Part of being a good writer is being a good reader… or at very least a prolific reader. Ideally in my chosen genre, of course, but really anything I read helps me better understand what makes certain stories “work,” and what about them doesn’t work.
With this in mind, I do my best to read every John Scalzi that is released (I haven’t quite managed it… I think I’ve only read 2 of the “Old Man’s War” series, and they were great but I know there are a lot more of them out there), and I recently started reading N.K. Jemisin.
Gosh, she’s amazing. I just finished the second book in the “Broken Earth” trilogy, titled The Obelisk Gate, and wow. Just wow. What a writer! It won the Hugo in 2017 (on the heels of the first novel, The Fifth Season winning in 2016), and yeah. Such a brilliant writer!
It’s amazing to me that such writers exist. She is so talented that I don’t think I’ll ever write anything anywhere near as good. She’s like a Terry Pratchett… talented enough to be fundamentally otherworldly.
Can’t wait to finish the trilogy! I’ve been reading them at my day-job (and encouraged an enormous amount to read that Jemisin herself wrote while also balancing a day-job) over my lunch breaks… reading her novels in 25 minute chunks is challenging, but only because I never want to put the book down!
Anyway. If you have any interest whatsoever in touching, brilliant, and living speculative fiction, I can’t recommend the series highly enough. No idea if it finishes on as high a note as it started and continued on, but I’d be surprised if it isn’t at least good, and possibly sublime.
Hope everyone out there is staying safe and healthy!