The Stone Sky

Nassun is the second protagonist of the story. The daughter of Essun, she is a precocious orogene who is capable of intuiting complex orogenic and magical processes, such as how to use the obelisks. Like Essun, she is the product of her traumatic experiences—which include the cruel training methods Essun learned from her own oppression and subjected Nassun to from a very young age—and her society’s anti-orogene ideology. Her understanding of the world is justifiably pessimistic and hopeless. All she wants is a simple life surrounded by people who love her for who she is, and she has been denied this at every turn.

Despite her young age, Nassun does not follow the typical coming-of-age arc that employs a loss of innocence to spur personal growth. Because she is an orogene, she was never allowed to be innocent; rather, she was forced to grow up almost immediately by her mother. This leads to problems that manifest throughout The Stone Sky, starting with her susceptibility to manipulation. While Nassun can take care of herself and has the world-weariness of someone four or five times her age, she is still a child in many respects. Steel takes advantage of this by using anger and feelings of futility to get her to do his bidding. Nassun immediately recognizes that he is untrustworthy, but she is so desperate for a purpose that she goes along with him anyway.

Nassun also exists in a parental triangle with Essun and Schaffa and means different things to each of them. For Essun, Nassun is the reason to keep fighting: She gives her purpose in a world largely devoid of meaning. However, Essun does not realize the degree to which her treatment of Nassun before they were separated has alienated Nassun, and their reunion—three books in the making, from Essun’s perspective—is anticlimactic because Nassun has replaced her as a parental figure with Schaffa, whom she fears is dying. Schaffa’s relationship with Nassun is no less complicated, as what draws him to her is that she reminds him of Damaya (Essun as a child), and he sees her as his Redemption. Yet, none of this matters to Nassun, because he is the only person who has loved her unconditionally—or at least, loved her in a way that she feels and recognizes.

Like her mother, Nassun illustrates the interconnection between Empire, Climate Catastrophe, and Systemic Oppression and The Importance of Family and Community. The systemic prejudices against orogenes have denied Nassun family and community her whole life. Her mother tries to protect her by teaching her to hide; her father can only love her when he believes she can be “cured” of her innate power. Both of them act out on their daughter the belief programmed into them by society that orogenes cannot be accepted into society. Isolation makes orogenes vulnerable to exploitation, which is both what enabled the Stillness to enslave orogenes for their own ends for centuries and what makes it possible for Steel to manipulate Nassun into doing what he wants. Yet, in the end, it is family that saves Nassun. Recognizing her mother’s love for her and honoring her own love for Schaffa, she chooses hope for change over the apocalypse.

Schaffa is a former Guardian who became “contaminated” after making a deal with Father Earth to prevent him from drowning. This process erased parts of his memory and made him an agent of Father Earth, who now controls him through his corestone. In the past, Schaffa was Essun’s Guardian, responsible for much of the trauma she experienced as a child. However, toward the end of The Obelisk Gate, Schaffa begins to resist Father Earth and make decisions for himself, which causes him great physical pain. This means that for the first time in the series, Schaffa is acting completely on his own accord. This manifests in actions such as no longer siphoning magic from Nassun, allowing the children of Found Moon to go free when they are all forced to leave, and killing his fellow Guardians Nida and Umber when they attempt to kill Nassun. This ties into the novel’s broader themes about agency and is central to the redemption arc that Schaffa completes in The Stone Sky.

Schaffa’s primary source of Redemption—despite his history of violence and abuse—is his relationship with Nassun. While The Obelisk Gate left some ambiguity surrounding Schaffa’s motivations and intentions, The Stone Sky quickly quells the idea that he wants anything beyond helping Nassun get what she wants. He takes care of her but also gives her the space to develop into the powerful orogene she is becoming. He does his best to answer all of her questions about Guardians, the Fulcrum, and the history of the Stillness—and in this way, he also serves as a vehicle for Jemisin to provide even more worldbuilding and backstory. Over the course of the novel, Nassun comes to see him not as her Guardian, but as her father and forms a bond so strong she is willing to completely change her plans if it means he can survive. His care and love for Essun’s daughter not only help him atone for the harm he did to her but also help heal some of the harm Essun did when she reenacted Schaffa’s cruel training methods on Nassun. Schaffa demonstrates that to dismantle Systems of Oppression and Autonomy, the people who were complicit in perpetuating them must confront the harm they have done and work to undo it.