The Fifth Season by N.K. Jemisin

This may be one of the best fantasy books I have read ever, or in many years at least.

It’s like the author took one of my geology textbooks, opened it to the creation of the Drakensburg Mountains or the rifting of Gondwanaland and thought, what if there were people trying to live through these massive, extinction causing, geological events?

And then built a whole world around it.

Which is to say the world building is brilliant. Complex, with culture and history and politics and just all of it. Written in a deeply immersive manner where the reader is just thrown into the world; where they are the only one who doesn’t know what is going on and what all these strange terms and cultural signifiers are. Jemisin does a enviable job of providing explanations that don’t break character or pace.

Imperialism

To me it was a book about the legacies of imperialism. How easily empires can come into being, change the narrative of their world, and how the damage can last, even long after the empire itself has collapsed. It explored how self-perpetuating institutionalised racism can be; the way in which victims can be forced or trained to uphold the system and the thinking that holds them in a place of subservience. And from there what kind of pressures are needed to break the system and the people within it. I feel like this latter point may get more exploration in the next book.

I also like how she scrambles up races, so they are not exactly like modern races. She explores racism not through the lens of skin colour but of orogenic power, race after all is a cultural phenomenon.

Chronology is for Chumps

The writing is damn clever.

The book if full of subtlety and complexity that kept my mind occupied imagining the off page actions and motivations of characters. So much so that I could fill several blog posts with theories about the story. But lets stick to the best bits.

We start with what appears to be a ensemble cast of three women, with the chapters alternating between them. What is noteworthy is that Ennis’ chapters are all told in the second person. The book opens with what initially seems to be the narrator breaking fourth-wall to address the reader, but quickly pivots to show that he is talking to Ennis. He then relates her parts of the story – as I imagine one might tell an amnesic what had happened to them. Within this second person narrative the narrator sticks to an attached POV of Ennis, giving her thoughts and feelings, rather than an omnipotent POV. I suspect it’s enough like an attached third to stop the style getting irritating to the reader.

What makes this so interesting is that its later revealed the narrator is one of the characters in the story. Which raises all kinds of questions about his knowledge and motivations. It is also unclear whether this narrative is entirely metaphorical or if he is in some way telling Ennis the story (as in the whole book’s story). Is he guiding Ennis’ journey or are we merely privy to his hopes for her?

The genius of this story is the way it’s structured. We start with Ennis and her experience of the huge geological event ‘the Yumenese Rifting’. When we switch to the other characters and it slowly dawns on the reader that their stories are progressing without any indication of the rifting. My first thought was that these characters were operating at different points on the story’s timeline, and I thought it was just a clever way of time jumping. But, it was much cleverer than that. I didn’t see the twist coming the first time, and even less the second time, and yet when I read back through the text and it had been bread-crumbed. I even got the references, but temporarily forgot they were from different characters.

It was quite simply a genius way to build a complex character, to show the formative events of her life, while still having a gripping narrative structure. It also sets up the world and its internal conflicts. It was frankly a perfect Act One. And it makes me tremendously excited to see the next part.

And yet this book is a complete story unto itself, it doesn’t feel unfinished or filler like Fevered Sun did. I think because all the major story threads that were setup are brought back together again. All the important people who had touched Ennis’ life have either died or have reconnected with her. We start the story thinking Ennis journey is going to be about finding her husband and daughter, but narratively it is about no longer running from her old lives, accepting that those experiences are part of her.

Series Arcs

Blame it on Harry Potter, because my favourite element in a story series, the thing I am always looking for but rarely find, is where the entire series works out a larger plot arc. A trilogy where the three books play out the 3-act structure – Captive Prince. Or where the last books pay off setups from the first book – HP. Not many authors achieve it. I suspect because for most of us we would need to write all three before publishing any of them to do it. And most people don’t have the time or money for that.

This book suggests good things for the others to come and I’m so excited.