Took a while to get here but the ending is absolutely, devastatingly, beautiful. Just the right amount of bitter to sweet, managed to both subvert and satisfy my expectations for the moon.

Some neat worldbuilding for the pre-Shattering civilisation too. I've always thought of life magic as elves singing trees into houses but the commitment to making everything from buses to beds out of genetically modified lifeforms in order that they can run on life magic is as impressive as it is unnerving. And Father Earth saying hi manages to feel like both a holy experience and finding out there was a monster under the bed the whole time.

Three books with Essun and I will don't have words for the emotional truth and depth to her. Such a sweet ache. I don't even want kids but if I did, I hope I'd love them half as ruinously as her. And be half as relentless in their protection. Everything she gave up in that final confrontation, and her reaction to it, and the line about her and the moon! I feel like I've become a more generous person just being lucky enough to witness her. Hoa chose right.