# OK, so how is N.K. Jemisin's Broken Earth series? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [August 21, 2018, 3:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ok-so-how-is-n-k-jemisins-broken-earth-series/819951 "2018-08-21T03:53:08Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Budget\_Player\_Cadet](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/budget_player_cadet/32/205_2.png) [@Budget\_Player\_Cadet](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Budget_Player_Cadet)\ **Post date:** [September 4, 2018, 4:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ok-so-how-is-n-k-jemisins-broken-earth-series/819951/21 "2018-09-04T04:44:36Z")
> [@SlackerInc](#): > > The former. I see bad actors, playing toxic tribal identity politics, on both sides. I suppose it is hopelessly naive, but I wish it were all simply about recognizing the best SF stories written in a given year. Period. Instead, it’s clearly just a factional fight and neither camp is open to voting for an author supported by the other side. It’s about winning, defeating the enemy, not recognizing the best SF (whether written by a straight white greybeard or a Millennial black lesbian socialist). Given that you haven’t read the books, perhaps it would be telling to consider what others who have _actually read the books_ have to say on the matter. As it turns out, the Broken Earth trilogy is being almost universally hailed as not just great literature, but the kind of work that will actually change a genre in the long term. Seriously - when I google “Broken Earth review”, here’s some of the results: [https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/26/books/review/nk-jemisin-stone-sky-broken-earth-trilogy.html:](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/26/books/review/nk-jemisin-stone-sky-broken-earth-trilogy.html:) “The 21st-Century Fantasy Trilogy That Changed the Game” [https://www.theverge.com/2017/8/17/16156416/n-k-jemisin-broken-earth-trilogy-the-stone-sky-fantasy-book-review:](https://www.theverge.com/2017/8/17/16156416/n-k-jemisin-broken-earth-trilogy-the-stone-sky-fantasy-book-review:) “N.K. Jemisin’s Broken Earth trilogy is a triumphant achievement in fantasy literature” [September | 2017 | Ars Technica](https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2017/09/if-you-read-one-sci-fi-series-this-year-it-should-be-the-broken-earth/:) “If you read one sci-fi series this year, it should be The Broken Earth” [https://www.autostraddle.com/read-a-fcking-book-n-k-jemisins-broken-earth-trilogy-is-a-revolution-417101/:](https://www.autostraddle.com/read-a-fcking-book-n-k-jemisins-broken-earth-trilogy-is-a-revolution-417101/:) “Read a F\*cking Book: N.K. Jemisin’s Broken Earth Trilogy Is a Revolution” …Basically, people absolutely love these books. Almost every review is positive, it’s sitting at a Goodreads rating of 4.3, and people are talking about it not just as a great set of novels, but as a legitimate game-changer in the genre. It’s fine if the short excerpt you read didn’t blow you away (I found it fascinating, but wasn’t a huge fan of the writing style), but _maybe_, instead of positing a shadowy cabal of politically correct people, to mirror the known bad actors of the Sad Puppies, you could instead consider that maybe, what we’re dealing with is a legitimately huge event in literature. Maybe this really is the new Aasimov, LeGuin, or Rowling. Fears about “affirmative action” hugos _because you personally didn’t like a short excerpt of her book_ are, at the very least, completely nonsensical. Even if you don’t like the writing style - it took me several tries to get into A Clockwork Orange, and I recognize that as my fault, not the author’s. ---
**Author:** ![SlackerInc](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slackerinc/32/275_2.png) [@SlackerInc](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SlackerInc)\ **Post date:** [September 4, 2018, 5:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ok-so-how-is-n-k-jemisins-broken-earth-series/819951/22 "2018-09-04T05:23:00Z")
You can hate the writing style in _Clockwork_ (or _Ulysses_, or _Moby Dick_, even Shakespeare) and still see the genius in it. Same with LeGuin or Atwood, for that matter. I don’t see that here. There _is_ a cabal. They have nicer motives than the reactionary insurgency they have been fighting. But “not as bad as others” is the closest I can come to a ringing endorsement. ---
