A review by chan_fry
The Broken Earth Trilogy: The Fifth Season / The Obelisk Gate / The Stone Sky by N.K. Jemisin

4.0

Perhaps I should have expected this, but the trilogy is better than each of the individual books. Taken as a whole, the story arc is powerful, engaging, and (I think) groundbreaking. Each character has something with which the reader can identify, some trait that emphasizes his or her humanity to varying degrees. The world-building is top-notch and epic in scope.

My only complaints are (1) present tense throughout (I realize this is a personal, subjective thing), (2) the first and third book are out of chronological order, skipping around in time quite a bit, often without warning, and (3) use of the second-person was distracting and took me out of the story until my brain began auto-translating the pronouns from “you” to “her”.