the fifth season
by n.k. jemisin
★★★★☆
dates read: 8/3/23 - 8/12/23 ! this review contains spoilers !
"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 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." (taken from goodreads)
“This is what you must remember: the ending of one story is just the beginning of another.”
the fifth season was a refreshing break from the endless slog of tolkien-esc fantasy novels i had read in the past few weeks. it reminded me of all the things that i enjoyed about the priory of the orange tree.
now the one thing about the fifth season that i haven't really seen in other novels, even beyond the fantasy genre, is the implementation of a second person narration. although i'm not sure why jemisin made the decision to involve the least popular narrative point of view, it eradicated the distance between character and reader in a way that i've never experienced before. however, that is only with essun's story, since the other two characters' stories, syenite and damaya, are both written in the third person. perhaps essun is written in the second person because she's the closest to the present in the timeline of events or she's in her most authentic form or maybe jemisin put all of her characters' names in a hat and drew one randomly. i honestly have no idea why essun is specially written. either way, jemisin allows the reader to be apart of her story and engage with the text on a more personal level, cultivating a more intimate reading experience.
another thing about essun narration that i found satisfying was that the second person point of view was not simply a stylistic decision but a big part of the plot. the narrator of essun's story is not a omnipotent invisible entity that never gets revealed like in the hobbit or the buried giant, two other books i've read recently that involve very present third person narrators who speak directly to the reader but are never explained. since they reside in an ambiguous space as narrators, they are and are not characters at the same time which leads to a lot of unanswered questions for me as a reader that i find frustrating, like who are you? how do you know this information? what role do i as a reader play in all of this? all that to say that jemisin doesn't have this issue. although the reveal of who essun's narrator is at the end of the book, i expect that the character and the reasons for why they are narrating at all will become really important later on in the series.
finally moving on from narration, the fifth's season's plot is cyclical and it's even prefaced in the beginning of the book. the concept of cycles is an important component of jemisin's plot that i enjoyed reading. the reveal that essun, syenite, and damaya are one character is the best example of cycles in the fifth season. since jemisin writes these three phases of essun's life as completely separate characters, she implies that damaya, syenite, and essun are not the same person even though they are. each name signifies a new beginning, a new life for the character. the character lives through one period of her life, but eventually adopts a new identity and is forced to start all over again. although i suspected that they might have been the same character once or twice while reading, it still made for an interesting twist.
speaking of identity, i'm glad to have finally read a piece of fantasy literature that surrounds an afrocentric world. once again, it's refreshing. although the stillness is a work of fiction, jemisin stays true to the very real, historical struggles of people of african descent through the orogenes and the dehumanizing nature of their position, the facade of their social mobility, their weaponization, the uneven power imbalances, and the propagated hatred directed towards them by the ones in control. with that being said, alabaster was probably one of my favorite characters as he teaches syenite about all the ways that the system is failing the orogenes, whether its from rewriting the history of stonelore or enslavement even in death at the node maintainers.
jemisin's world building in the fifth season is also incredible. while there are parts of the stillness' history that remain a mystery, it reflects the detachment required for new beginnings. the fleshed out geography. the physical appearances, cultures, and economies of different regions. the slang and language. jemisin is really a master of her craft, making her fictional world feel tangible.
in totality, i enjoyed the fifth season despite my qualms with the fantasy genre and perhaps that is due to the science fiction nature of jemisin's book or that it isn't anywhere within five miles of being considered high fantasy.