**Author:** ![Budget\_Player\_Cadet](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/budget_player_cadet/32/205_2.png) [@Budget\_Player\_Cadet](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Budget_Player_Cadet)\ **Post date:** [September 4, 2018, 6:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ok-so-how-is-n-k-jemisins-broken-earth-series/819951/23 "2018-09-04T06:40:22Z")
You read what amounts to a few pages from the prologue of a book series with near-universal acclaim and did not like the writing style. From this, you are concluding that the support is factional, the writing is objectively bad, and she only won three Hugos because of people playing identity politics. If you can’t see how ridiculous that sounds, I’m not sure I can help you. This would be a contrarian take if you had read the book and didn’t like it (kinda like that jerk who slagged off Toy Story 3 as all about product placement); as is it’s really kinda awful. ---
**Author:** ![Budget\_Player\_Cadet](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/budget_player_cadet/32/205_2.png) [@Budget\_Player\_Cadet](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Budget_Player_Cadet)\ **Post date:** [September 4, 2018, 6:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ok-so-how-is-n-k-jemisins-broken-earth-series/819951/24 "2018-09-04T06:55:43Z")
(Also just so we’re clear I’m not saying you’re a jerk for having a contrarian take. It’s entirely possible to go against a firm consensus on the value of a work of art. It’s still advisable to do so in a way that makes some kind of sense, i.e. Moviebob liking The Happytown Murders because he legitimately found the one-note humor funny.) ---
**Author:** ![SlackerInc](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slackerinc/32/275_2.png) [@SlackerInc](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SlackerInc)\ **Post date:** [September 4, 2018, 7:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ok-so-how-is-n-k-jemisins-broken-earth-series/819951/25 "2018-09-04T07:07:35Z")
> [@Wendell\_Wagner](#): > > SlackerInc, could you look through the list of Hugo novel nominees for the past few years and tell us which ones (which didn’t win) which were written by straight white greybeards are, in your opinion, better than the ones which won the Hugo?: > > [Hugo Award for Best Novel - Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hugo_Award_for_Best_Novel) > > (This question is just for SlackerInc. Please, everyone else, please don’t offer your own opinion on this matter. I want to know what SlackerInc thinks is best without him being prompted by someone else.) There aren’t many to choose from, but: —2011: Iain McDonald’s lofty stylings are miles ahead of Connie Willis’s leaden prose, the latter reminiscent of 1950s juvenile sci-fi. > **[Preview: The Dervish House by Ian McDonald - Reactor](https://reactormag.com/preview-the-dervish-house-by-ian-mcdonald/)** > > Enjoy this preview chapter from our friends at Pyr Books!   Monday The white bird climbs above the city of Istanbul: a stork, riding the rising air in a spiral of black-tipped wings. A flare of the feathers; it wheels on the exhalations of... > **[Excerpt from Blackout | Penguin Random House Canada](https://www.penguinrandomhouse.ca/books/191570/blackout-by-connie-willis/9780345519832/excerpt)** > > One of Spectra's most prestigious authors returns with one of the most highly anticipated novels on our list, now in trade paperback. —2012: > **[Among Others (Excerpt) - Reactor](https://reactormag.com/excerpt-among-others/)** > > Among Others is at once the compelling story of a young woman struggling to escape a troubled childhood, a brilliant diary of first encounters with the great novels of modern fantasy and SF, and a spellbinding tale of escape from ancient enchantment.... > **[LEVIATHAN WAKES](https://www.orbitbooks.net/orbit-excerpts/leviathan-wakes/)** > > Chapter One: Holden A hundred and fifty years before, when the parochial disagreements between Earth and Mars had been on the verge of war, the Belt had been a far horizon of tremendous mineral wealth beyond viable economic reach, and the outer... _Leviathan Wakes_ is not as literary as _Dervish_, but that’s some great hard SF. And it got beat by some fairy shit? Bleah. Don’t the fantasy people have their own convention? 2014: > **[Neptune's Brood (Excerpt) - Reactor](https://reactormag.com/neptunes-brood-excerpt/)** > > The year is AD 7000. The human species is extinct—for the fourth time—due to its fragile nature. Krina Alizond-114 is metahuman, descended from the robots that once served humanity. She's on a journey to the water-world of Shin-Tethys to find her... > **[Books: Book Reviews, Book News, and Author Interviews : NPR](https://www.npr.org/books/)** > > NPR's brings you news about books and authors along with our picks for great reads. Interviews, reviews, and much more. Leckie’s writing is very absorbing, but so is Stross’s. Close one! 2015: [https://us.macmillan.com/excerpt?isbn=9780765369345](https://us.macmillan.com/excerpt?isbn=9780765369345) > **[Skin Game by Jim Butcher: 9780451470041 | PenguinRandomHouse.com: Books](https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/309657/skin-game-by-jim-butcher/9780451470041/)** > > Chicago’s only professional wizard is about to have a very bad day in the latest novel in the #1 New York Times bestselling Dresden Files... As Winter Knight to the Queen of Air and Darkness,... Neither Anderson nor Butcher can touch Liu (I own that book BTW but haven’t finished it). 