivs are a potential source of incredible power and also probably a reason why origins are so screwed over, although humans being awful is the real reason there.
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Re: The bits that I don't know how to feel about!
I mean, I hit that awkward bit where even in e-book it was telling me there were X many pages to go... that were not actually novel, but were author notes/sample chapters etc, so the last line ... didn't immediately feel like a last line, and I was confuse. But that's also something that I won't stumble so hard over in the reread, so that'll help.
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Re: The bits that I don't know how to feel about!
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It made me flail too.
I clued in a chapter or two before it was revealed that Damaya was Syenite (thus suggesting the third logical piece) and I was on board with it. Because even though Essun is incredibly compelling and dynamic, she's also hollow. She is all about what she is refusing to think and what she is insisting on doing because she can't not. The tripling gives her the underlying betrayal AND the underlying experience of love and courage AND the prior trauma to make it all make sense. In a way, that allows the character of Essun to demand empathy rather than seem like a pointless Energizer Bunny (the way so many characters who are supposed to be superhumanly inspiring often come off to anyone who has seen some real shit rain down).
Both the sections in second person AND the tripartite structure are difficult to pull off but they ARE pulled off, which in my mind is a tour de force on NKJ's part.
So reread, and then see how you feel.
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<3!
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Also, from the perspective of a writer, the moment of realizing the connection between the three different timelines/perspectives; it was like a brain bomb, an explosion of admiration and delight and envy, that she could carry that off so smartly and effortlessly and well.
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YES. The world building was amazing, to the point where for a few hours after I finished I found myself thinking "oh, rusting earth!" and then giggling at myself. I didn't realise how invested I was in these characters until we got to Damaya's hand scene, and ​WELP. As I think I said above, it was horrifying and abusive, and we were actively supposed to read it as such. The fact that this counts as a plus is... ugh, says horrible things that are lurking in our culture (and in my recent readings, but whatever).
It took me a while to come around to liking the triptych, actually. About the only thing I picked while I was reading -- until the explicit reveal -- was the fact that the 'timelines' were jumping oddly, and I couldn't figure it in my head. As a wider context, I'd grown up on the awful Cecila Dart-Thorton, who had her character change names (and personalities?) each book, so my kneejerk was actually suspicion. But now with a little distance, and a lot of discussion, I can see how it's folded in together, and dang am I looking forward to settling down in a few months for a reread, esp we now know everything that brought us to the opening chapters, hot damn.
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I figured out what she was doing ahead of the reveal (though not crazily ahead) and I think, more than anything, the way she could take a person at these three different portions of their life and how much they could seem like a different character is what impressed me the most? I think so few authors allow for that kind of growth, especially with a woman's character, that it was so huge to me that Jemisin did it, and carried it off, and got it published. I mean, again, she'd made something of a name for herself by the time this came around, but still. It's so much of everything that mainstream publishing and people in general say is impossible and can't sell and isn't realistic. It's complicated and messy and hits on such hard, ugly truths. I love it.
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Thought you might appreciate.
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I SAW and I am SO PLEASED. I'm going to keep plowing through my backlog of non-hugo reading for the moment, but the sequel is definitely on my list! :D :D :D
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