Ori Rosenstein

I got into these books because some critic compared it to the Dune books. I might not have read them they didn't make the comparison, but, for my money, it is undeserved. The first book is nice and well paced, doing a lot of worldbuilding without a lot of exposition. The twists and turns are quite predictable. In the second book not much happens, when you really boil it down. The third is a slog, most of which with characters I don't actually care about. That's the worst thing about this trilogy. I don't care about any of the protagonists and I outright dislike some of them. Schaffa's redemption is tedious and makes him very one dimensional. Nassun is a brat, and I don't care how justified the book makes it out to be. And Essun (no spoilers). She's fine, but none of her struggles feel like a struggle. Whenever she faces an obstacle, she either magically and without any justification suddenly knows what to do about it, or someone magically and unjustifiably rescues her. That is the reason all the tension was sucked out of book 2, and why I don't really care about her tribulations in book 3. A word about the comparison to Dune now: it stemmed from the environmentalist perspective. But Dune discusses alternative, and plausible ecosystems, while Broken Earth admits the ecosystem in it is not survivable without magic. As for world building: The Butlerian Jihad and the subsequent abolishment of machines for human substitutes is infinitely more interesting and relevant than the Shattering, which is not plausible at all, and the implied accusation, that if people could, they would destroy the world is as old as it is unjustified - we actually could do it for the past century, and didn't. I'm not saying we won't, but then writing warning books about it is just, well, irrelevant.

I got into these books because some critic compared it to the Dune books. I might not have read them they didn't make the comparison, but, for my money, it is undeserved. The first book is nice and well paced, doing a lot of worldbuilding without a lot of exposition. The twists and turns are quite predictable. In the second book not much happens, when you really boil it down. The third is a slog, most of which with characters I don't actually care about. That's the worst thing about this trilogy. I don't care about any of the protagonists and I outright dislike some of them. Schaffa's redemption is tedious and makes him very one dimensional. Nassun is a brat, and I don't care how justified the book makes it out to be. And Essun (no spoilers). She's fine, but none of her struggles feel like a struggle. Whenever she faces an obstacle, she either magically and without any justification suddenly knows what to do about it, or someone magically and unjustifiably rescues her. That is the reason all the tension was sucked out of book 2, and why I don't really care about her tribulations in book 3. A word about the comparison to Dune now: it stemmed from the environmentalist perspective. But Dune discusses alternative, and plausible ecosystems, while Broken Earth admits the ecosystem in it is not survivable without magic. As for world building: The Butlerian Jihad and the subsequent abolishment of machines for human substitutes is infinitely more interesting and relevant than the Shattering, which is not plausible at all, and the implied accusation, that if people could, they would destroy the world is as old as it is unjustified - we actually could do it for the past century, and didn't. I'm not saying we won't, but then writing warning books about it is just, well, irrelevant.

I got into these books because some critic compared it to the Dune books. I might not have read them they didn't make the comparison, but, for my money, it is undeserved. The first book is nice and well paced, doing a lot of worldbuilding without a lot of exposition. The twists and turns are quite predictable. In the second book not much happens, when you really boil it down. The third is a slog, most of which with characters I don't actually care about. That's the worst thing about this trilogy. I don't care about any of the protagonists and I outright dislike some of them. Schaffa's redemption is tedious and makes him very one dimensional. Nassun is a brat, and I don't care how justified the book makes it out to be. And Essun (no spoilers). She's fine, but none of her struggles feel like a struggle. Whenever she faces an obstacle, she either magically and without any justification suddenly knows what to do about it, or someone magically and unjustifiably rescues her. That is the reason all the tension was sucked out of book 2, and why I don't really care about her tribulations in book 3. A word about the comparison to Dune now: it stemmed from the environmentalist perspective. But Dune discusses alternative, and plausible ecosystems, while Broken Earth admits the ecosystem in it is not survivable without magic. As for world building: The Butlerian Jihad and the subsequent abolishment of machines for human substitutes is infinitely more interesting and relevant than the Shattering, which is not plausible at all, and the implied accusation, that if people could, they would destroy the world is as old as it is unjustified - we actually could do it for the past century, and didn't. I'm not saying we won't, but then writing warning books about it is just, well, irrelevant.