The Fifth Season (The Broken Earth) Paperback – August 4, 2015

The Fifth Season is the first book in The Broken Earth trilogy. It won the Hugo Award for 2016 and the sequel, The Obelisk Gate, just took the 2017 Hugo Award. The third book in the series, The Stone Sky is due out in a few days (August 15, 2017) and seems to have a lot of buzz around the anticipated release.

Being such a critically acclaimed darling and widely read already, there's not much my review can add, but I'll throw my few cents in anyhow.

For me this was a 4.5 star book. This is the second N.K. Jemisin book I've read (the other was The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms). I liked this book appreciably more, but there are definitely a few commonalities that I'll just chalk up to the authors style. She seems to favor chopping her narrative up chronologically, and not really explaining to the reader what's earlier or later in the timeline, you just get to piece it together as you go. She also seems to favor some tougher to read perspectives (one of the POV storylines in The Fifth Season uses 2nd person, which is not so common, but I thought it worked well in this context). Lastly, she's not an author that spells out all the twists and turns of the plot, again, the reader is left to infer and piece things together. I thought this was much more effective in The Fifth Season than in The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms.

This book did have fair amount of made up words. You will pretty much catch on to all of it by context, but it's a little disorienting at the start of the book when they come in fast and furious. For those reading the ebook edition (like I did), it may be helpful to know there's an index at the back of the book. As usual, I only found it when I was done. One day I'll learn to check.

Quick plot overview without getting into spoilers - this is a dystopian novel, set on a far future Earth. The continents have been smashed together again and the world is menaced by extremely active tectonic shifts and the resulting hot spots/volcanoes. The titular "Fifth Seasons" happen when a massive natural disaster occurs (volcano/earthquake) that impacts life over most or all of the continent for a long period of time (anywhere from six months to hundreds of years) - impacts can be acidic rain, famine, fungal blooms, crop extinction, etc. There's an index of the various Fifth Seasons at the back of the book as well.

The narrative revolves around people in this world with an extra ability to control the earth (specifically seismically, in quelling or causing earthquakes/tsunamis/volcanic erruptions). These people are called orogenes (politely) or roggas (informally/derogatorily). In the current timeline, an empire called Sanze controls most of the continent. At the capital of Sanze, there's a school/training facility called the Fulcrum. The Fulcrum is designed to train/control orogenes.

In philosophical themes, the book gives you a lot to chew over and think about in regard to the true meaning and results of slavery and freedom and the intention of actions and the results. The book also touches on race (a lot of comments will note the description of most of the population reads as African or Asian) and sexuality (there is a gender fluid character as well as some bisexuality and a three-way, sort of, relationship).

The book is most certainly dark, but worthy of reading. There are several instances of abuse centered on children which always seems harder to read and a few grisly deaths as well as some mass death events. The world of The Fifth Season is a harsh one. There was not a lot of humor to lighten this book up but it was nonetheless an engaging read that left you with something to ponder.

Edit: I finished this book several months ago but I'm still thinking about it. Added an extra star for the narrative's lasting power.

I've enjoyed all of Jemisin's books thus far, but I often avoid starting series books until the whole series is complete because I hate being left hanging, waiting for the next installment. But "The Fifth Season" was totally worth the suspense. The world of The Stillness - an ironically-named super-continent that suffers frequent, massive environmental catastrophes thanks to its unstable geology - is a captivating setting for the story's three narrators, each of whom is forced to journey across the dangerous, shifting land. In conceiving a society able to do what it takes to survive across multiple devastating periods of disaster and climate change, Jemisin creates a world order that each of her main characters sees through different eyes: one hoping it will offer her refuge, one furious about its demands on her, and one hoping to just avoid its gaze altogether.

Even though I enjoy a good Tolkein-esque fantasy, it's so refreshing to read Jemisin's writing, which always takes a fresh departure from the pseudo-medevial-Europe settings so common in the genre. Rather than elves and orcs and plundering armies, Jemisin gives us orogenes (those gifted with the ability to control geological forces), stone-eaters (non-humans who can move through solid rock with their own, mysterious agenda), and a continent that is a greater threat to its people than any army. Whether the strict, caste-driven, xenophobic society that has evolved in response to the environment is a necessary evil or a regime to be overthrown is an argument that will likely span the entire trilogy.

"The Fifth Season" could be considered part of the vein of SF/F that addresses environmental and climate change issues (e.g. Nicola Griffith's "Slow River," Paolo Bacigalupe's "The Windup Girl") but in this trilogy, change is inevitable and largely beyond human control. The book builds toward several narrative twists slowly revealed in its final third; I had picked up on enough very subtle hints to suspect some of them, but they still came into focus with a satisfying emotional "click" that made me glad I waited and didn't stumble across any spoilers. I was so captivated by the narrative that I literally woke up in the night wanting to read more (thanks, insomnia! thanks, book light!). Waiting for the next two chapters leaves me feeling as unsettled as the world of The Stillness itself.

I picked up the Kindle and audio versions if this trilogy to take a break from my recent "hard SF" binge. My expectations were not high -- I've been disappointed by many fantasy authors trying to "break the mold" and differentiate themselves from the Tolkiens, Martins, and Rothfuss of today's big-book-fantasy. I was happily surprised by these books. This is neither a _Harry Potter_ YA nor a grimdark story; it's not an urban fantasy or a classic quest tale. It is a well-written fantasy with a largely unique magic system and mythos coupled with a satisfying personal story of loss, revenge, and what it means to be an "other" in stratified, xenophobic, society. The only books I can conpare it to are Daniel Abraham's Long Price Quartet (and that's good company for any story). Highly recommended for any reader of modern fantasy looking for a unique world and system of magic.