The Fifth Season by N.K.Jemisin: Review

 

As far as well written fantasy novels go, The Fifth Season (TFS) by N. K. Jemisin is a beautiful tale that is a good read for anyone that loves the genre. As the first part of ‘The Broken Earth’ series, TFS encourages readers to want to read further into the dystopian, ecologically unstable world that Jemisin has created. As someone who almost never delves into the realm of fantasy reads I found this book had a lot to offer. The well written characters and intricately crafted world, sucked me right into the pages almost as soon as I was half way down the first page.

Again for me, the decision to purchase this book was firstly the presence of it on the amazon homepage, initially I dismissed it as it looked too fantasy-type for me and I went off in search of some historical fiction to whet my appetite instead. However, a few days after this I was on a blog that was listing out something along the lines of ‘Black, female fiction writers’ and sure enough there was ‘The Fifth Season’ by N.K. Jemisin. Of course after this it was no time at all before I had swanned into Waterstones to purchase my copy, and spent a week sat in my parents garden devouring this book and only really moving to get out of the sun and back into the shade every hour or so.

I think, one particular thing that I liked about the this book (despite the fact that it was fantasy and most of the characters were POC, and if that didn’t just make my heart sing) was the chronology of the book. Jemisin writes the book in chunks of three, written as though they are accounts by three different people, in addition she also changes perspective for each character, with the character of Syen being written in the third person perspecgive but the parts where we learn about Essun as second perspective. This was the thing that really got me stuck in this book. I found the idea of this riveting. However, it did make it a little more obvious perhaps earlier than intended that all three characters are in fact the same character at different stages of their life, you are told this way at the end of the novel, but I unfortunately clocked onto this right from the start and decidedly ruined the flow of the book for myself. Nevertheless, this didn’t stop the progression of the charcters being an extremely emotive ride-along for the reader. I found that the dividing of the characters suffering and experiences in three sections helped draw attention to her as a whole character that perhaps would not have been the case had it been written differently.

I am going to treat, Damaya, Syenite and Essun as three different characters here, because although they technically are the same character I feel as though they are also not. Holistically, I would say that Damaya was my favourite. I say this because (SPOILERS) she had the biggest change of character and I would say, and pardon my French, the most shit thrown at her. Her abandonment on the part of her family at such a young age and having to deal with Schaffa and a whole new life was big set of changes for a child to deal with. However, her change of character while only a few years later I found was a remarkably good way of showing strength of character, and I believe plays a big part in the decision that Essun and Syen make later on.

I would say that my favourite part of the book is the return of Alabaster at the very end, I think that was the only thing that I didn’t really see coming. His state of being and the stone eater with him, added a nice gory and horrific end to the book. I feel like in particular this scene was written extremely well, there is a hostility between Hoa and the other stone eater, the shock of seeing Alabaster in his state and the whole atmosphere of the underground comm at to the perfect setting for the ending. Don’t get me wrong here are plenty of scenes like this throughout the book, for example the death of Essun’s infant son at the very beginning or Syenite’s infanticide mid way through. However, I felt that this scene in particular was the most riveting and emotive.

Overall, I really enjoyed TFS, I felt that it had the right amount of hope and despair that makes fantasy novels worth reading. I’m looking forward to diving into the other works of Jemisin in the future