eBook
Dutch language
Published by Uitgeverij Luitingh-Sijthoff B.V..
A SEASON OF ENDINGS HAS BEGUN.
IT STARTS WITH THE GREAT RED RIFT across the heart of the world's sole continent, spewing ash that blots out the sun.
IT STARTS WITH DEATH, with a murdered son and a missing daughter.
IT STARTS WITH BETRAYAL and long-dormant wounds rising up to fester.
This is the Stillness, a land familiar with catastrophe, where the power of the earth is wielded as a weapon. And where there is no mercy.
This description comes from the publisher.
I really enjoyed the world building and characters in this, but it was a little slow for my liking.
Mein erstes Buch dieses Jahr ist gleich ein Treffer. Dieser Fantasyroman in einer finsteren, postapokalyptischen Welt, in der jederzeit erneut Katastrophen auftreten können, hat mich in seinen Bann gezogen und ich werde ganz sicher auch Band 2 lesen, auch wenn ich an einigen Punkten schlucken musste. Einige Ereignisse und Figuren war doch schwer zu verdauen.
Die drei Handlungsstränge scheinen zunächst wenig miteinander zu tun zu haben, man erfährt auch nicht, in welcher Relation sie zeitlich zueinander stehen - bis schließlich am Ende alles zusammengeführt wird. Der Schreibstil des dritten Handlungsstrangs ist extrem ungewöhnlich (zweite Person Singular - würde man das analog zum Ich-Erzähler dann Du-Erzähler nennen?) und hebt ihn von den beiden anderen Strängen ab.
A beautifully crafted world built on the uncertainty of world-ending earthquakes and those with the power to move the earth themselves; a group both used by the now-ended civilisation and abused and ostracised by it for their powers.
I find it a great example of world-building where, instead of starting with “wouldn’t it be cool if people were green” it takes a structural change to the world and expands upon how this influences human society and evolution in a methodical, connected way. The parallel stories well serve the slow exploration of the world and the #queer poly rep is beautiful.
1) "Let's start with the end of the world, why don't we? Get it over with and move on to more interesting things."
2) "'You hate the way we live. The way the world makes us live. Either the Fulcrum owns us, or we have to hide and be hunted down like dogs if we're ever discovered. Or we become monsters and try to kill everything. Even within the Fulcrum we always have to think about how they want us to act. We can never just... be.' He sighs, closing his eyes. 'There should be a better way.' 'There isn't.' 'There must be. Sanze can't be the first empire that's managed to survive a few Seasons. We can see the evidence of other ways of life, other people who became mighty.' He gestures away from the highroad, toward the landscape that spreads all around them. They're near the Great Eastern …
1) "Let's start with the end of the world, why don't we? Get it over with and move on to more interesting things."
2) "'You hate the way we live. The way the world makes us live. Either the Fulcrum owns us, or we have to hide and be hunted down like dogs if we're ever discovered. Or we become monsters and try to kill everything. Even within the Fulcrum we always have to think about how they want us to act. We can never just... be.' He sighs, closing his eyes. 'There should be a better way.' 'There isn't.' 'There must be. Sanze can't be the first empire that's managed to survive a few Seasons. We can see the evidence of other ways of life, other people who became mighty.' He gestures away from the highroad, toward the landscape that spreads all around them. They're near the Great Eastern Forest; nothing but a carpet of trees rising and falling for as far as the eye can see. Except— —except, just at the edge of the horizon, she spots something that looks like a skeletal metal hand, clawing its way out of the trees. Another ruin, and it must be truly massive if she can see it from here. 'We pass down the stonelore,' Alabaster says, sitting up, 'but we never try to remember anything about what's already been tried, what else might have worked.'"
3) "'I didn't know.' She slurs the words around the back of her hand. The words don't make sense but she feels compelled to say them. 'I didn't.' 'You think that matters?' It's almost cruel, the emotionlessness of his voice and face. 'It matters to me!' 'You think you matter?' All at once he smiles. It's an ugly thing, cold as the vapor that curls off ice. 'You think any of us matter beyond what we can do for them? Whether we obey or not.' He jerks his head toward the body of the abused, murdered child. 'You think he mattered, after what they did to him? The only reason they don't do this to all of us is because we're more versatile, more useful, if we control ourselves. But each of us is just another weapon, to them. Just a useful monster, just a bit of new blood to add to the breeding lines. Just another fucking rogga.'"
