The Fifth Season

It took me a minute - and when I say a minute, I mean about 200 pages or so - to realize that The Fifth Season didn't really feel like a story in of itself, but an opening chapter to a very large book. Also, that I wasn't enjoying it very much.

The world of The Fifth Season is one of regular calamity. Apocalyptic earthquakes and seismic events happening every hundred years or less, never allowing civilization to advance. What's viewed as both the protectors and the banes of this world are the orogenes - people born with the ability to affect the movements of the earth. If they're not killed at childhood when their abilities are discovered, they are taken to the Fulcrum, where they are trained to use their powers for the greater good. Make no mistake though, the Fulcrum is not Hogwarts. Grits are brought up with the knowledge that they literally don't count as people, and they have little right to their own bodies or their own lives. The Fifth Season gives us three perspectives into this world at three different times - a girl just brought to the Fulcrum to begin her training, an accomplished four-ringer assigned to a mission and to make a baby with another far more powerful orogene, and an orogene woman who had been in hiding, longing for revenge during the end of the world.

It's going to be hard to put my finger on it exactly, but I think what it was was that I never really felt invested in any of the characters. It certainly wasn't the world building, which as you could probably tell is absolutely fascinating. It's dense, for sure, but Jemisin has never been the type of writer to hold your hand. But what becomes clear within a few chapters is that this is a world built on horrible oppression and, most notably, the abuse of children. That left me with this tension throughout the whole book, like I was always anticipating a blow. When it came to the central characters, there wasn't enough that I felt like I could celebrate with them or about them, the only thing I felt with much acuteness was their pain. A book with mostly pain and little enjoyment feels kind of like a raw deal, doesn't it?

This is certainly a well-written book, with lots of fascinating plot devices, mysterious allies, and super creepy villains. There's some pretty exciting sequences, and Jemisin manages to make the orogenes' use of their powers not seem too abstract (there are some moments though when that stuff just kind of goes by in a blur). I just.... I don't know, I wasn't feeling it. It might have been the voice. Jemisin has always balanced her lofty fantasy worlds with relatable dialogue and sarcasm, but I think in this case the reliance on ironic humor made me feel more detached and even annoyed than invested. I think there's also some issues with the pacing. The way it bounces back and forth between perspectives, and the amount of time character spends traveling and observing things rather than doing things often ground things to halt. Jemisin has gotten away with this in the past, but that's mostly because I adored the characters and didn't mind wandering around for 300 pages with them. This was definitely not the case here.

This is one of those books that is really difficult to rate. Somewhere a little above a 3, because it feels more substantial than most middling 3-star books, but definitely not a 4 for me. A fascinating world, but not a very enjoyable story.