The Obelisk Gate (The Broken Earth, #2)

by N.K. Jemisin

After all, a person is herself, and others. Relationships chisel the final shape of one’s being. I am me, and you.

setting her teeth in the earth and dragging every iota of life and heat and movement out of the whole comm until it is a gleaming frosted confection of ice-slivered slate walls and still, solid bodies.

In love, then, we shall seek understanding.

(The obelisks are conduits. You flow through them, flow with them, as the magic flows. Resist and die, but resonate finely enough and many things become possible.)

“You can’t convince anyone of anything—” Let alone people whose hate can’t be reasoned with.

Magic derives from life—that which is alive, or was alive, or even that which was alive so many ages ago that it has turned into something else.

A web of silver threads interlacing the land, permeating rock and even the magma just underneath, strung like jewels between forests and fossilized corals and pools of oil. Carried through the air on the webs of leaping spiderlings. Threads in the clouds, though thin, strung between microscopic living things in water droplets. Threads as high as your perception can reach, brushing against the very stars.

Steel’s words fall into her like a stone into water, and she does not ripple in their wake.