2016: > **[Neal Stephenson - Read the first 26 pages of Seveneves](https://www.nealstephenson.com/news/2015/04/13/seveneves-excerpt/)** > > The personal website of author Neal Stephenson, unless it's been hacked. _Seveneves_ \>\>\>\>\>\>\>\>\*The Fifth Season \* 2017: No white dudes nominated (Liu was the only man). That makes it easy. 2018 Scalzi beats Jemisin: > **[The Collapsing Empire: Prologue - Reactor](https://reactormag.com/excerpts-the-collapsing-empire-john-scalzi/)** > > Our universe is ruled by physics and faster than light travel is not possible—until the discovery of The Flow, an extra-dimensional field we can access at certain points in space-time that transport us to other worlds, around other stars. Lots of good stuff here, but the two 2014 nominees I excerpted are stronger than the others. Wendell, your request turned out to be an hours-consuming homework assignment—but a uniquely pleasurable one. Thanks! > [@Darren\_Garrison](#): > > Yes, I would, and did. (If not in this forum then in others.) Fair enough then! ---
**Author:** ![SlackerInc](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slackerinc/32/275_2.png) [@SlackerInc](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SlackerInc)\ **Post date:** [September 4, 2018, 7:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ok-so-how-is-n-k-jemisins-broken-earth-series/819951/26 "2018-09-04T07:19:45Z")
> [@Budget\_Player\_Cadet](#): > > You read what amounts to a few pages from the prologue of a book series with near-universal acclaim and did not like the writing style. From this, you are concluding that the support is factional, the writing is objectively bad, and she only won three Hugos because of people playing identity politics. “From this”? Why do you assume I haven’t been following this factionalism for years, predating any of Jemisin’s three wins? I had not read any of her prose until this week, but the political struggle over Worldcon has been on my radar for the better part of a decade. ---
**Author:** ![Budget\_Player\_Cadet](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/budget_player_cadet/32/205_2.png) [@Budget\_Player\_Cadet](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Budget_Player_Cadet)\ **Post date:** [September 4, 2018, 7:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ok-so-how-is-n-k-jemisins-broken-earth-series/819951/27 "2018-09-04T07:20:17Z")
Just to clarify - which of those books did you actually read? ---
**Author:** ![SlackerInc](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slackerinc/32/275_2.png) [@SlackerInc](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SlackerInc)\ **Post date:** [September 4, 2018, 8:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ok-so-how-is-n-k-jemisins-broken-earth-series/819951/28 "2018-09-04T08:04:31Z")
If you cannot detect wide disparities in merit from the first few pages, you are not much of a reader. There are two basic parameters I judge SF by: 1. Literary quality (as I would judge non-genre fiction like Doerr’s) 2. How interesting and original the premise and setting are, and how well they are fleshed out via world building. When #1 is weak, it is apparent within a few sentences at most. #2 should come into focus within a few paragraphs (if it doesn’t, that is itself a weakness). These are not random excerpts, but rather attempts by the author and publisher to put their best foot forward. If they seem good, the entire book could turn out to be less satisfying than their original promise seemed to suggest. But if they start out weak, abandon all hope: they are only likely to get worse. Not that I would stick around to find out! (Whereas the ones I highlighted with positivity, I have added all of them to my Wishlist.) ---
**Author:** ![SlackerInc](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slackerinc/32/275_2.png) [@SlackerInc](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SlackerInc)\ **Post date:** [September 4, 2018, 8:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ok-so-how-is-n-k-jemisins-broken-earth-series/819951/29 "2018-09-04T08:17:08Z")
Missed the edit window. Anyone want to insist, with a straight face, that all the WorldCon members who voted for Jemisin read everything nominated, cover to cover? How many of them even read every word of her entire trilogy? :dubious: ---
