The world has already ended by the start of N.K. Jemisin’s latest novel The Fifth Season, the first book in The Broken Earth trilogy. There is little surprise that this book was nominated for best novel for the Hugo Awards (2016), the Nebula Awards (2015), and the Locus Award for best fantasy novel (2015). The Fifth Season is a brilliantly crafted novel with strong world-building, gorgeous description, and unique usage of different character points of view that asks readers to question the nature of oppression.
The story takes place in a land called The Stillness, a supercontinent that’s ironically named due to the constant tremors and seismic waves that people shape their lives around surviving. Civilizations are built on top of each other, ignoring those that did not survive and leading its citizens to death. The empire Sanze prevailed though, bringing innovation as they built upon the lands of those they conquered and the bodies of enslaved orogenes –people gifted with powers to control geological forces. And then one day, Sanze suddenly ends without warning with the arrival of a fifth season, an era of catastrophic climate change.
The Fifth Season is told through three narratives of orogene women in different time periods; the child Dayama, who is feared for her powers and taken from her home to serve her empire, the young woman Syenite, who is trying to politically advance her career and discovers the dark truth about her work, and Essun, who comes home to discover that her husband has murdered their son and kidnapped their daughter. Through these stories, Jemisin weaves together the narrative of how the world ended, how Sanze got to the point of destruction, and how to survive the aftermath.
As a fan of Jemisin’s previous works, the Inheritance trilogy and the Dreamblood duology, The Fifth Season is an incredible turning point in her career as an author. It is the book where Jemisin was able to take all the skills she has learned from writing her previous series and craft it into a novel that exceeded my expectations. Jemisin has grown as a world-builder, something I felt that fell slightly short in the Inheritance trilogy, managing to flesh out the world of The Stillness and leaving no loose ends or unanswered questions.
I’ve always considered Jemisin’s characterization one of her best strengths as a writer, and The Fifth Season does not disappoint. Dayama, Syenite, and Essun are all well-crafted characters that draw you in and stick with you long after you’ve finished the book. Essun’s point of view is also notable, because it is a clear departure from commonly used points of view in fantasy writing. Instead of writing in third or first person, Jemisin uses second person in Essun’s narrative. This causes the line between reader and character to blur, and I found myself identifying with Essun to the point of becoming her. It’s a testament to the strength of Jemisin’s writing that’s she’s able to craft such a strong world with such compelling characters, while playing with genre conventions.
The second book in The Broken Earth trilogy, The Obelisk Gate, will be released next month on August 16.
