The Broken Heavens is the third novel in the Worldbreaker Saga by Kameron Hurley.
Finished on: 10.12.2024
[Here are my reviews of the other two books in the series.]

Content Note: genocide

Plot:
Kirana, leader of the Tai Kao, has almost finished saving her people, leaving the Dhai people in shambles. What is still needed is to close the way between the worlds, to stop other invaders. Lilia, too, is desperate to close the way. The temples seem to be the answer to achieving that, but nobody really knows how to work them anymore.

The Broken Heavens is an ambitious conclusion to an ambitious series that partly works extremely well and partly seems to be lacking something.

I finished the book and the series a while ago, but am only just getting around to writing the review. In the half year since, a lot of the details of the ending have become hazy. But the overall feeling that I get when I remember the book (and the series in general) is that it was a bit of a chore. That is not per se a bad thing – I do like the occasional book that feels like work, and the Worldbreaker Saga does ask a lot of the readers which I find fun and challenging.

But I am not exactly sure that the work really pays off. I am still in awe of the world-building and the sheer scope of the universe Hurley created here. There is so much that we have never really seen before in fantasy novels [shout out to the living temples], and I liked that a lot. It is impressive for sure. And the resolution to the story and the overarching problem was mostly satisfying and very in tune with what was established thus far. Yet, some story threads got shortchanged or even lost along the way, I think – not surprising with the giant story Hurley built.

There are memorable characters, although I did struggle to keep some of them apart until the end. There are just so many of them, and some names are rather similar, too. More importantly, though, I loved the matter of fact queerness and differing concepts of gender and sexuality that the series presents.

Maybe the series would have needed even more space, more books to be completed. But I honestly wouldn’t have read much more of the series as is. While I appreciated a lot of it intellectually, emotionally I didn’t connect that much with it. And this last part of the trilogy underscored that.

Summarizing: not always successful, but I do appreciate the ambition here.