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300 pages, Hardcover
First published August 4, 2015
“Let's start with the end of the world, why don’t we?”
“Orogeny is damned useful, Syenite is beginning to understand, for far, far more than just quelling shakes.”
“Home is what you take with you, not what you leave behind.”
“This is what you must remember: the ending of one story is just the beginning of another.”
—for all those who have to fight for the respect others are given without question.
“For all those that have to fight for the respect that everyone else is given without question.”
These people killed Uche. Their hate, their fear, their unprovoked violence. They.
(He.)
Killed your son.
(Jija killed your son.)
But the world is not permanent, and millenia of wrongs do not make a right simply by the sheer force of habit. The earth moves slowly. After all, the continental drift is imperceptible, yet the built-up pressure sometimes may just lead to the devastating shattering. And in that shattering, in the end of the world, who can tell the right from wrong? And does it even matter?
“Let’s start with the end of the world, why don’t we? Get it over with and move on to more interesting things.”
“There passes a time of happiness in your life, which I will not describe to you. It is unimportant. Perhaps you think it wrong that I dwell so much on the horrors, the pain, but pain is what shapes us, after all. We are creatures born of heat and pressure and grinding, ceaseless movement. To be still is to be… not alive.
But what is important is that you know it was not all terrible. There was peace in long stretches, between each crisis. A chance to cool and solidify before the grind resumed.”
“We aren't human.”
“Yes. We. Are.” His voice turns fierce. "I don't give a shit what the something-somethingth council of big important farts decreed, or how the geomests classify things, or any of that. That we're not human is just the lie they tell themselves so they don't have to feel bad about how they treat us.”
“She will pay no attention to the world that is ending outside. The world has already ended within her, and neither ending is for the first time. She's old hat at this by now.”
“This is what you must remember: the ending of one story is just the beginning of another. This has happened before, after all. People die. Old orders pass. New societies are born. When we say “the world has ended,” it’s usually a lie, because the planet is just fine.
But this is the way the world ends.
This is the way the world ends.
This is the way the world ends.
For the last time.”
LET’S START WITH THE END of the world, why don’t we? Get it over with and
move on to more interesting things.
(Friends do not exist. The fulcrum is not a school. Grits are not children. Orogenes are not people. Weapons have no need of friends.)
"Perhaps you think it wrong that I dwell so much on the horrors, the pain, but pain is what shapes us, after all. We are creatures born of heat and pressure and grinding, ceaseless movement. To be still is to be... not alive."
"But this is the way the world ends.
This is the way the world ends.
This is the way the world ends.
For the last time."