N.K. Jemisin has published a trilogy and a duology, five novels, each challenging preconceived notions of what fantasy is, the characters who populate fantasy novels, and the storytelling notions of Fantasy. The Fifth Season is her sixth novel, the first of a new series entitled The Broken Earth and is yet another challenge to the genre, this time, with more of a post-apocalyptic flavor, or rather multiple post-apoclyptical flavors since the story takes place after multiple apocalypses have occurred. Unlike typical PA fiction, some of the history of previous cataclysms survive and inform, to varying degrees, the inhabitants of the transformed worlds.
The narrative, is initially, very chaotic. Jemisin employs multiple character points of view, one for each chapter, give the feel of a dangerous world were nobody is safe. The novel is post-apocalyptic, but takes place on a secondary world. A world where the planet is extremely unstable, where magicians (Orogenes) with powers based on geology work with technology in the hopes of keeping the world, on a literal, tectonic level, stable.
The geology of the world is so unstable, that the multiple apocalyptic events have become commonplace enough to be referred to as “Seasons” by the people who live on this world. Orogenes travel the world and try to stabilize geologic anomalies before they can erupt, like volcanoes or pending earthquakes. While the Orogenes should be considered heroes for their ability to save lives and stabilize geographic regions, they are contrarily seen as harbingers of doom, pariahs and the targets of enmity. This could be due to the inherit instability of their powers.
We are introduced to this world through the eyes of Essun, and damn does Jemisin get the emotional ball rolling very quickly. Upon returning home, she realizes her husband has brutally murdered their son. This shocking moment informs Essun’s tale. The other narrators, Damaya and Syenite/Syen, travel a road no less wrought with heartbreak and sorrow and under go changes of their own over the course of their own narrative journeys, not unlike the geological cataclysms that strike their world. Jemisin marvelously portrayed women whose changes in demeanor, and person, mirror the global changes. Not only does the story come across through these three women’s eyes/voices, each of the three story threads is told in a different narrative voice, third person narrative for Syen and Damaya, while Essun’s story is told through the rare second person present, as if we the reader are Essun. As I said, there’s some chaotic elements in the story and the narrative reflects this chaos. It takes some acclimating, but is an ultimately very rewarding storytelling technique.
Great story, great fantasy is often a balance between character and world-building. In The Fifth Season Jemisin not only balances these critical elements, she does it such a way that one is integral to the other and the world is (of course) a character in and of itself. When there are three narrative strands in a novel, my gut starts playing games, I try to figure out how these three characters will meet, my mind will anticipate the meeting of these characters. This is just one game Jemisin is playing in The Fifth Season, I get a sense that she still has cards yet to reveal, but the hand she is showing looks like a winner with respect to the characters.
Throughout Jemisin challenges the tropes of Fantasy, pushing the boundaries of expectation until the story manages to transcend the genre trappings. She gives us perhaps the most schizophrenic/psychopathic mentor the genre has seen. The hero’s journey is one of the most common story trails to follow in Epic Fantasy, but what Jemisin does with her characters on their journey, the mental anguish, the “training” they receive, and their realizations are powerful, like the birthing of something new out of the rough, rocky shell of the expected.
The Fifth Season is a powerful, epic novel of discovery, pain, and heartbreak across the landscape of a many-times broken world with characters who are supremely flawed and broken themselves. It is a novel that demands much of its readers, it rewards them aplenty and is one of those novels that becomes more powerful after deep consideration and subsequent readings. It invites those deep dives into the world and is one I’ll have to read through again.
With some patience, this one is Highly Recommended.
© 2015 Robert H. Bedford
Orbit, August 2015
Trade Paperback, 512 Pages | ISBN: 978-0-316-22929-6
http://nkjemisin.com/ | http://www.orbitbooks.net/excerpt/the-fifth-season/
Review copy courtesy of the publisher, Orbit Books
I read this and really enjoyed it though the ending left me a tiny bit confused. I hope it was meant to be…
As always, a really interesting work by N.K. Jemisin !