The Stone Sky

By: N. K. Jemisin

Narrated by: Robin Miles

Length: 14 hrs and 16 mins

Publisher's Summary

Humanity will finally be saved or destroyed in the shattering conclusion to the post-apocalyptic and highly acclaimed NYT best-selling trilogy that won the Hugo Award three years in a row.

The Moon will soon return. Whether this heralds the destruction of humankind or something worse will depend on two women.

Essun has inherited the power of Alabaster Tenring. With it, she hopes to find her daughter Nassun and forge a world in which every orogene child can grow up safe. For Nassun, her mother's mastery of the Obelisk Gate comes too late. She has seen the evil of the world, and accepted what her mother will not admit: That sometimes what is corrupt cannot be cleansed, only destroyed.

©2017 N. K. Jemisin (P)2017 Hachette Audio

Critic Reviews

"Narrator Robin Miles keeps up the suspense throughout this dramatic conclusion to the Broken Earth Trilogy... Miles perfectly embodies the voices of the many characters... Listen and be transported to a meticulously built world that serves as a dire warning about the dangers of prejudice and power." (AudioFile)

Dragged Out

N. K. Jeminsin has a great way of unfolding a story and creating twists and turns. However, you have to endure so many mundane details and chapters to get to what people are doing and why. Additionally, I listened to this book on 2.45x speed just to get through the mundane details and the long, slow, awkward pauses of the narrator.

Mother Earth vs Earth Mother

"But for a society built on exploitation, there is no greater threat than having no one left to oppress."
- N.K. Jemisin, The Stone Sky

Book three in the Broken Earth series turns solid what the earlier books hinted at. You could tell this was a series about race, culture, power, slavery, greed, family, etc., earlier in the series but The Stone Sky hammers Jemisin's themes home. This book had some serious Earth Mother energy to it. And while I was VERY impressed with the series, and I loved it, I still prefer the poetic writing of Ursula LeGuin. I feel like N.K. Jemisin has incredible (10 Ring) potential and while it appears these books came out like they were fired from a 9mm (fast and hard) in 2015, 2016, 2017. Perhaps, it took her longer than a year to write them. If THIS is what she can do in a bit over a year, I wonder what she could do if she refined her prose just a bit. But don't mistake my criticism as being heavy. It is a piece of sand on an eyelash. It is a mouches volantes. And, it may just be something I ate.

This review is for the entire series

(Review added to all books in series)
This was so good, I'll probably re-read the entire series again by the end of this year. This was truly a 5-course meal of a trilogy. Jemisin never hesitated staring an ugly truth right in the eye and it really paid off. Nothing came easy and there wasn't a hint of a Mary Sue moment.

It was refreshing to be offered a series where the main character was over 40, had kids and had already lived a full range of experiences. This is the second series that I've read by Jemisin and as much as I loved the 1st one (The Inheritance Trilogy), this was even better. I hope it doesn't sound pompous, but you can see more maturity in both the writing and the story-line.

The audio-book narrator, Robin Miles, is headed to the top of my narrator list. She can add everything from an African to a Gaelic? to a Slavic accent without sounding fake. It really brings the characters to life in a nice way.

I'm sure I'll still be re-reading this series decades from now. It's easy to see why Jemisin won the Hugo back to back on this one.

Fizzled out

I wanted to like it more but I felt like the ending fizzled out. Not sure what I wanted though

Powerful and satisfying conclusion

Excellent narrator really captures the emotional undercurrent of each scene. Like the previous two books, major plot points can be seen approaching from some distance off but the upside to this is that the plot is resolved in a very satisfying and neat conclusion. The whole narrative just comes off as very cohesive and focused.

Personally I find some of the premises underpinning the main themes to be questionable but it does not prove difficult to suspend my disbelief and imagine that thy might hold true in a world that is fundamentally different from our own.

A very enjoyable experience overall bolstered by good pacing and a narrative focus on critical characters and events. Some of the tension was significantly undercut by the predictability of certain events but the writing style, choice of point of view, and the performance of the narrator combine to consistently and powerfully capture the complex emotional forces ravaging the critical characters.

this book was a slog

I really enjoyed the first book. the second two were just incredibly slow. I wanted to finish because of how much I enjoyed the first, but I would not recommend them.

meh.

I heard good things about this series so I got all three. I had to drag myself through it...

Resolved w/o closure

It ends. And it’s satisfactory. But Damaya and Nassun lack a satisfying interaction, and they’re shared guardian’s story is just as anti-climactic. It’s as if the author joe got tired of ran out of time or something.

Slow and uneventful

I am a fan of this series and love the world of earth magic created by the author. This book, however has a sluggish pace that never truly becomes captivating the way the first two did.

Ends weakly

Generally a good trilogy, though the story seems to run out if gas in book 3. I was confused most of the way through this meandering wrap up. I was left unsatisfied.