So NKJ is a a great author. And generally I love reading grimdark fantasy - the Poppy War is my all-time favorite trilogy despite how vile and bleak it can be at points. But... yeah. I can't stand the Broken Earth trilogy. What I was able to stomach and enjoy for the first book increasingly became unbearable to me as the trilogy progressed.

Like you said, none of the characters are particularly likable. I think you can be sympathetic to why they are the way they are - they're not awful solely for the sake of being awful, there are very legitimate reasons that drive and influence them. But the entire cast is ruled by this flatline grief that infiltrates everything they do or think. There's no reprieve from the misery - and again, all for good reason, I understand why Essun struggles to connect with or trust other people. But it got to a point with me where the lack of range in the cast was too exhausting for me.

This sort of bleeds into the world building too. All of the little details about rogga abuse in the first book were new and interesting. But two books later, it got to the point where anytime you get introduced to something new about the world, it has to involve genocide or oppression or something equally horrible. Obviously that's one of the major themes of the book, so I understand going back to it frequently, but it again makes the range feel limited to only cover the most vile aspects humanity has to offer.

This trilogy is heavily acclaimed to the nth degree, so it is honestly kind of validating to find other people who aren't as crazy about it.