The Obelisk Gate

Fantasy book by NK Jemisin.

It's been a long time since I read the first book in this trilogy (looking back it was September 2021!) so it took me a while to pick the story back up when I read this. There's a note there to read things in series closer together, in a more deliberate way.

So, although I didn't really remember why the main character was so traumatised by certain characters deaths, I remembered enough to appreciate that the character died and should have had an impact.

What I did manage to pick up quicker than I thought was the 'rules' of this fantasy land. That allowed me to enjoy the story.

Overall, though, this book did feel like the middle of a trilogy in a way that a lot of these books tend to. There was a lot of time dedicated to setting up the conflicted bad guy for the third book. This was needed and nessecary, but it did mean that another bad had to be invented for the protagonist to fight. This left her story feeling a little at odds with the main thrust of the trilogy. A good think to remember when writing large, epic works.

Still, very good and very readable, I motored through this book, and it gave me a great way to get back into reading after a very distracted Christmas period.