The novel “The Obelisk Gate” by N. K. Jemisin was published for the first time in 2016. It’s the second book in The Broken Earth trilogy and follows “The Fifth Season”. It won the Hugo Award as the best novel of the year.

In the underground city of Castrima, Essun and Alabaster can live even though their orogenic nature is known. That can happen thanks to the influence of community leader Ykka and because the strange mechanisms that run all the city’s systems only work in the presence of orogenes. However, Alabaster is slowly turning into stone and knows he doesn’t have much left to live, so he tries to teach Essun not only more about orogenes but obelisks as well. Essun is perplexed when Alabaster tells her about an object he calls Moon.

After Jija killed his son because he found out that he’s an orogene, he fled taking his daughter Nassun with him. He understood that she too is an orogene but didn’t have the courage to kill her too. There are rumors that in the south there’s a place where it’s possible to eliminate orogeny from a person, and Jija intends to bring Nassun there.