Book: The Fifth Season
Author: N.K. Jemisin
Rating: 🌟🌟🌟🌟1/2
Completed this for the 52 Book Club Reading Challenge #20 (Title in a serif font).
This is the way the world ends. For the last time.
Essun comes home to find out that her husband has murdered their son and kidnapped their daughter.
Meanwhile, elsewhere, a madman seeks vengeance, and the havoc he wreaks threatens to topple the Sanze empire, and throw the world into a fifth season – a winter that lasts many years, after which they must be rebuild.
So Essun must journey through destroyed lands to find her husband and daughter, despite all the dangers lurking along the way.
This is a stunning book. The writing is haunting, poetic and powerful.
The world-building is both deftly done and extremely challenging.
Jemisin does this without explaining what is what, leaving the reader to understand the world-specific terminology from context (though there is also a helpful glossary at the back of the book).
The advantage of this is that the story doesn’t stop for a lot of explanation. You learn what you need to know when you need to know it.
The disadvantage is that it takes a while to get a handle on what’s going on in the story.
Much fantasy and science fiction tends to be a commentary on our own societal ills and The Fifth Season is no different.
The groups being discriminated against differ both in name and description, but the markers of injustice still ring true.
Dehumanising people is a universal phenomenon it seems.
It is also a story of resilience, resistance and survival.
There is also something to be said for the narratives of a particular people – and how often those are moulded to fit those in charge.
All in all it is a powerful first book or a trilogy. Looking forward to reading book #2!
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