The Fifth Season
Woooo! It’s been a while. I have a new book club! They’re actually reading the sequel to this book, so I gotta catch up, and that means: more book reviews! People who dwell in the Stillness must shelter in communal Comms, living in fear that one of their number could be revealed as a dreaded Orogene. Fortunately, the Guardians exist to wrangle those not-people, carting them off to the Fulcrum, where they can be properly made to serve mankind. At least, that’s what most folk believe.... Initially, I was disoriented by The Fifth Season; Jemisin deliberately employs the rarely-used Second Person voice, a dangerous and forbidden literary technique, and I needed a chapter or two to adjust to the unfamiliar perspective. It isn’t there all the time, mind you, just for, oh, about a third of the chapters. That, bundled with a substantial sum of setting-specific terminology, made the early chapters an exercise in patience.
Jemisin never becomes didactic, however. Rarely does she indulge in having one character explain something to another purely for the benefit of the reader, accomplishing much of her conveyance via show-don’t-tell and trusting that we will grasp her meaning in the fullness of time. I count this as a positive feature and laud her authorial skill! By the end, I didn’t feel like I lacked for detail and am very much anticipating The Obelisk Gate.
The story winds through the lives of three main protagonists, moving among events in three separate and distinct time periods, and the cast around them is fairly sparse. Readers beware of that: this isn’t three stories taking place concurrently, so keeping track of what is happening when may, at first, be a bit rough. (Personally, I very much enjoyed Andrew Hussie’s Homestuck, which is, what, four timelines across two separate universes? The Fifth Seasons was, if anything, rather refreshing!) I must, here, spare a moment to applaud the performance by Robin Miles in the audiobook version! She fills every line with a deft nuance that pulled my heart whichever way she pleased. I have favorites among the narrators I have heard in books past and she may have just launched herself into first place.
Ultimately, The Fifth Season is good! The world is intriguing, though the details are sparse, and the few characters are realized well. There are enough elements left unresolved to keep my imagination engaged. Content warning: there’s a lot of dark stuff here, including various kinds of abuse. If you’re looking for a feel-good book to help you laugh a bit and maybe learn something about yourself... go read Sir Terry Pratchett, instead. If you enjoy a journey through a dark, post-apocalyptic, pseudo-medieval fantasy setting, check it out!
