The Fifth Season

by N. K. Jemisin ★★★★☆

I'm late to the game on The Fifth Season, but perhaps this is the way one should read sci-fi/fantasy, especially when it's written as a trilogy (or more). The "Broken Earth Trilogy" was completed back in 2017; The Fifth Season won the 2016 Hugo Award, and then both the 2nd and 3rd book in the trilogy also won the Hugo in subsequent years, so we have a) a complete series and b) all three books are the best science fiction or fantasy written in the respective years they came out. It's about as close to a can't-miss as you can get, right?

Well, actually...yes! The Fifth Season is interesting, unique, and well worth your time to read.

The novel opens with a cataclysmic world event that wreaks havoc on "The Stillness", the fantastical land in which the story takes place. We come to learn that these disasters usher in a "Season", which could be anything from the "Choking Season" (five years without sunlight and plagued by clouds of ash) to the "Acid Season" (seven years of an acidified jet stream). Most seasons are triggered by some type of tectonic or seismic activity, and each time such an event happens, the world suffers for an extended period of time.

The story follows three women -- a middle-aged mother, Essun; a young woman, Syenite; and a young girl, Damaya. All are gifted orogenes, a subset of the population that can tap into the earth and manipulate its energy to work a type of natural magic. All are also in the midst of circumstances that are varying degrees of tragic. At the novel's opening, Essun has just discovered her three-year-old son has been murdered by her husband after her son's own orogenic powers manifested. Syenite, a mid-level orogene, is assigned to solve a fairly straightforward issue for a coastal town, but as part of that assignment, she is ordered to procreate with a powerful male orogene with whom she's traveling. Damaya is locked away by her parents in a frigid barn when her orogenic powers became apparent, only to be sold to a "Guardian", who exerts an iron-fisted control over her and her powers, leaving her under constant threat of pain or even death. This is not a happy book.

There are multiple conflicts, but they ultimately center around a burgeoning power struggle between the ruling class of Guardians -- who use their own special powers to negate orogenes' connection with the earth and keep them in a position of subservience -- and the orogenes, who are the most powerful and feared people in the land, but have settled into their societally mandated position of submissiveness...for now. There is the opening seismic event that you know is going to eventually bring consequences and create some type of unlivable condition across the land. And there are strange floating obelisks in the sky that we are warned early on in the book will play a role.

This is the type of fantasy novel where all the characters understand what's going on, and so very little explanation is directly provided to the reader. It all becomes clear eventually, but it takes some concentration to follow the story until some of the framework and terminology becomes more evident. It's creative and different, and while it's quite harsh at moments (look no further than the opening situations I documented), the grittiness stops short of becoming gratuitous or without purpose. This is a 5-star effort in many ways; I didn't enjoy reading it as much as some other books this year -- hence the 4 stars -- but I'm appreciative of Jemisin's craft in creating her unique world, magic system, and cast of characters. I'm not rushing to read the remaining books in the trilogy, but I will read them. The Fifth Season is an impressive beginning, and given that strong start and the trilogy's sweep of the Hugos, this is a series that all fantasy-lovers should find time to read.