Reading Order
The Obelisk Gate Reading Order
The Obelisk Gate (2016) by N.K. Jemisin is the second volume of the Broken Earth trilogy and the winner of the Hugo Award for Best Novel — the first time any author had won consecutive Hugos. Continuing immediately from The Fifth Season, it follows two parallel narratives: Essun in Castrima, an underground community built inside a geode, where she must learn to use obelisks (ancient weapons/tools that float above the earth) while the world-breaking event (called the Rift) continues; and Nassun, Essun's daughter, who has been taken by Jija (her father, who killed her son) south toward another Fulcrum and who is developing her orogeny under the guidance of Schaffa, a former Guardian who has changed. The Obelisk Gate deepens the mythology of the Broken Earth and complicates its moral picture: Nassun is a sympathetic protagonist who makes choices that put her in conflict with her mother, and Jemisin refuses to simplify the tension between Essun's world-saving project and Nassun's own desires. The novel also begins to reveal the deep history of the Stillness — the origin of orogeny, the origin of the obelisks, the relationship between the geological catastrophes and the ancient civilization that preceded the Sanze empire — preparing the revelations of The Stone Sky.
Where to start
The Obelisk Gate — read The Fifth Season first. This volume continues directly and requires the first novel's context for the Castrima sequence and the obelisk mythology.
Complete The Obelisk Gate Book List
- 1Buy
The Obelisk Gate
N.K. Jemisin·2016·The novel — Essun in Castrima learning to use obelisks, and Nassun's parallel journey south with Jija; the deepening mythology and complicating moral picture of the second volume; Hugo Award winner. - 2Buy
The Fifth Season
N.K. Jemisin·2015·The trilogy's first volume — the essential predecessor; Essun's three timelines and the introduction of the orogene's world; the Hugo Award-winning first novel that The Obelisk Gate continues. - 3Buy
The Stone Sky
N.K. Jemisin·2017·The trilogy's conclusion — the essential next step; Essun and Nassun's convergence and the choice about the world's future; the Hugo Award-winning trilogy conclusion. - 4Buy
The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms
N.K. Jemisin·2010·Jemisin's debut novel — the companion in her earlier Inheritance trilogy; the same formal ambition and thematic concern with oppression and power in a fantasy setting, establishing the concerns the Broken Earth trilogy extends. - 5Buy
Parable of the Sower
Octavia E. Butler·1993·Butler's near-future dystopia — the predecessor in speculative fiction by a Black woman about a Black woman navigating catastrophe; the formal predecessor to Jemisin's geological-catastrophe world. - 6Buy
A Memory Called Empire
Arkady Martine·2019·Martine's Hugo Award-winning debut — the companion in recent award-winning SF by a woman of color that examines imperialism, identity, and cultural survival in a speculative setting. - 7Buy
The Left Hand of Darkness
Ursula K. Le Guin·1969·Le Guin's Hugo-winning classic — the formal predecessor in humanist SF that uses world-building to examine social oppression; Genly Ai's Gethen is the predecessor to Essun's Stillness. - 8Buy
The Dispossessed
Ursula K. Le Guin·1974·Le Guin's anarchist utopia — the formal predecessor in SF that uses speculative world-building to examine the relationship between freedom and community; Anarres vs. Urras is the predecessor to Castrima vs. the Sanze empire.
The Obelisk Gate — Frequently Asked Questions
What is The Obelisk Gate about?
The Obelisk Gate follows two parallel narratives. The first follows Essun in Castrima, an underground community built inside a geode in the Stillness, where she is hiding from the catastrophic Rift that Alabaster triggered. Castrima is a precarious community (it depends on the geode's orogeny-based technology and on the cooperation of roggas — the slur for orogenes — and non-orogenes together) and Essun must learn to use the floating obelisks while managing the community's internal politics. The second narrative follows Nassun, Essun's daughter, who has been taken by her father Jija south toward a place called Found Moon — an alternative to the Fulcrum run by changed Guardians who take a very different approach to orogeny. Jija is revealed to be more complex than a simple villain, and Nassun's relationship with Schaffa (her Guardian) is one of the novel's most troubling and important elements.
What is Nassun's role in the trilogy?
Nassun is introduced in The Obelisk Gate as a point-of-view character alongside her mother Essun, and she becomes increasingly important as the trilogy progresses. She is a child — about 10 when the Rift begins — who is more powerful as an orogene than her mother, and who is shaped by very different experiences: where Essun was trained by the oppressive Fulcrum, Nassun is trained by Schaffa (a changed Guardian who is both more and less dangerous than before), and her understanding of orogeny is different. Nassun's trajectory — away from her mother, toward her own choices — is one of the trilogy's central tensions, and The Stone Sky's resolution of the Essun-Nassun relationship is the trilogy's emotional core.
What are the obelisks and what is their significance?
The obelisks are enormous floating structures of unknown origin that are scattered across the Stillness — some in the sky, some half-buried, some drifting. In The Fifth Season, they are mysterious background elements. In The Obelisk Gate, Alabaster (dying of stone-eater erosion) teaches Essun to use them: they are ancient weapons or tools, connected to a network that can, in theory, draw down the Moon (a rogue moon that was launched millennia ago and whose orbit is destabilizing the Stillness). Essun learns to sense the obelisks and eventually to use them. Their deep history — what they were built for, who built them, what the Moon was launched away from — is the mystery that The Stone Sky resolves.
How does The Obelisk Gate complicate the first novel's moral picture?
The Fifth Season presents the orogene oppression clearly: the Fulcrum and the Sanze empire are oppressive, the orogenes are oppressed, Alabaster's world-breaking Rift is (implicitly) an act of justified resistance. The Obelisk Gate complicates this: Castrima is a community where roggas and non-roggas cooperate, but the cooperation is fragile and the non-orogenes' fear of orogenes is not simply prejudice — orogenes are genuinely dangerous. Nassun's relationship with Schaffa complicates the picture further: Schaffa is a Guardian (part of the system that controls and kills orogenes) who has been changed, and Nassun loves him; this is not false consciousness but a genuine attachment to a person who is also part of an oppressive system. Jemisin is making the allegory more complex: not all white people are simply villains, not all Black people benefit equally from resistance, the moral situation requires nuance even in the middle of genuine oppression.
What should I read after The Obelisk Gate?
After The Obelisk Gate, The Stone Sky (2017) is the immediate next step — the trilogy's conclusion. For Jemisin's other work, The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms is her debut. For the tradition The Obelisk Gate belongs to, Octavia Butler's Parable duology and Ursula Le Guin's The Left Hand of Darkness and The Dispossessed are the most important predecessors. Arkady Martine's A Memory Called Empire is the most important recent companion.
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