Review: The Fifth Season

The Fifth Season by N.K. Jemisin
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

If you know anything about N.K. Jemisin from following her on Twitter or anywhere else, you know she's a whip-smart lady, and that she's got quite a few award-winning books out there. So for my first Jemisin book, I figured I'd try the beginning of her Broken Earth Trilogy and see how it played out. Well, I can see for sure why she's an award winner, even though the book wasn't quite 100% to my taste. The book's narrative styles, while each were delightfully snarky in a genre that so often takes itself way too seriously, were so unconventional (particularly the use of second-person POV for about half the book in total, usually a major turn off for me) that reading the book proved to be almost more of a struggle than it was worth.

That said, though, as difficult as the story was to follow at times, I still very much appreciate what Jemisin's giving us in the subtext here. Not only does she beautifully blend sci-fi and fantasy, but she also blends these genres with blistering social commentary, criticizing humanity not only for bigotry - rather X-Men-like, if one parallels the orogenes with the mutants, and Jemisin also includes story threads about in-universe slurs and reclamations thereof - but also for our damage to the environment. Not unlike the Once Upon a Time Arc Words "All magic comes with a price," orogenes' power, because it draws from the earth itself, tends to cause some serious damage when used, and it's no wonder the earth fights back with such constant and deadly seismic activity. Considering the recent rise in devastating earthquakes, floods, and hurricanes the world over, it's a theme that's all too timely right now.

(On a lighter note, though, the earth's seismic self-destructive nature lends itself, in-universe, to some surprisingly amusing volcanic-themed swears in the ironically-named Stillness.)

I'm happy to report that I've already got the remaining books in the trilogy on order at the library, and that yesterday I managed to sell the only available copy of The Fifth Season to a bookstore customer. Given how thought-provoking and yet darkly funny this book is (its opening lines are some that I'll surely be quoting to other customers as soon as we restock on this book), I expect nothing less than more greatness from not only the sequels, but all the rest of Jemisin's acclaimed bibliography, which I'll surely read in due time.

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