The Fifth Season (The Broken Earth, #1) in The Toast

Sep 27, 2016 Adam rated it it was amazing

Shelves: fantasy, ecofiction, audiobook, geology

The Fifth Season is billed as fantasy, but it almost feels like a pastiche of classic scifi. It's got a school section that is basically a riff on Ender's Game, its magic users are a naturalistic take on Jedi, and the world feels very reminiscent of Dune, in both the knife-edge risk ecology of its human settlements and its political and social structures. This impression is heightened by Jemisin's (IMO inexplicable) tendency to use scifi-isms where normal words would do, like saying 'gyneer rath The Fifth Season is billed as fantasy, but it almost feels like a pastiche of classic scifi. It's got a school section that is basically a riff on Ender's Game, its magic users are a naturalistic take on Jedi, and the world feels very reminiscent of Dune, in both the knife-edge risk ecology of its human settlements and its political and social structures. This impression is heightened by Jemisin's (IMO inexplicable) tendency to use scifi-isms where normal words would do, like saying 'gyneer rather than engineer. There's a lot of Capital Letter castes and social roles and it feels like Capital W Worldbuilding, all of which I could do without and are hardly integral to the book.

But those are superficial complaints, and they were quickly swept away for me by the immediacy of the prose and the extent to which it matches my expectations for an ideologically modern series. If it evokes classic scifi, it does so not so much in nostalgic aspiration as in confident, progressive modernization of all of their ideas. It's dramatically inclusive of queer relationships and has maybe more trans characters than the rest of the fiction I've read combined. It's both matter-of-fact and kind about this, in the same way that it is about everything. It's grindingly realist, full of hardship and hard choices, but void of the performative cruelty and cynicism of the Grimdark subgenre. There's no destiny or morally aligned factions; just history and survival and deep-time mysteries.

Orogen abilities resemble the Force in their ability to move objects telepathically, but they're constrained by entropy and conservation of energy. Those abilities are heritable, if unpredictably, but they're not cosmically aristocratic. Interestingly, they're not tied to puberty, as such superpowers almost invariably are--the explanation that seems implied is more evolution than predestination.

As a geology minor, the geological nature of the history and magic was extremely satisfying. It could perhaps evoke more of a sense of deep and layered time, but it has been revealed only in myth and cryptic hints so far, so I'm sure that will come as the series progresses. What is clear already, though, is that human history and biology are deeply defined by the planet's geology and ecology, and that history has shaped the planet in turn. It's an intriguing backstory.

The worldbuilding is good, but it's the narration that really puts The Fifth Season over the top. It's tremendously rich and empathetic, despite prose that tends toward terse restraint over indulgent lyricism. It gambles on two experimental (or at least unusual and challenging) devices and pulls them off with grace, and both are central to the novel's success. The audiobook is excellent (with the exception of the reader's unfortunate Southern accent for Tonkee (sp?)) and really sells the intimacy of Jemisin's writing.

I know I've been saying this about a lot of books lately, which is awesome, but Fifth Season is another in the contemporary fantasy books that are doing exactly the kind of materialist, progressive fantasy I'm looking for. In this case it comes with the added benefits of an intricately geological and environmental history, and an ambitious and effective narrative voice that digs into rich emotional territory. Surely worthy of its Hugo. ...more

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Sep 19, 2017 Jessica rated it it was amazing

It took me four attempts but I'm so glad I read it. ...more

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May 05, 2016 Meghan rated it it was amazing

Shelves: fantasy, ebook, bipoc-authors

A future Earth where earthquakes, volcanoes and other geological calamities happen with disturbing regularity, where there are Seasons communities must prepare for - years where there will be ash clouding the sky and nothing will grow, or where rivers and water sources will dry up, or other widespread calamities will strike. The preparations for these Seasons are ruthless but ensure that at least some survivors will make it. In this way the Sanze empire has survived for thousands of years

An Oreg ...more

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Sep 17, 2017 keri. rated it it was amazing

Shelves: fiction, fantasy, sciencefictions, insanebutawesome, queer, dystopia, audiobook, creepy, ebook, 2017

that was both compelling and CRAZY AS FUCK, so I guess I'm all in. ...more

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Jul 26, 2015 Alicia rated it really liked it

Jemisin's latest--the start of a new trilogy, yay!!--is another complicated, amazing, bonkers piece of fiction. It's set in a world where, periodically, major natural disaster extinguish large swathes of life on earth. There are also people who can control rocks/the ground, considered very dangerous (though some are discovered as children and taken to a central sort of facility where they are trained and controlled and their powers are hopefully used for good). I don't want to say anything else ...more

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May 17, 2018 Flora rated it it was amazing

Shelves: scifi-fantasy-speculative, lgbtqia

Really engrossing, well written, well thought out, diverse fantasy. It has such a cool concept and the worldbuilding is so cleverly done. I can't wait to read the rest of the series. ...more

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