Zana’s Reviews > The Obelisk Gate > Status Update

‘”...They’ll never have the precision to be more than rock-pushers.” Alabaster’s voice is thick with contempt.

“Innon was a rock-pusher,” you snap.

A muscle flexes in his jaw, and he pauses for a moment. “So maybe it’s a good thing that you’re teaching them how to push rocks safely, even if you aren’t doing it kindly.”’

I'm not even a rock pusher but I feel personally attacked 🪨

‘“Alabaster said the Moon was flung away.”

“Into a degrading long-ellipsis orbit.” When you stare blankly, she speaks your language again. “It’s coming back.”

Oh, Earth. Oh, rust. Oh, no. “You want me to catch the fucking Moon?”’

I'm crying

“So I ran to the hole and jumped in. It’s not suicide if you don’t mean to die; that’s what I told myself.”

👁️👄👁️

‘“She’d told me already that she took me from Meov because they couldn’t risk me being killed. So there, at Corepoint’s heart, she told me, ‘This is why I saved you. This is the enemy you face. You are the only one who can.’”’

He's The One™️!!

‘“I fought Antimony all the way down,” Alabaster says. “It was stupid. If she’d lost her grip on me, if her concentration had faltered for an instant, I would have become part of the stone. Not even crushed, just… mixed in.”’

👁️👄👁️

‘He looks at her, and for the first time in what feels like forever, he smiles at her the way he used to. The way a father should smile at his daughter. “They can cure you, Nassun. That’s what the stories say.”’

Orogene conversion camp?

‘He starts to shake his head, winces as this causes him pain somewhere, sighs instead. “They called it magic.”’

Bitch I said it first

“There is such a thing as too much loss. Too much has been taken from you both—taken and taken and taken, until there’s nothing left but hope, and you’ve given that up because it hurts too much. Until you would rather die, or kill, or avoid attachments altogether, than lose one more thing.”

Damn that's deep

“...Between the gelidity, moving, too, but in a slower and less organic way, you suddenly sess the same thing you found in the stone of him. Something else, neither flesh nor stone. Something immaterial, and yet it is there for you to perceive. It glimmers in threads strung between the bits of him, crossing itself in lattices, shifting constantly. A… tension? An energy, shiny and streaming.”

Oooh magic

‘“Anyway, I told you how the obelisks followed you to Tirimo. Where you go, they go. That makes them satellites to your primary.”

You shudder, not liking the thought that comes into your head—of thin, invisible tethers anchoring you to the amethyst, the nearer topaz, and now the distant onyx whose dark presence is growing in your mind....’

👁️👄👁️