Book Review: The Fifth Season by N.K. Jemisin
The time is the far future. So far, indeed, that five or six great worldwide civilizations after our own have come, collapsed and been mostly forgotten. So far that there is only one known continent left, sarcastically known as The Stillness because of its constant tectonic activity. Over strange eons, humanity itself has changed. The world has ended many times, and now it is the age of the Fifth Season and the world is ending for the last time.
Essun (whose story is told in present tense and second person) barely notices the disaster that split the continent in half. Her husband has murdered their son and run off with their daughter, and Essun is paralyzed with grief. But soon it becomes necessary for her to flee the village. For Essun is an orogene (“rogga” if you want to be derogatory), someone who can sense and control seismic vibration, who has been hiding among the villagers, and it will soon occur to people that this is so.
As the disaster has made movement to the north too hazardous to consider, Essun sets out south to find her daughter, blending in with the refugees. She’s soon joined by a young-looking boy who isn’t exactly human, and a feral woman who has more knowledge than it might appear.
Interspersed with Essun’s journey are the stories of Schaffa, a young orogene who is sold by her parents to an agent of the Fulcrum, the one legal group of orogenes who support the empire centered on the city of Yumenes; and Syenite, an experienced member of the Fulcrum who’s been assigned to assist the powerful orogene Alabaster…and bear his child.
This is the first of the Broken Earth trilogy, and won a Hugo award.
Good: Imaginative science fiction worldbuilding, starting from a premise that only gets fully revealed at the end of this first volume. There’s a glossary at the end for all the new terms, which you may need, but most of it can be picked up from context if you’re patient. Orogeny is an interesting powerset and after the first earthshaking demonstration, we slowly see both its pitfalls and advantages.
There’s some interesting characters and what seems like an excessive amount of coincidence turns out to be nothing of the kind. There’s a lot of ethnic diversity, though due to the far future setting, none of the ethnic groups exactly map on to current ones.
Less good: As the novel wore on, I became less and less enamored of Essun as a person. It turns out she’s done some pretty horrific things, and shows no interest in atoning for them. Instead she’s mostly focused on living a quiet life where she doesn’t have to deal with her past. (Until her husband murders their son and takes away their daughter, at which point she mostly wants her daughter back.)
The three protagonists’ stories intertwined in a way I found a bit too predictable, and I got irritated that the book evidently expected me to be surprised.
As the first book in a trilogy, this volume is mostly setup for the situation, so the vast majority of plot points are not resolved here.
Still, this is skillfully written, and I can see why it won the Hugo. Recommended for fans of far future science fiction epics.
