I have edited this review after finishing the series.
I started off wondering if I would finish this book; there were some things I initially perceived as flaws, but turned out to be strokes of pure genius. I'll explain later. I liked Jemison's previous work in The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms and the subsequent novels in that series. The Dreamblood books were more of a miss for me my first read through, but after having gone back through them again, I appreciate them more and they were wonderful stories as well. Going into this book, I had mixed expectations. As it turns out, the book, despite my initial misgivings, is excellent. The story is wonderfully written and fleshed out, with a thought-provoking setting and interesting characters. The treatment of orogenes (i.e. magic users) is somewhat reminiscent of the Dragon Age video games, although it definitely has its own twists; the similarities are in how orogenes are controlled and feared by their society. I found myself eagerly anticipating my nightly reading times to sink into this world.
I do have a minor quibble with some of the language the author developed for her world. Jemisin has developed a sort of jargon for her world that I found to be unrealistic. It's hard to describe exactly why it didn't work for me; it just felt cheesy in that way that sci-fi lingo can become cheesy. For example, northern latititudes and southern latititudes are referred to as nomidlats and somidlats or something like that. The word 'rust' is often a swear word, which just sounded lame when reading through it: "rusting hell!" See what I mean? Communities are called 'comms.' Every facet of the society depicted in The Fifth Season is centered around long term survival after periods of extreme environmental adversity, but I could never make sense of why they would have lost other vocabulary to describe settlements; why does it have to be "comms" to describe any hamlet, village, town? That simply didn't seem very realistic. The characters in the novel certainly use advanced vocabulary in all other respects. I got to where I could overlook this stuff, but initially it a little harder for me to suspend disbelief throughout the read.
Another thing that bothered me was one character's points-of-view being written in the 2nd person. This character's chapters are the only ones that are like this, so it is jarring to read several chapters in the 3rd person to then suddenly be thrust into a chapter that literally sounds as if someone is telling what YOU are doing/seeing/thinking/saying etc. Initially, I thought it was simply incorrect to use the 2nd person. After having completed the series, it was genius and there is no other way this story could have been told as effectively. It will bother you. It will make you feel like the Author is trying too hard to make you feel her characters' feelings. In the end, you'll bask in sheer amazement about the courage it took to do it, and how fantastically well it works.
It was the above two flaws that had me debating putting the book down and moving on to something else. I am happy I didn't, it's a pretty darn good book. There is another problem with the book that needs to be discussed.
This is a world where forced breeding occurs between people in order to ensure the survival of the human species. I commend Jemisin for including homosexual and transsexual characters in this book. She treats them as any other sort of character. At first I didn't think anything of it, but there is a drawback to that approach. I understand that Jemisin wanted to write these characters in an inclusive way. I just think that the world they lived in would never have allowed it. In a society where producing offspring is critical for the survival of the species, I found it incongruous that homosexuality would be so liberally accepted; not because of my own views on the topic, which are quire liberal, but because of the context of the world I was reading about in this book. In this world, people who might not produce offspring might be viewed as with suspicion or as a threat. In our world, persecution of homosexuals has most often arisen in areas where resources are scarce and survival is difficult. I think both the impact and the immersion would have been helped if the society was hostile to them, and then their worth was shown over time by their absolute critical importance to the continued existence of the human species.
The story, however, is so amazingly good that these minor gripes do not detract from its telling in any significant way. I loved this story, and the series itself is the best I've ever read.
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I highly suggest you read The Fifth Season by N.K. Jemisin!
I highly suggest you read The Fifth Season by N.K. Jemisin!There’s so much in the book that I would love to scream about, but I don’t wanna give away too many spoilers. Most importantly, it really is an amazing and fantastic book that you should have read already. If not, now’s your chance! Go and get it today!One of the most interesting and potent eye-catching elements of The Fifth Season is N.K. Jemisin’s use of perspective throughout the novel. Some chapters use second person when describing what Essun does, i.e. “you did this” “you did that”. Other chapters use third person when describing Damaya and Syenite’s experiences. Also, ever-present is a sort of third person omnipresent narrator who presses their own opinion and point of view on everything that is happening.These three different narratives (for Essun, Damaya, and Syenite) move through different points of time. Also, these different narratives gradually give away details of the world and begin to build up the tension underneath the surface of the novel.In the first chapter, Essun’s child is dead and she needs to chase down her husband who took off with her daughter. Damaya is a young girl just discovered to be an orogene (those people who can control energy from the ground and temperature) by her parents. She hides in the roof of a barn but is taken Schaffa (a guardian, those who attempt to train and control orogenes). Syenite is an orogene who is at the fulcrum (a place run by guardians and where orogenes are trained to learn to control their powers). In the end, these three narratives weave and wind together and finish in a masterpiece where your only want is to reread the entire novel to catch everything you didn’t catch the first time.The Fifth Season would have seriously taken a lot of effort just to conceive and write down. There are great ideas out there, but N.K. Jemisin’s put her words down on paper and just makes The Fifth Season into something quite beautiful.Sometimes the narrator forces their ideas into your head, but it’s no problem. It’s good to get different perspectives once in a while. I really love what N.K. Jemisin did with her book and highly suggest you read it straight away! You certainly get hooked and want to read all the books in N.K. Jemisin’s The Broken Earth series.This was such a popular book. It won the Hugo award in 2016, and was nominated for a Nebula Award. Not to mention the other two books in N.K. Jemisin’s Broken Earth series also won the Hugo award for 2017 and 2018 respectively. This book was huge so I needed to get in and start reading it. I really loved everything about the book – except the ending which seemed to suggest that I need to read the next two books. Not that I’m complaining! hahaN.K. Jemisin’s The Broken Earth series starts off with this book and it’s a fantastic start. The world that N.K. Jemisin builds in The Fifth Season is really detailed and authentic. We don’t get all the details of the world, but I assume she’s keeping it all for the next two novels. Talking about this novel though, we can see a lot of inclusion for minorities and LGBTQ+ characters as well as themes. They are not just stereotypes but wholly taking part in the novel and feel like real people you can meet on the street.It really is great that we can have a more inclusive science fiction community, especially since N.K. Jemisin won triple Hugo Awards for her recent novels.--- Reviewed by FLY INTO BOOKS (dot) com
Top reviews from other countries
Brandi Cruickshank
Best use of second person in a book evet
Reviewed in Canada on October 12, 2023
Amazon Customer
Great Story with amazing characters
Reviewed in Mexico on December 2, 2019
Anonym
Sci-Fi-Fantasy Masterpiece (all 3 Books)
Reviewed in Germany on August 18, 2019