4) "'Orogenes built the Fulcrum,' he says. She's almost never heard him say orogene. 'We did it under threat of genocide, and we used it to buckle a collar around our own necks, but we did it. We are the reason Old Sanze grew so powerful and lasted so long, and why it still half-rules the world, even if no one will admit it. We're the ones who've figured out just how amazing our kind can be, if we learn how to refine the gift we're born with.' 'It's a curse, not a gift.' Syenite closes her eyes. But she doesn't push away the bundle. 'It's a gift if it makes us better. It's a curse if we let it destroy us. You decide that—not the instructors, or the Guardians, or anyone else.' There's another shift, and the bed moves a little as Alabaster leans on it. A moment later she feels his lips on her brow, dry and approving. Then he settles back down on the floor beside the bed, and says nothing more."
5) "Winter, Spring, Summer, Fall; Death is the fifth, and master of all. -Arctic proverb"
A solid post-apocalyptic fantasy novel with good characters and what I thought was pretty well thought out worldbuilding and lore. I particularly enjoy Jemisin's ability to establish a robust sense of place to the settings she describes.
When I first started the book, I braced myself for disappointment, because what often happens with over-hyped books is that I tend to disagree with the majority when it falls flat for me. N. K. Jemisin was also quite a popular author already, and I was skeptical of that popularity… for that, I am truly sorry, because after reading this book I can say the accolades and fans are all well-deserved. While initially the writing style and confusion threatened to upend my experience of the book, I persevered and was gradually sucked into the story and incredible worldbuilding.
Jemisin has a way of writing her characters and creating an expansive yet brutal world. In the world of the Stillness, nothing is taken for granted, and Father Earth is seen as a violent force who is not on your side. Yet there are people with magical abilities, orogenes, who have an …
When I first started the book, I braced myself for disappointment, because what often happens with over-hyped books is that I tend to disagree with the majority when it falls flat for me. N. K. Jemisin was also quite a popular author already, and I was skeptical of that popularity… for that, I am truly sorry, because after reading this book I can say the accolades and fans are all well-deserved. While initially the writing style and confusion threatened to upend my experience of the book, I persevered and was gradually sucked into the story and incredible worldbuilding.
Jemisin has a way of writing her characters and creating an expansive yet brutal world. In the world of the Stillness, nothing is taken for granted, and Father Earth is seen as a violent force who is not on your side. Yet there are people with magical abilities, orogenes, who have an innate connection to the Earth and his natural forces; they are vital to the preservation of society, but they are also a force of destruction, just like Earth. Another reviewer mentioned that by the end of the book it almost feels like this world is not all that different from our own, if you fast-forward a little and add a few changes, and I agree—there are a lot of subtle themes that could be interpreted from the book, such as the destruction of natural resources and human hubris in the age of the anthropocene. In addition to the realistic facets, Jemisin is skilled at worldbuilding and creating lore, definitions, nations, races, etc. that are all a breath of fresh air from your standard fantasy fare. What I appreciated even more was the deft interweaving of science and magic in the book, with the insertion of ‘geomests’ and ‘archaeomests’ and even anthropological records of the previous Seasons provided in an appendix, making it feel like more than a book. This is a decent example of ‘sci-fi AND fantasy’ for a change—though this is very much more of a fantasy novel than a sci-fi one… at least for now. Jemisin also crafts a narrative that is both mysterious and illuminating, with clever machinations of the plot that I both did and did not anticipate.
What I didn’t enjoy as much were some of her stylistic choices. Some parts of the book are told in the second person, which I just never click with as a reader, and which makes it hard for me to comprehend what is happening. Despite this annoyance, I pushed through because I enjoyed the rest of the book… and by the end, I even almost got used to it, somewhat. (And there is eventually a reason to explain this choice of narration.) At other times, Jemisin will take extreme poetic license and go into non-standard prose, breaking sentences in half like it’s a verse of poetry, or repeating things in brackets (in brackets) for… dramatic effect? I don’t know. I didn’t like it, but it doesn’t happen too often in the book so it’s easy to brush aside the cheesiness of those moments. I also felt initially that some of the worldbuilding was static and underdeveloped, but things get better as the book progresses, and this is the first in a trilogy so it isn’t out-of-place.
