Review: The Fifth Season by N.K. Jemisin
Overview:
Rating: 5 out of 5.
I finished this tome of a book in all of 2 days. Jemisin’s concept is unlike anything I’ve ever read before – despite the book falling under the popular genres of fantasy and post-apocalyptic. The world building, which can be intense at first, is beautiful and well worth the time spent to understand it. Oh, and did I mention the perfect balancing of three separate storylines?
Content Warning:
The Fifth Season contains sexual violence, gore, death, child abuse, and genocide.
Book Description:
The Fifth Season is a post-apocalyptic fantasy that takes place in a land known as The Silence. Here, natural disasters are common, and those who are capable of controlling them (known as orogene) are both feared and persecuted. This story follows three such people:
Essun, a woman in her 40’s, has successfully hidden her powers from her husband and community… until her son is killed for possessing the very same gifts she has.
Syenite is a trained orogene, working in the Empire’s capital under the strict guidance and supervision of those known as Guardians.
Young Damaya, whose powers have recently revealed themselves in the school playground, is quickly rejected by her family and swept away from her home.
Nothing is guaranteed in The Silence. Not even the safety supposedly promised by the nation’s capital. Our characters must learn to adapt or perish as the seasons inevitably change.
On the World-Building:
I’m not going to lie, I was very intimidated by the first couple chapters of this book. Jemisin immediately jumps into things, and it took me a minute to fully comprehend what was going on. Specifically, there’s an extensive amount of new terminology to grapple with: phrases to describe significant historical events, commonly used slang, geographical references, etc. Normally, so many details would detract from the story for me. This time was different for several reasons:
Jemisin did not rely heavily on exposition, awkward dialogue, or info-dumping to explain the world to the readers. Any new information or terms were introduced very organically.
With the help of context clues (or the appendix that I found in the back of the book *wink, wink*), I was able to straighten things out by page 40 or so.
Ultimately, a majority of the world-building details were relevant to the story. There weren’t any lengthy history lessons or side blurbs that appeared only once, never to be relevant again. Everything had a purpose.
At the end of the day, the world building contributed to the uniqueness of the book. The payoff was beyond worth the time it took to develop an understanding of the vernacular.
On the Structure of the Story [Spoilers]:
At first glance, The Fifth Season is structured as a very well-balanced, triple narrative story. The author infuses each chapter with the right amount of character building, plot development, and suspense to make each as interesting as the last. I never felt bored with one character over the others, which is a common experience for me when reading novels with multiple storylines. So, by these standards alone, Jemisin really hits it out of the ballpark.
. . . BUT THEN COMES THE BIGGEST, MOST GLORIOUS, MOST UNEXPECTED PLOT TWIST: All three narratives focus on the same woman, just at different points of her life. You don’t really see it coming, but it makes all the sense in the world when Jemisin oh so subtly lets it slip. About 300 pages in and all of a sudden a whole new layer of depth is added on top of all the excellent detail that is already there. It’s jaw-dropping and delicious and probably what took this book from good to phenomenal.