Fifth Season (2015, Little, Brown Book Group Limited)
English language
Published Aug. 25, 2015 by Little, Brown Book Group Limited.
A SEASON OF ENDINGS HAS BEGUN.
IT STARTS WITH THE GREAT RED RIFT across the heart of the world's sole continent, spewing ash that blots out the sun.
IT STARTS WITH DEATH, with a murdered son and a missing daughter.
IT STARTS WITH BETRAYAL and long-dormant wounds rising up to fester.
This is the Stillness, a land familiar with catastrophe, where the power of the earth is wielded as a weapon. And where there is no mercy.
This description comes from the publisher.
The broken earth has a lot of appealing elements (sorry) with narrative experiments going on at different scales. Some worked better than others for me, none were total flubs. The power dynamics between characters are fairly well balanced, but sometimes the characters felt a little too imaginary to me.
Wow, a fantastically-informed world and engrossing story of strong women. Update 2024: still outstanding, complex and revealing narrative on oppression and community and power.
Buenisimo. Excelente historia y el mundo en el que se desarrolla. Los personajes, la forma de contar la historia, todo. De lo mejor que he leído últimamente.
Warning: Extremely Vague Spoilers
It’s clear to see why The Fifth Season won a Hugo award and became immensely popular. Jemisin is an amazing world-builder and extremely good at plotting. She knows exactly at what pace to reveal the mysteries of her world to make her readers desperate to find out what happens next. The culture and history of her world are shaped by the titular “fifth seasons” years-long periods of environmental disasters, which is a great concept, and her orogenes are a really cool half-magic, half-science twist on typical elemental magics. She also manages to do something that was once thought impossible: create fantasy-cursing that sounds both thematic and natural.
Jemisin wants to do more than just write an exciting book though, she has a message, a two-fold one at that. She’s clearly both inspired by climate disasters in our world, as well as (racial) oppression. I say racial, …
Warning: Extremely Vague Spoilers
It’s clear to see why The Fifth Season won a Hugo award and became immensely popular. Jemisin is an amazing world-builder and extremely good at plotting. She knows exactly at what pace to reveal the mysteries of her world to make her readers desperate to find out what happens next. The culture and history of her world are shaped by the titular “fifth seasons” years-long periods of environmental disasters, which is a great concept, and her orogenes are a really cool half-magic, half-science twist on typical elemental magics. She also manages to do something that was once thought impossible: create fantasy-cursing that sounds both thematic and natural.
Jemisin wants to do more than just write an exciting book though, she has a message, a two-fold one at that. She’s clearly both inspired by climate disasters in our world, as well as (racial) oppression. I say racial, because while the orogenes aren’t a one-on-one for an actual real-life group, there’s hints (like the slightly-on-the-nose slur for them being “rogga”) that she was inspired by the oppression of Black people. There’s nothing wrong with that, in fact, I’m always happy when an SFF author sees the potential in their fictional world to dissect and analyze our real world. I think especially fantasy is deeply underutilized in that respect. However, I am disappointed in how she went about it. While I’m fully aware how white and arrogant this sounds; I think she could’ve done better.
A review on Goodreads, by Nick Imrie, really put it better than I could “…I can't help but feel that the rape, torture, slavery and abuse are all set-dressing, while the real visceral oppression is here in the social snubs, slights and slurs. In the world of The Fifth Season rape is quotidien but being called rogga is unforgivable.”
Harsh, but I think she really managed to identify what bothered me so much about her treatment of oppression in this book. It seems like the most visceral feeling moments of cruelty and bigotry are the ones she’s actually likely to have experienced herself, rather than the ones that are actually the worst.
The orogene characters in this book do terrible things, they kill people accidentally and on purpose, allies and enemies, sometimes one, sometimes many. The guilt they experience over this is minimal, and often they halfway justify it by making the argument that the people they killed all contributed to the oppressive system under which orogenes are forced to live (which, admittedly, is truly horrific). Jemisin seems to agree. I get the sense that we’re supposed to see this world as irredeemable because of the bigotry and cruelty of its inhabitants. And I understand that part of the genre conventions of these types of books is that Life is Cheap, but if you’re trying to make a point about oppression, it’s hard for me take it both ways. I can’t both sympathize with a character’s anger over being called a slur, ignore their comparative stoicism over being cast out from their family, and then excuse them semi-accidentally on purpose wiping out an entire village. The actions in this book aren’t afforded their proper emotional weight, in my opinion.
