The Obelisk Gate

Of the six finalists for this year's Hugo Award for Best Novel, N.K. Jemisin's The Obelisk Gate was my least anticipated. I'm in the dramatic minority here, as the first novel in this series, The Fifth Season, received near unanimous praise and walked away with the Hugo in a decisive win. I was less sanguine about that initial novel's pessimism and relentless misery, which mostly served to distance me from the narrative rather than suck me in. There were some interesting revelations and solid worldbuilding in that initial volume, but on the whole, it didn't feel like much progress had been made in the overall arc. Such things happen in the first volume of a series, I guess, but that didn't exactly inspire confidence that the second book in the trilogy would fare better.

Spoiler: My lack of confidence was warranted. Full review linked below.