(This review was written before I launched the review site)
I just finished reading The Obelisk Gate by NK Jemisin.
This series is really good.
The style of conveying information to the reader, and playing around with the narrator, continues in this book from The Fifth Season. And it’s still great. And anything I say would be a spoiler for either the first book or this one, and I really want you to discover it like I did, so I’m just going to shut up now and just tell you to go read it.
Actually, no, I’ll say a little more. The magic and the characters are both brilliant. This is the book where Jemisin, now that she’s gotten the basic worldbuilding out of the way, really gets to show you how much she knows about geology, and how societies are structured, and how interpersonal relationships work and/or break down, and the workings of the human brain, all in the context of terrible apocalypse and strange systems of magic.
These characters, man. They’re so well-rendered. Every single person in this story feels like a person, not a sketch or stereotype, and it’s so damn good. Everything has been thought out.
Seriously, if you like fantasy, you need to read this series. I’m astonished it’s taken me this long to get to it.