Book 16: ‘The Fifth Season’ by N.K. Jemisin

The options I had for book sixteen were:

‘Ancillary Justice’ by Ann Leckie

‘The Fifth Season’ by N.K. Jemisin

‘The Sisters Brothers’ by Patrick deWitt

Although Ancillary Justice showing up once more did make me think I should chose it, I ended up going with ‘The Fifth Season’. Having first got into fantasy with the Game of Thrones series of books, my desire to branch out has seen Jemisin’s work recommended to me. Thus, I was excited to give it a try.

Goodreads summary: This is the way the world ends. Again.

Three terrible things happen in a single day. Essun, a woman living an ordinary life in a small town, comes home to find that her husband has brutally murdered their son and kidnapped their daughter. Meanwhile, mighty Sanze — the world-spanning empire whose innovations have been civilization’s bedrock for a thousand years — collapses as most of its citizens are murdered to serve a madman’s vengeance. And worst of all, across the heart of the vast continent known as the Stillness, a great red rift has been been torn into the heart of the earth, spewing ash enough to darken the sky for years. Or centuries.

Now Essun must pursue the wreckage of her family through a deadly, dying land. Without sunlight, clean water, or arable land, and with limited stockpiles of supplies, there will be war all across the Stillness: a battle royale of nations not for power or territory, but simply for the basic resources necessary to get through the long dark night. Essun does not care if the world falls apart around her. She’ll break it herself, if she must, to save her daughter.

The three things that help to make a fantasy novel work are the author’s ability to create an interesting world, peopled with interesting characters, and build it upon systems that are engaging in and of themselves. In ‘The Fifth Season’, N. K. Jemisin absolutely delivers on all three counts in a novel that had me almost immediately reaching for the second book to find out what happens next to Essun. I mean, when you start your story with the world ending, you have really set your stall out to provide your reader with an excellent experience.

It is difficult to talk about structure and the narrative voice without giving too much away, but the story is initially split into three separate arcs. By utilising the second person for Essun’s chunk of the story, the one that starts the reader off and carries the bulk of the later part of the narrative, it feels immersive from the opening page. It helps to place us in a world that is falling apart and very different from our own, whilst we also experience Essun’s very real confusion and awe as some of the more fantastical elements of the world around her come to life and the reality of a ‘Fifth Season’ taking hold.

Though the three different narratives that we follow, we get a chance to explore a richly realised world that Jemisin has created. The Fifth Season itself is a process of dramatic climactic change, one that threatens the lives of all who inhabit the Stillness. They include Orogenes, powerful creatures who can control the earth around them, the central ‘system’ that is explored within the novel. Rather than being magicians who can produce lightning bolts out of thin air, this manipulation of the planet’s power is at once fantastical, yet believable – of singular importance to the reader ‘buying in’ to Jemisin’s world.

With great power comes great responsibility and we are shown several difficulties of life as an orogene, including the difficulty in controlling that which burns within in such a volatile fashion. This also helps to somewhat humanise the experiences of Damaya and Syenite, the two other narrative strings that run alongside Essun’s story. Through their trials and tribulations as powerful outcasts in this society, we are left in a position to legitimately sympathise with them as things go wrong…and boy do they go wrong from time to time.

Perhaps it is the fact that this is a trilogy, but ‘The Fifth Season’ is more often than not bleak in its outlook. There are moments to savour, yet Jemisin doesn’t shy away from presenting the darker side of humanity as it exists in the Stillness. Around every corner, there is the possibility that things won’t work out for our main protagonists the way they might hope for. At times, it reminds me of Joe Abercrombie’s work: Jemisin takes tropes and ideas from the fantasy world, gives them a modern twist, whilst maintaining a consistently black tone, whether for comic purposes or to highlight a more difficult reality about this world.

Naturally, it would be churlish to give away details about the ending, but suffice to say that it had me immediately seeking out the second book in the trilogy. The plot is masterfully paced and intricately crafted; there is no doubt that I will be enjoying more of Jemisin’s work in the months to come.