Within the logic of the world she created, orogenes have demi-god levels of power and are fully capable of accidentally killing people, even as infants. They are also undeniably people, despite their danger, but it’s easily understandable why regular folk would hate and fear them. Now, as I said, Jemisin is an amazing plotter. I have no doubt she realized this, and already has an answer in store, (I’ve read the first fifty pages of the second book, and I’m placing my bets on “ancient indigenous knowledge on orogenes that was lost during Sanzed colonialism”) which disappoints me a little. It feels pretty cliché to compare her to Octavia Butler, the only other Black female sci-fi author people are likely to have heard of, but it was one of her greatest strengths as a writer that she always fully engaged with these types of moral dilemmas. She never let her characters take the easy way out and discover some kind of ancient, lost third option. I just don’t trust Jemisin to do the same. (Though I’m prepared for her to embarrass me on this front. I have underestimated her before.)
I feel like Jemisin wants to use this book to pose us a question, except she has already scribbled in the answer. She wants to portray morally gray characters, but we never actually doubt who she considers “the good guys”. And she seems to be unable to go beyond her own experiences to truly confront the horrors of the world she created.
And that’s what could have taken this book from “good” to “great”, in my opinion. And, in all honesty, if this wasn’t a Hugo winner, I wouldn’t have scrutinized it to this extent. For me, it became a victim of its own high expectations.
So, conclusion.
Should you read this book? Honestly, yes. Am I going to read the rest of the series? Yes, I need to know how this ends. Am I bit disappointed? … Yeah, sadly.
I came upon a list of queer books and thought I'd give a try to the Fifth season. I haven't Heroic fantasy for more than a decad (apart from a book by Damasio). The book is good : well written, the way the narration is built is brilliant. In terms of representations it is very good as well, compared from what I read in the past. I enjoyed the female characters and the fact that heterosexuality or being cis isn't the norm. Yet the book is definitely speciesist : eating other animals or exploiting them is not questionned. A total page turner. I read it in four sittings, which means I spent a lot of time reading in bed haha. Personnally, I'm both grateful for this page turning effect and uneasy. For me it's totally addictive, I have no motivation to do anything else than reading what comes next. This …
I came upon a list of queer books and thought I'd give a try to the Fifth season. I haven't Heroic fantasy for more than a decad (apart from a book by Damasio). The book is good : well written, the way the narration is built is brilliant. In terms of representations it is very good as well, compared from what I read in the past. I enjoyed the female characters and the fact that heterosexuality or being cis isn't the norm. Yet the book is definitely speciesist : eating other animals or exploiting them is not questionned. A total page turner. I read it in four sittings, which means I spent a lot of time reading in bed haha. Personnally, I'm both grateful for this page turning effect and uneasy. For me it's totally addictive, I have no motivation to do anything else than reading what comes next. This kind of situation makes me feel bad as I'm unable to do others things I should be doing. This definitely has to do with me and not with the author or the book, but that said I wish these books would not have that kind of effect on me. Jacques Abeille's les Jardins Statutaires is a good example of fantasy book which is both enjoyable without being an absolute page turner forme.
Not my favorite book but well crafted and continuing on with the series. A big part is I didn't really love the viewpoint characters, the side characters tend to be more interesting to me.
Die Welt ist zu einem einzigen Superkontinent - die Stille - zusammengefallen. Tektonische Spannungen sorgen kontinuierlich für Erdbeben oder Vulkanausbrüche. Besonders heftige Ausbrüche können eine Fünftzeit auslösen - eine mehrjährige Periode aus Asche- und Schwefelregen mit wenig Sonnenlicht und geringen Überlebenschancen für die Bewohner:innen des Kontinents. In dieser Zeit zerfallen Reiche, Gemeinschaften ("Gems)" kämpfen um ihr Überleben und ganze Zivilisationen gehen unter. Allerdings ist die Menschheit der Wut von "Vater Erde" nicht völlig machtlos ausgliefert. Einige Menschen können mittels der Gabe der Orogenie durch Beeinflussung von Wärme und Bewegungsenergie sogar Erdbeben aufhalten und Vulkane abkühlen. Aufgrund Ihrer potentiellen Macht werden die Orogenen gejagt und ermordert. Im günstigsten Fall entdeckt ein:e Wächter:in ein orogen begabtes Kind und nimmt es zur Ausbildung mit ins Fulcrum - dort werden die Orogenen zur bedingungslosen Unterwerfung unter die Wächter erzogen.