**Author:** ![Budget\_Player\_Cadet](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/budget_player_cadet/32/205_2.png) [@Budget\_Player\_Cadet](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Budget_Player_Cadet)\ **Post date:** [September 4, 2018, 8:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ok-so-how-is-n-k-jemisins-broken-earth-series/819951/30 "2018-09-04T08:18:59Z")
Ah, okay. So your position is basically, “these widely acclaimed, award-winning books I did not read are crap/substantially worse than their competitors, and I can tell based on short excerpts.” That’s a… _novel_ take. It’s like looking at the trailers for a movie and deciding ahead of time that it’s definitely going to be shit, then after the movie comes out to rave reviews, whining about affirmative action because the director isn’t a white guy. Say what you will about contrarian reviewers, most of them at least take the time to read/watch/play the piece they offer a bizarrely offbeat opinion on. They typically don’t just watch the trailer before deciding their score. So what is that “fairy crap”? 5/10? 3/10? How undeserving of a Hugo do you think this book _you never read_ is? ---
**Author:** ![SlackerInc](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slackerinc/32/275_2.png) [@SlackerInc](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SlackerInc)\ **Post date:** [September 4, 2018, 8:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ok-so-how-is-n-k-jemisins-broken-earth-series/819951/31 "2018-09-04T08:21:21Z")
Very. Same goes for GRR Martin, BTW. Get your own awards, fantasy writers! ETA: A trailer is generally not edited by the filmmaker. If I see the first few uninterrupted minutes of a movie, you bet I can tell which ones are bad right away. ---
**Author:** ![SlackerInc](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slackerinc/32/275_2.png) [@SlackerInc](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SlackerInc)\ **Post date:** [September 4, 2018, 8:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ok-so-how-is-n-k-jemisins-broken-earth-series/819951/32 "2018-09-04T08:38:10Z")
Tell you what, though: if you want to buy any or all of those winning books for me, I will suffer through them and report back in detail. 😃 ---
**Author:** ![Budget\_Player\_Cadet](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/budget_player_cadet/32/205_2.png) [@Budget\_Player\_Cadet](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Budget_Player_Cadet)\ **Post date:** [September 4, 2018, 8:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ok-so-how-is-n-k-jemisins-broken-earth-series/819951/33 "2018-09-04T08:40:00Z")
> [@SlackerInc](#): > > A trailer is generally not edited by the filmmaker. If I see the first few uninterrupted minutes of a movie, you bet I can tell which ones are bad right away. Okay, sure. But then you have lots of people who actually did read it who aren’t just saying “this is good”, they’re saying “this is amazing, game-changing, likely to be one of the most important literary works of the decade”. At that point your opinion is firmly in the minority even among snobby literature critics, except you don’t even have the claim of having read the book! You’re going off your prejudices from a short excerpt. Does any of this sound horribly arrogant to you? Even without getting into the politics of what you seem to think are affirmative action Hugos. ---
**Author:** ![Budget\_Player\_Cadet](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/budget_player_cadet/32/205_2.png) [@Budget\_Player\_Cadet](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Budget_Player_Cadet)\ **Post date:** [September 4, 2018, 8:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ok-so-how-is-n-k-jemisins-broken-earth-series/819951/34 "2018-09-04T08:43:26Z")
> [@SlackerInc](#): > > Missed the edit window. > > Anyone want to insist, with a straight face, that all the WorldCon members who voted for Jemisin read everything nominated, cover to cover? How many of them even read every word of her entire trilogy? :dubious: The WorldCon members weren’t saying that the other nominees were crap. ---
**Author:** ![SlackerInc](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slackerinc/32/275_2.png) [@SlackerInc](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SlackerInc)\ **Post date:** [September 4, 2018, 9:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ok-so-how-is-n-k-jemisins-broken-earth-series/819951/35 "2018-09-04T09:24:40Z")
You can tell what’s crap within the length of those excerpts. To differentiate between “very good” and “great” would absolutely require reading the whole thing (and why would I not want to?). So I can’t say, for instance, that 2014 awarded the wrong author. I have to reserve judgement. So actually, the two years right before Jemisin’s threepeat look fine. But the ones I did talk shit about? They have problems that were immediate and obvious. Let me ask you this: would the Pulitzer judges not agree about the problems with the ones I dragged? (They might also not love the hard SF novels that I liked mostly for premise/worldbuilding, admittedly; but at least that is achieving a purpose that is central to the genre.) Relatedly, do people really buy novels without reading the first few pages first? (Hmm…I think that question deserves its own thread, coming soon!) ---
