(no subject)

[eirias]

I finished the Broken Earth trilogy today. This has been an interesting and difficult time to read this series... everything resonates a bit too much.



On difference and prejudice:

Nassun takes a deep breath and lets out a heavy sigh.

"I really just wanted to live somewhere nice," she says. "Live somewhere with... with you. I wouldn't have minded working and doing things to be a good comm member. I could have been a lorist, maybe." She feels her jaw tighten. "But I can't do that, not anywhere. Not without having to hide what I am. I like orogeny, Schaffa, when I don't have to hide it. I don't think having it, being a--a r-rogga--" she has to stop, and blush, and shake off the urge to feel ashamed for saying such a bad word, but the bad word is the right word for now. "I don't think being one makes me bad or strange or evil--"

She cuts herself off again, yanks her thoughts out of that track, because it leads right back to But you have done such evil things.

Unconsciously, Nassun bares her teeth and clenches her fists. "It isn't right, Schaffa. It isn't right that people want me to be bad or strange or evil, that they make me be bad..." She shakes her head, fumbling for words. "I just want to be ordinary! But I'm not and--and everybody, a lot of people, all hate me because I'm not ordinary. You're the only person who doesn't hate me for... for being what I am. And that's not right."

"No, it isn't." Schaffa shifts to sit back against his pack, looking weary. "But you speak as though it's an easy thing to ask people to overcome their fears, little one."

On weighing a teacher's worth in the apocalypse:

Three people got left behind on the highroad, unable to walk any further because of sprains or breaks. You don't know them. In theory, they'll catch up once they've recovered, but you can't see how they'll recover with no food or shelter. Here on the ground it's worse: a half-dozen broken ankles, one broken leg, one wrenched back among the Strongbacks pulling the wagons, all in the first day. After a while, Lerna stops going to them unless they ask for his help. Most don't ask. There's nothing he can do, and everyone knows it.

On a chilly day, Ontrag the potter just sits down and says she doesn't feel like going any further. Ykka actually argues with her, which you weren't expecting. Ontrag has passed on her skill of pottery to two younger comm members. She's redundant, long past childbearing; it should be an easy headwoman's choice, by the rules of Old Sanze and the tenets of stonelore. But in the end, Ontrag herself has to tell Ykka to shut up and walk away.

It's a warning sign. "I can't do this anymore," you hear Ykka say later, when Ontrag has fallen out of sight behind you. She plods forward, her pace steady and ground-eating as usual, but her head is down, hanks of wet ashblow hair obscuring her face. "I can't. It isn't right. It shouldn't be like this. It shouldn't just be--there's more to being Castrima than being rusting useful, for Earth's sake, she used to teach me in creche, she knows stories, I rusting can't."

Hjarka Leadership Castrima, who was taught from an early age to kill the few so the many might live, only touches her shoulder and says, "You'll do what you have to do."

Ykka doesn't say anything for the next few miles, but maybe that's just because there's nothing to say.

Comments

[paperkingdoms]

Oof.

[libskrat]

I ran out of able-to-keep-going before I finished the third book.

[eirias]

There were times I had to set the book down, particularly when Schaffa and Nassun were together. The deftness of Jemisin’s portrayal of abusers and their tactics was really disturbing.