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The Fifth Season (The Broken Earth, #1)

N.K. Jemisin

Start date: December 21, 2018

Finish date: January 13, 2019

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Nov 22, 2017 Shhhh... Books rated it it was amazing

Shelves: fantasy, favorites, scifi, adult, literary

OH jesus monkey freaking aRGh. This was amazing.

I can't even.

Ahhhh.

Okay, so I read NK Jemisin's previous series and that was good. BUT this series...

This reading experience was... like reading Ursula Le Guin's Left Hand of Darkness with the intense emotional upheaval.

Sensual and dark and it ends with horror and ultimate rebellion and its just so freaking visceral and I kept seeing my own baby boy as I read it and ahhhh.

Loved. Loved. ...more

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Aug 27, 2020 Tani rated it really liked it

Shelves: fantasy, dark-fantasy, female-author, 2020-novels, sff-2020, sff-ladies-2020, sff-awards-2020

Another month, another read for the Hugo/Nebula winners bookclub. And may I say, this is a read that is long overdue? N.K. Jemisin took the SFF world by storm when she started this series, so I'm kind of ashamed that I've taken this long to get to it.

Anyway, The Fifth Season is set in a post-apocalyptic world where a certain percentage of the population has evolved the ability to control the earth, a magic they call orogeny. However, the ability is often linked with emotion, and requires extens Another month, another read for the Hugo/Nebula winners bookclub. And may I say, this is a read that is long overdue? N.K. Jemisin took the SFF world by storm when she started this series, so I'm kind of ashamed that I've taken this long to get to it.

Anyway, The Fifth Season is set in a post-apocalyptic world where a certain percentage of the population has evolved the ability to control the earth, a magic they call orogeny. However, the ability is often linked with emotion, and requires extensive training in order to control it with any success. Given the dangers, it's probably no surprise that orogenes become a sort of second-class citizen. They're taken away from their families when they're young, reviled by their communities, and basically used as a commodity. They're vitally important in sheltering humanity against the shattered planet they live on, but also treated as tools.

The narrative of The Fifth Season is split into three parts. In one, told in the controversial second person, we travel with Essun as she tries to track down her husband. On discovering that she and their children are orogenes, he killed one and kidnapped the other, leaving Essun on a desperate quest to catch up before her daughter is also killed. In another part, we meet Damaya. She's a newly discovered orogene, taken from her parents for training in the Fulcrum, where all sanctioned orogenes are trained. In the third, we follow along with Syenite, a four ringer whose just been assigned a new mentor, a ten ringer named Alabaster. They set out a mission to clear some coral out of a harbor, and in the process, will completely open Syen's eyes to the world she lives in.

The first thing I was struck by was how very interesting this whole world is. There's a ton of attention that's been devoted to the world-building, especially on a social and psychological level, and it is honestly fascinating. Jemisin uses orogeny in this world to masterfully comment on race in our own world, and the result is equal parts depressing and terrifying. I think the choice to show each character in a different stage of her life was a particularly impressive stroke, as you really get a feel for the system that's used to oppress orogenes and the ways that it's built up and maintained. The story also details what happens to people who can't or won't comply with the system, and let me tell you, it's awful.

Character is also a strong point of this story. The three storylines are all pretty equally fascinating, although I did find that I was most into Syen's story, for the most part. Each of the characters faces unique challenges, and I was impressed with the care that each character is crafted with. Damaya probably gets the least time, but in many ways, her story is the most informative. She's very much in the process of being trained, so we get to see much more of that system at work. In contrast, Syen is already thoroughly trained, and so part of the interest of her story is when Alabaster starts to reveal some of the realities of the world to her, and we see her reactions and increasing disillusionment. Essun has actually left the system, but we can still see the remnants of it in her, in her belief that nothing in her life can stay, that she's doomed to unhappiness and has created her own trouble by trying to snatch something from the jaws of despair.

I think that where this fell down for me was in pacing. I hit the last 80% and felt no more urgency than I had in the first few pages. I was interested, but not drawn in like I expected I would be. And the ending! The ending made me feel like I'd been dropped from a cliff and not in a good way. I was extremely dissatisfied with how this ended. In the previous Jemisin books that I've read, she's been very good about actually finishing a story with the end of each book, so I was expecting that to happen here, and it was not what I got. Needless to say, that definitely affected my enjoyment.

Despite that quibble, though, I really enjoyed this book, and I'm looking forward to continuing with the series. ...more

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Jan 08, 2019 flajol rated it really liked it

Shelves: science-fiction

It took me a while to get into this because of the shifts between points of view and use of present tense (which I usually hate), but once I got into the swing of the differing voices, I loved it. Great world building and great characters.

I felt a real connection with all three main characters, and I enjoyed seeing how their stories converged. This is very definitely first in a series though, and Jemisin has set up lots of questions that I hope will be answered in the next two books.

My only gr ...more

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