**Author:** ![SlackerInc](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slackerinc/32/275_2.png) [@SlackerInc](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SlackerInc)\ **Post date:** [September 4, 2018, 9:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ok-so-how-is-n-k-jemisins-broken-earth-series/819951/36 "2018-09-04T09:33:51Z")
> [@Budget\_Player\_Cadet](#): > > Okay, sure. But then you have lots of people who actually did read it who aren’t just saying “this is good”, they’re saying “this is amazing, game-changing, likely to be one of the most important literary works of the decade”. At that point your opinion is firmly in the minority even among snobby literature critics, except you don’t even have the claim of having read the book! You’re going off your prejudices from a short excerpt. > > Does any of this sound horribly arrogant to you? Even without getting into the politics of what you seem to think are affirmative action Hugos. It’s easy to cite examples that have nothing to do with the affirmative action issue. The one that comes to mind most easily is _Tree of Life_. What a ridiculous joke that movie is. Incredibly overrated. And I did not watch the whole thing, but am confident in that proclamation. Is it arrogant? I suppose. There are worse things. ETA: I created that new thread inspired by this one, about whether people buy novels without auditioning them first: [https://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=861603](https://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=861603) ---
**Author:** ![Alessan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alessan/32/465_2.png) [@Alessan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alessan)\ **Post date:** [September 4, 2018, 10:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ok-so-how-is-n-k-jemisins-broken-earth-series/819951/37 "2018-09-04T10:10:39Z")
> [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](#): > > I’m glad the bookshelf has room for both. Her approach to violence is one reason why I think of Jemisin as Le Guin’s successor. I haven’t read the books yet, but it seems to me that one major difference between Jemisin and Le Guin is that the latter didn’t try to hide her gender behind initials. ---
**Author:** ![Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/left_hand_of_dorkness/32/7156_2.png) [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)\ **Post date:** [September 4, 2018, 10:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ok-so-how-is-n-k-jemisins-broken-earth-series/819951/38 "2018-09-04T10:47:55Z")
> [@Alessan](#): > > I haven’t read the books yet, but it seems to me that one major difference between Jemisin and Le Guin is that the latter didn’t try to hide her gender behind initials. “Major difference?” Okay. As for the SlackerInc show, I think I know the plot well enough to be totally uninterested; I only wish everyone else remembered the last episode as well, and were willing to change the channel. ---
**Author:** ![Budget\_Player\_Cadet](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/budget_player_cadet/32/205_2.png) [@Budget\_Player\_Cadet](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Budget_Player_Cadet)\ **Post date:** [September 4, 2018, 10:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ok-so-how-is-n-k-jemisins-broken-earth-series/819951/39 "2018-09-04T10:55:38Z")
Dreadfully sorry, I think I’ve said my piece. ---
**Author:** ![Alessan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alessan/32/465_2.png) [@Alessan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alessan)\ **Post date:** [September 4, 2018, 11:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ok-so-how-is-n-k-jemisins-broken-earth-series/819951/40 "2018-09-04T11:33:24Z")
> [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](#): > > “Major difference?” Okay. I’m exaggerating, of course; it’s just a pet peeve of mine. My issue is mostly with the publishers who insist on it rather than the actual authors, anyway. That said, thanks for the recommendation. I’ve definitely put her on my list. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ok-so-how-is-n-k-jemisins-broken-earth-series/819951.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ok-so-how-is-n-k-jemisins-broken-earth-series/819951.md?page=3)