“The Fifth Season” by N.K. Jemison

I’ll be honest, I’ve been in a bit of a fantasy slump lately. I absolutely loved fantasy for most of my life, I grew up on fantasy novels and absolutely loved diving into fantastic worlds that didn’t have the need to justify themselves the same way sci fi books do. But I haven’t been into it lately. I think I’ve been frustrated with the tropes of a lot of fantasy books. Most of them are horribly misogynistic, not exactly racially inclusive, and they fall back on the same plot twists. Not to mention that most of them are very sexually explicit and violent. And I’m not really into detailed descriptions of sex, thanks.

However, this book has restored a lot of my hope in fantasy books. It’s written by a very cool, Black, female author. So you know this is going to be good. You can tell that she puts in a lot of racially diverse characters, as well as queer characters!

The Fifth Season starts off with the story of Essun, written in the second person. This is very interesting in and of itself, the only other book that I’ve read in second person was If on a winter’s night a traveler. It tells you from the beginning that the book is going to be interesting! Essun just found out that her husband killed her son for being an orogene, someone who can harness the power of the Earth to do incredible things like moving mountains and quelling earthshakes. She realizes that her husband has left with her daughter, and she goes on a quest to find her.

There are two other voices that give narration. One of them is Damaya, a young girl who has recently found out that she’s an orogene and is being sent to the capitol for training. Orogenes are seen as weapons, not people, so they are inhumanely trained and bred at the capitol. Damaya’s perspective is key as that is how the reader finds out a lot about the world, through Damaya’s eyes. For example, we find out that Guardians are individuals who are trained in subduing orogenes. Damaya’s Guardian, Schaffa, breaks her wrist the first day they know each other to demonstrate his power and his willingness to stop her by any means if he needs to.

The other voice is Syenite. Syenite is a young orogene at the capitol, trying to rise through its ranks and gain respect. She’s sent to an older, very powerful orogene, Alabastor, to go on a mission together to a city on the coast. Their harbor is closing so they have been sent to clear it. Part of this mission is that they are supposed to be having sex in order to have a baby that’ll hopefully be a powerful orogene as well. That way the capitol continually has a supply of new weapons.

What is really fascinating about this narrative, as I alluded to earlier, is that the audience isn’t told much directly. You learn the vocabulary and the norms of the culture as you go, piecing it together from context clues. Damaya’s story is the only one where we are told much explicitly in the form of exposition. It’s world building and story telling at its finest really, you never feel like a reader, more of an observer. Especially with the second person narration!

The other thing I adore about this book is how it turns tropes on their heads. The powerful, magical individuals, the orogenes, are seen as less than human and used as weapons. Most other fantasy series that I have seen do the opposite where the magical individuals are worshipped and revered. So much of the story is about how these people are controlled and harnessed for the use of the civilization. People try and kill Essun when they realize that she’s an orogene, not that it does much since she’s incredibly powerful, but it shows how hard she has worked to keep that hidden. Syenite works hard to make sure that she and Alabastor are respected in the city that they have come to save. Even Damaya is shunned by her family when they realize what she is. It’s fascinating seeing how this works and how integrated into the civilization this hatred is.

I’d be remiss if I didn’t comment on the representation. Alabastor is shown to be queer and enjoy sex with men rather than women. Immon is another queer character, seems to be more bisexual, and openly flirts with men and women. Tonkee is a homeless ex-scholar that Essun befriends on her way to find her daughter, and she is revealed to be a trans woman who was rejected by her family. Many characters are described as having darker skin, or with kinky or curly hair. There are different races described in the society, I haven’t really plotted out which are Black or white, but clearly there’s a mix! It’s so good to see.

I initially started this book because of a queer book club. I’m so glad that I did that, this has been an excellent read and wonderfully enough, Jemison has many books, including the rest of the trilogy that this book is from. I’ll for sure finish this series, and hopefully get to her others. It just was so nice to revisit fantasy from an angle that I found more palatable than the usual junk.