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Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:
Sometimes a book series is so important that you want people to put everything aside and just read it. I'm not the only one who feels this way about N.K. Jemisin's Broken Earth trilogy. The first and second novels in Jemisin's trilogy, The Fifth Season and The Obelisk Gate won the prestigious Hugo Award for the past two years in a row—the first time this has happened since Ender's Game and its sequel Speaker for the Dead won sequential Hugos in 1986 and 87. Now the final Broken Earth book, The Stone Sky, is out. You can gobble up the whole series without interruption.
There are a lot of reasons why this series has been hailed as a masterpiece. There are unexpected twists which, in retrospect, you realize have been carefully plotted, skillfully hinted at, and well-earned. There are characters who feel like human beings, with problems that range from the mundane (raising kids in a risky world) to the extraordinary (learning to control earthquakes with your mind). The main characters are called orogenes, and they have the ability to control geophysics with their minds, quelling and starting earthquakes. Somehow the orogenes are connected with the lost technologies of a dead civilization, whose machines still orbit the planet in the form of mysterious giant crystals called obelisks. To most people on the planet, the orogenes are known by the derogatory term "rogga," and they're the victims of vicious prejudice.
But Jemisin is hardly retelling The X-men, only with orogenes instead of mutants. She's created a sociologically complex world, and the more we read, the more we understand how the orogenes fit into it. As we travel with our protagonists across the planet's single megacontinent, we discover the place is full of many cultures, often at odds with one another. The brown urbanites from the tropics think the pale, rural people of the poles are ugly idiots; the coastal people aren't too sure about the inland people; and of course everybody hates the orogenes. These tensions are part of a long and complex history that we learn more about as the series develops. There are a number of mysteries to unravel in this series, but one of them is understanding the devastating origin of prejudice against orogenes.
[...] The Broken Earth is exciting, full of incredible technology, and powered by a dark historical mystery. It's something you can read to escape, or to ponder philosophical questions in our own world. In short, it's that rare series that appeals to a love of adventure, and to the urge to reflect on the unseen forces that drive our civilizations.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by insanumingenium on Monday September 18 2017, @09:22PM (3 children)
For all the people who are claiming that it is some sort of ancient nanobots and it really is science fiction
spoiler warning
Second level orogeny is literally magic. Not as in I am comparing it to magic, it is called magic, and is what you would expect from the name magic.
The writing was not my style, entirely too much time is spent comparing texture of hair for my taste.
As far as it being SJW politics, hell yes it is, and that is undeniably why it won the Hugos, but Sci-Fi Fi has always been political. I just wish socially progressive still looked more like Heinlein and less like "safe spaces"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 18 2017, @09:43PM (2 children)
If they are connected to machines that perform the "magic" then it is still scifi. Telepathy is a common scifi tool, so I think the doors are pretty wide open for this story. If the second level orogeny doesn't use the machines then fine it starts falling into a more fantasy realm, if the characters call it magic then that just means they didn't understand how it worked.
Undeniably why it won? I dunno, seems like whiny "get off my lawn" antics from someone stuck in the past. Heinlein pushed the barriers for his time, but he included a lot of personal politics I found disagreeable, and many of his stories contain old men fawned over by young hot women. Pretty ridiculous sometimes.
(Score: 3, Informative) by deimtee on Tuesday September 19 2017, @03:48AM (1 child)
Many of his stories contain rich old men fawned over by young hot women. Look around, it's not ridiculous at all.
If you cough while drinking cheap red wine it really cleans out your sinuses.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 19 2017, @03:28PM
Then the whole "progressive" bit is gone as we return to barbaric humanity where people whore themselves out. Heinlein is a good bridge from old school patriarchal horrors to women have value.