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Bibliophiles of the internet, my name's Adriana
and today I'm here to talk about "The Obelisk Gate" by N.K. Jemisin.
Just to recap, this story takes place in a world called the Stillness, which is going through its latest season—
—a season being an apocalyptic event where the world becomes unstable
so it can be remade and reshaped in some way.
Some people in the Stillness are called orogenes, and they have the ability
to exert their raw will and energy over the earth and rock.
Although this is a tremendous power, it can also be triggered by their emotional reactions.
Because of this, orogenes are essentially the lowest rung on the social ladder.
They are extremely oppressed because most people believe them to be volatile,
unpredictable, and inherently "violent."
There's also a group of people called Guardians who are tasked with "controlling" orogenes
and shaping them into quote-unquote "productive citizens" by any means necessary, at all costs.
We pick up on the storyline of Essun, whose husband murdered her youngest child
for displaying early signs of orogeny and then kidnapped her only remaining child, Nassun.
We also get to read from the perspective of Nassun as her father takes her to this remote location
where allegedly there are people who can "cure" her "condition."
There's also Schaffa, a Guardian returning to his roots of shaping young orogenes,
and we also get to briefly read from the perspective of an ancient entity known as a stone eater as well.
To start off, N.K. Jemisin writes with the air of discovery.
Her stories—the way they progress and unfold—emulate the phenomenon of discover itself.
She immerses you in all these essential details that don't seem to have any importance on their own,
but when you're finally ready, when you're finally equipped to confront the messiness
and complexity of this world,
suddenly everything is laid bare before you and you wonder how you just couldn't see it.
Because the fact of the matter is you didn't WANT to see it until you had no other choice.
***, man. If that's not real life, I don't know what is.
What I really admire about this series is that none of the characters are clean cut.
There's no such thing as the righteous vs. the unrighteous, good vs. evil.
None of these characters are easy to understand or even like.
All of them have survived by any means necessary, but really when you're living in an environment
as hostile as the Stillness, when you're living through the viciousness of a season,
there is no such thing as a good choice. Every choice is a bad choice, an impossible choice.
The dedication really says it all: "To those who have no choice but to prepare their children for the battlefield."
That helps us to try and understand Essun, especially, and where she's coming from.
As you read more about Nassun and how she was raised and trained in secret by her mom,
it just makes you stop and think back on the atrocities we were exposed to in book one.
What must a person have lived through and experienced to convince them that
destroying their own children is the only viable option?
Essun willingly sacrifices the warm, loving mother-daughter relationship that might have been.
Her daughter will never love her; her daughter will never admire her; her daughter will never confide
in her or trust in her, but Nassun will LIVE. She will survive.
It just really drives home what kind of experiences could lead that to being Essun's only choice
when, in all honesty, in this world, in this society where orogenes are targeted,
it was never a "choice" in the first place.
That in itself could have been painted as noble or remarkable in any other story,
but with Nassun's point of view thrown in the mix, we know it was anything but.
It was horrible. It was awful. It was WRONG. And there's no way around that.
And that's something that runs throughout the entire book, that all of the characters are confronting.
It doesn't matter if it comes from a place of concern—real or imagined, it doesn't matter if the person
loved you at the time, it doesn't matter if it was for the "greater good"—
—if someone or something hurts you, it's wrong. Period.
That's revolutionary, because we're not taught to recognize that.
We're taught to internalize it and pass it on.
And really it's about the fact that the goal of the oppressor is for us to put them out of a job.
They give us all the tools, they arm us with fear and self-hatred, all in the hopes that one day,
they won't have to lift a finger, because we'll have become so good at oppressing ourselves
and oppressing others the way we were taught that they become obsolete.
It's a cycle.
The trauma inflicted upon Essun by her Guardian is the same as the trauma Essun then turns around
to inflict on her own child. The abuse is almost identical, it's so precise.
But that's what happens when the colonize inflicts their devices of violence on the colonized:
They internalize that violence and that trauma and then use it against their own,
continuing the work of their colonizer whether they realize it or not.
This is how cycles of violence flourish. This is how systems of oppression thrive.
And it's only one of many complex ideas at the forefront of this book.
That's why I think this second book is really focused on the efforts surrounding the decolonization
of the mind—how we're discouraged from our own freedom by the boundaries inflicted upon us by others.
You really see this rally cry from Alabaster as he realizes that orogenes have been hunted
and reduced to a people whose sole focus it to survive.
They've willingly minimized themselves, they've gone into hiding, when really they were built
for so much more. They were meant for something greater, something their oppressors don't want
them to see—because you can never discover what you never think to look for in the first place.
On page 204, Alabaster says: "It's amazing when you think about it. Everyone in the Stillness is like this."
"Never mind what's in the oceans, never mind what's in the sky; never look to your own horizon"
"and wonder what's beyond it."
"We've spent centuries making fun of the astronomests for their crackpot theories,"
"but what we really found incredible was that they ever bothered to *look up* to formulate them."
Orogenes are taught to focus on the ground beneath their feet, to fear the very earth itself,
to the point where it would never even occur to them to look to the sky, to discover another way
of living, and being, and fixing the world—restoring its balance.
The ingrained belief that they are the problem actively stops them from even thinking about
how they just might be the solution.
And I think that really speaks to why orogeny is at the center of this series,
because by definition, it's a disruption of the world as we know it,
and the people in power, the people benefiting from this system, they don't like that!
They want a system where orogenes actively stop *themselves* from making any progress.
It's so hard to break out of that mindset. We become so confined to how other people view us and think of us,
how other people define us, that it becomes difficult to reclaim what has been taken from us.
It's so hard to re-teach yourself how to live, how to understand and process the world,
how to love yourself and others, how to purge yourself of the fear and shame inflicted upon you
by society. But it has to be done. That's what this story is about.
It won't be easy and there will be more losses along the way, but it has to be done.
I can only hope that some parts of that made sense.
This series is doing incredible, important, necessary work, and it means so much to me.
This book, just like its predecessor, gets a huge five stars.
So those were some of my thoughts on this sequel. I cannot *wait* for the release of "The Stone Sky."
It's going to be a destroyer of worlds, mark my words.
In the comments below, let me know if you have read this series, if you plan on it,
or let me know what you think of it so far.
But that is everything I had for this review today. Thank you so much for watching this video.
I really hope that you enjoyed it, and I will catch YOU on the flip-side of the page.
Bye!
[♫ snazzy end screen music ♫]