The Obelisk Gate by N.K. Jemisin

My mother-in-law got me a copy of The Obelisk Gate, bless her, prompted by my husband, who knew how much I'd loved The Fifth Season. I let it sit in limbo for a few months, not because I was worried about whether or not it would be good, but because I wasn't sure my heart could take it at any given moment. Finally, the news that the Hugo nominees were to be announced made me get on it, because I'm voting for the first time this year, and I was pretty darned sure The Stone Sky would be nominated. And I was not going to read that without having read this.

So, my heart prepared for further breaking, I picked it up. And I loved it almost as much, although it was less heart-breaking at times than skin-crawling. And by "at times," I mean "every Schaffa chapter."  Ohhh, the Schaffa chapters.

*shudder*

Creepy as all hell, and Jemisin would drop little bits in his train of thought, and my gorge would rise, because I'd read the first book not all that long ago, and I knew darned well exactly what the meaning behind the meaning was, and that it was horrific.

This book moves between whatever Schaffa has become (I've got a pretty good idea, but I'd find it hard to put in precise terms), Essun as she joins a new comm full of orogenes, located underground as the Season becomes more deadly, her daughter Nassun who, along with her murderous father, travel to a satellite Fulcrum, where her father hopes she can be cured of the disease of orogeny, and an unnamed narrator, who is gradually revealed to be Hoa, the small boy/stone eater Essun met last book.

If I just railed on Winterson for not understanding that science fiction and fantasy can be complex, this book would be one I'd hold up as Exhibit A for what this genre can be like, dammit. Nothing here is simple, and oh, so much of it hurts. Essun tries not to become part of the comm she is in, fearing endings like those that have claimed her sons previously. People react in ways expected and unpredictable, and are occasionally deadly.

Nassun, for quite a while, still loves the father who killed her brother, and hates the mother who was cruel in order to help her learn to hide - the intricate anguish of hurting children because it is what you think they need to survive is precise and devastating. Love is a thing for easier times, except it isn't, it survives even in harshness. And, easy and hard, it can be perverted or wielded in destructive ways, passing lessons of enslavement and oppression through generations that live in the interstices of every conversation.

But the world is built here as well, skilfully, as Essun learns from Alabaster what she can do with the obelisks, and why orogene children have had their talents bent towards the earth, instead of exploring the wider world of what no one remembers to call magic. Nassun learns some of the same lessons all by herself. Mother and daughter hurt those around them, sometimes by accident, sometimes on purpose.

And the moon is coming back. It is coming back from where it was flung, and its return could mean a return to stability or an end to humanity, which might give the stone eaters a chance to become the dominant species on a surface too inhospitable to flesh and blood.

I'm caught up. The nominees have been announced. But I need a month or so before I'm recovered enough to read The Stone Sky.