While reading, I found myself resisting the urge to pick the book back up while I had to do other things (like sleep…), which is a mark for me that I had a great time with this one. It’s not a perfect book, but that is rarely the case—and perhaps since my expectations were low to begin with, I ended up enjoying it more than I anticipated. I would recommend this book to any sci-fi/fantasy fans who appreciate good worldbuilding and an interesting, at times even complex plot… and I’m excited to read the rest of the series. (Though I do wish I would finish more of my currently in-progress series before starting new ones… note to future self: stop starting new series!)
P.S. Also I saw an interview between Neil Gaiman and N. K. Jemisin, and it is very delightful to watch.
Didn't click with me at all. I was pretty bored most of the time, but thankfully it's a short book.
Es fing souverän an, ging dann aber leider nicht so weiter. Die Magie ist von der langweiligen Sorte, bei der so ziemlich alles möglich ist, zum Beispiel plötzliche Teleportation, um die Figuren aus schwierigen Lagen zu befreien. Meine im Mittelteil nur noch sehr mäßige Freude am Buch erreichte einen Tiefpunkt, als die positiven Gegenentwürfe zur falschen und gemeinen Welt sichtbar wurden: eine Art unterirdisches Dorf der Schlümpfe mit Häuschen aus leuchtenden Kristallen und eine Pirateninsel, auf der alle immerzu froh und lustig sind. Warum ist der positive Gegenentwurf in Fiktion, die sich der Beschreibung von Ungerechtigkeiten mit großem Aufwand widmet, oft so eindimensional, lustlos ausgedacht und kitschig? Ich will auf keinen Fall wissen, was in den nächsten beiden Bänden der Trilogie passiert und werde bei künftigen Buchentscheidungen mehr darauf achten, ob Kristalle eine Rolle spielen. Kristalle sind nie ein gutes Zeichen.
I want to write a review without spoilers - which is rather difficult, I find, because so many things are intertwined and connected in this amazing book that I can't seem to say much without giving away one twist or another.
Therefore let me say that the author is terrifyingly clever about leaving hints all over the place to things much further along in the book. This book deserves attention, and close-reading, if you really want to appreciate it. Also it's really great fun to form hypotheses and then see them turn out right, concerning who is who and what is what.
The characters are all brilliantly developed - the ones one tends to sympathise with more as well as the ones one tends to do so less. Because there simply isn't any juxtaposition of good and evil - no one is just one, and some maybe need a different …
I want to write a review without spoilers - which is rather difficult, I find, because so many things are intertwined and connected in this amazing book that I can't seem to say much without giving away one twist or another.
Therefore let me say that the author is terrifyingly clever about leaving hints all over the place to things much further along in the book. This book deserves attention, and close-reading, if you really want to appreciate it. Also it's really great fun to form hypotheses and then see them turn out right, concerning who is who and what is what.
The characters are all brilliantly developed - the ones one tends to sympathise with more as well as the ones one tends to do so less. Because there simply isn't any juxtaposition of good and evil - no one is just one, and some maybe need a different scale altogether.
Another wonderful thing is how the author manages to present topics such as race or origin and the implications thereof as well as totalitarian political systems on the go, showing their negative consequences without getting out the moral sledge hammer. There are characters who fall outside heteronormativity, concerning sexuality as well as sex/gender or "traditional relationship/family models". But the representation feels very natural in that these characters aren't there mainly or just for that. They have a ton of other defining characteristics and motives, and then they also happen to be part of what in our reality would be termed the LGBTQ+ community.
It was 1 a.m. when I read the last pages and finally fell asleep with a turmoil of emoitions because on the one hand one of my favourite characters [...] - but on the other hand another one [...]. I can't write any of that for a spoiler-free review. So just go read the book and see how you feel in the end.
Just, wow.
This is not a happy book, it's not a light book, but it is a good book. Hot damn.
This is not a happy book, it's not a light book, but it is a good book. Hot damn.
Wow! It's been a while since I have read a book that "I couldn't put down." Really great story and fascinating world building. It had me hooked from the beginning. I will say that I have a pet peeve for when book series split an overarching story into multiple books, without each book being able to stand solidly on its own. This series kind of falls into that territory so far, but I am excited to pick the rest of the series up.
It started slow. However, once it became clear that the PoV chapters were happening at different times in the timeline, the book came into its own and was fantastic. A series I'll continue listening to.
Mind-blowingly good! Struggled the first 50 pages to keep up since the world was so weird, and intricate. The second person narrative sections were jarring at first too. But wow, the pay off is so worth it. One of the best sci-fi novels that I've read in years. On to book 2 very quickly....
