The Fifth Season, by N. K. Jemisin
I love reading all types of books from pretty much every genre, but nothing gets me binge-reading quite like fantasy and science fiction. I plowed through this creative Hugo Award winner! I've said before that my standards for originality in sci fi are pretty high, and The Fifth Season is nothing if not original. We are on Earth, that much is pretty clear, but far, far into the future, when the continents have fused into one enormous landmass, and violent tectonic activity is common. The title refers to the false winters the world is thrown into every now and then by huge earthquakes or volcanic eruptions: a fifth season in which food won't grow, normally docile animals turn carnivorous, and humans must do everything they can to stay alive. As I do with most sci fi, I loved being thrust into the middle of this world and figuring out its history and culture as I read.
In this geologically unstable time, there is a class of people with specialized abilities that tie them to the earth, allowing them to sooth earthquakes and volcanoes, saving lives every day. They can also cause these disasters, and as such are shunned as a dangerous and lesser breed of people, despite the fact that orogeny (this ability) is not strictly hereditary, and can crop up in anyone. Ostracism, fear, anger, love: these are common human themes and the strangeness of these people's environment allows us to examine them anew.
The format of the book is also unique. It's split into three parts of alternating chapters. One is written in the second person, "you" being a woman in her forties who has recently lost both her children and is facing the start of a Fifth Season. One is written in the present tense but takes place in the past, the main character being an adolescent girl from a backwater who is discovered to be an orogene. The third is indeterminately placed in the timeline; the focus is a young woman, an orogene of some power who is saddled with a very powerful male orogene she really doesn't care for. Through these three settings and characters, we learn about this far-future Earth and what it has endured and are given clues as to why it's in such bad shape and where these orogenes come from, but no answers are provided yet. This is a series, after all, so the author must keep us guessing.
The writing is good but prone to cliche on occasion, which is especially jarring given the different vocabulary and syntax of the characters. I'm curious to see whether Jemisin's second book in this series has less of this problem.
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In this geologically unstable time, there is a class of people with specialized abilities that tie them to the earth, allowing them to sooth earthquakes and volcanoes, saving lives every day. They can also cause these disasters, and as such are shunned as a dangerous and lesser breed of people, despite the fact that orogeny (this ability) is not strictly hereditary, and can crop up in anyone. Ostracism, fear, anger, love: these are common human themes and the strangeness of these people's environment allows us to examine them anew.
The format of the book is also unique. It's split into three parts of alternating chapters. One is written in the second person, "you" being a woman in her forties who has recently lost both her children and is facing the start of a Fifth Season. One is written in the present tense but takes place in the past, the main character being an adolescent girl from a backwater who is discovered to be an orogene. The third is indeterminately placed in the timeline; the focus is a young woman, an orogene of some power who is saddled with a very powerful male orogene she really doesn't care for. Through these three settings and characters, we learn about this far-future Earth and what it has endured and are given clues as to why it's in such bad shape and where these orogenes come from, but no answers are provided yet. This is a series, after all, so the author must keep us guessing.
The writing is good but prone to cliche on occasion, which is especially jarring given the different vocabulary and syntax of the characters. I'm curious to see whether Jemisin's second book in this series has less of this problem.
Shop local!
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