Auf verschiedenen Zeitebenen wird die Geschichte der Orogenen Essun erzählt, die als Kind von einem …
Die Welt ist zu einem einzigen Superkontinent - die Stille - zusammengefallen. Tektonische Spannungen sorgen kontinuierlich für Erdbeben oder Vulkanausbrüche. Besonders heftige Ausbrüche können eine Fünftzeit auslösen - eine mehrjährige Periode aus Asche- und Schwefelregen mit wenig Sonnenlicht und geringen Überlebenschancen für die Bewohner:innen des Kontinents. In dieser Zeit zerfallen Reiche, Gemeinschaften ("Gems)" kämpfen um ihr Überleben und ganze Zivilisationen gehen unter. Allerdings ist die Menschheit der Wut von "Vater Erde" nicht völlig machtlos ausgliefert. Einige Menschen können mittels der Gabe der Orogenie durch Beeinflussung von Wärme und Bewegungsenergie sogar Erdbeben aufhalten und Vulkane abkühlen. Aufgrund Ihrer potentiellen Macht werden die Orogenen gejagt und ermordert. Im günstigsten Fall entdeckt ein:e Wächter:in ein orogen begabtes Kind und nimmt es zur Ausbildung mit ins Fulcrum - dort werden die Orogenen zur bedingungslosen Unterwerfung unter die Wächter erzogen.
Auf verschiedenen Zeitebenen wird die Geschichte der Orogenen Essun erzählt, die als Kind von einem Wächter entdeckt wird und so der Ermordung durch ihre Eltern entgeht, sich gegen das Fulcrum stellt und sich auf der dritten Erzhälebene auf die Suche nach ihrer Tochter begibt.
Neben einem spannenden world-building und interessant angelegten Charakteren werden unter anderem Themen wie Xenophobie, Sklaverei, Kastenwesen und das Verhalten von Menschen unter existentiellen Bedrohungen angesprochen.
Selten hat mich ein Fantasy-Roman so gefesselt. :-)
There’s some interesting world building in the book, but I ended up getting pretty confused by the multiple timelines and main characters the author was following, including one bizarrely in the second person. Spending a bit of time on Wikipedia to better get a synopsis of how the plots tied together was pretty helpful. I did enjoy the chapters opening with a quote from one of the sacred texts (very Dune like), but a bit more sign posting would have been helpful in its stead.
Took me a bit to get into it, and the changing of character names over time confused me a bit, but once I got past those two issues, it was a really fun read. Looking forward to the next two books to see what happens on Earth in a possible distant future where earth magic is common and nothing is stable.
I don't recall how I discovered Octavia E. Butler twenty years ago but I'm pretty sure I noticed N.K. Jemisin thanks to a review in the Washington Post that compared her work to Butler's Parables books.
The Fifth Season is the beginning of an epic, laying the foundation of a world with a magic system and a hierarchical guild that employs it. A world, like ours, that is changing, changing in ways the humans within it do not expect and may not survive. If you're watching fantasy series via streaming ... the world of The Wheel of Time is probably the best match in terms of feel and scope.
Excellent! Really great worldbuilding and character development. I was excited to see where the story went, and what happened next.
This book is every bit as good as you’ve probably heard. Original, engaging, and deeply moving in parts. It is full of longing in every form, and ultimately a thoughtful take on privilege and purpose.
You should have told Jija, before you ever married him, before you slept with him, before you even looked at him and thought maybe, which you had no right to ever think.
It will break your heart, which is a feat for a book set in such a foreign fantastic universe.
You should have told Jija, before you ever married him, before you slept with him, before you even looked at him and thought maybe, which you had no right to ever think.
I really enjoyed the world building and characters in this, but it was a little slow for my liking.
Mein erstes Buch dieses Jahr ist gleich ein Treffer. Dieser Fantasyroman in einer finsteren, postapokalyptischen Welt, in der jederzeit erneut Katastrophen auftreten können, hat mich in seinen Bann gezogen und ich werde ganz sicher auch Band 2 lesen, auch wenn ich an einigen Punkten schlucken musste. Einige Ereignisse und Figuren war doch schwer zu verdauen.
Die drei Handlungsstränge scheinen zunächst wenig miteinander zu tun zu haben, man erfährt auch nicht, in welcher Relation sie zeitlich zueinander stehen - bis schließlich am Ende alles zusammengeführt wird. Der Schreibstil des dritten Handlungsstrangs ist extrem ungewöhnlich (zweite Person Singular - würde man das analog zum Ich-Erzähler dann Du-Erzähler nennen?) und hebt ihn von den beiden anderen Strängen ab.
A beautifully crafted world built on the uncertainty of world-ending earthquakes and those with the power to move the earth themselves; a group both used by the now-ended civilisation and abused and ostracised by it for their powers.
I find it a great example of world-building where, instead of starting with “wouldn’t it be cool if people were green” it takes a structural change to the world and expands upon how this influences human society and evolution in a methodical, connected way. The parallel stories well serve the slow exploration of the world and the #queer poly rep is beautiful.
