"The Fifth Season" by N.K. Jemisin

I’m a horrible blogger. Several times this past year, I thought I should just quit this. But I keep being drawn back. So, I’m going to do a little catching up and see how well I remember some of the books I read much earlier this year. Stay tuned. Today, however, I’m just going to write about one.

I’ve been singing the praises of The Fifth Season all year even though I’m late to the party: It was published in 2015, and Jemisin is well-known as a gifted writer in the sci-fi and fantasy world. Since then, she has come out with the next two books in The Broken Earth trilogy and has won the Hugo Award three years running. No author has ever done that, let alone a black, female author. Back in 2015 she was the first African-American to win the Hugo for Best Novel. Actually, this year’s Hugos were dominated by women as female authors won in all the major categories. This is important. I’ve been noticing odd twitter posts lately about how women really don’t play video games or aren’t Dungeon masters, and female geeks and nerds—including Jemisin--are getting a bit pissed off. Here’s a quote from an article on Jemisin in The Guardian: 

On making it a hat-trick with The Stone Sky, the third book in her Broken Earth series, Jemisin said: “As this genre finally, however grudgingly, acknowledges that the dreams of the marginalised matter, and that all of us have a future, so will the world.”

The world of The Fifth Season is much like ours and yet, it is not. [I have not yet read the next two books in the series. I’m not entirely sure that I will. I might not want to know what happens to the characters I’ve kind of fallen in love with. I foresee bad things before the possible world-ending conclusion (to paraphrase Hermione, “We could be killed. Or worse, expelled!”).] In this trilogy, the world is populated with some normal people, just like you and me, and people born with certain skills; let’s call them earth-moving abilities. Because the land is visited by cataclysmic earth-shattering events every few years, these earth-movers are rather important. They can quash earthquakes, but also create them. They can move rock, but may also become rock. They are extraordinary, but bred and held captive to keep the land from destroying its inhabitants. They are superheroes but treated as slaves

Jemisin takes on a lot of weighty matters, no pun intended. But like the best of authors, she weaves these concerns seamlessly into the story. Her prose is lovely and heartfelt. You will be wrapped up in the story and the characters’ struggles. Later you’ll have time to reflect on what you read.

It’s interesting that the subject headings for the book are “end of the world” and “mothers and daughters.” I find the juxtaposition of those two headings rather funny. (“Mom, you’re ruining everything!”) Part of the book does involve our heroine Essun searching for her daughter, but I think the conflict between them is to come in the next two books. This book has a bit of a love story, too, as well as countless tragedies and hardship. Yet, you can’t help but enjoy it. I read it nine months ago and I still think about certain scenes. If you like science fiction, I think you’ll enjoy it. One word of warning… stick with it. It can be a bit confusing in the beginning, but when the worlds of certain people come together, you’ll understand what you were reading at the start.