(This review was written before I launched the review site)
I just finished reading The Fifth Season, by N.K. Jemisin.
I’ve heard a lot about this book. A couple people in my writing group have been singing its praises recently, and Amazon’s recommendation engine has been trying to bring it to my attention for…I don’t know how long. Years, at this point. I’m not sure why I never read it before now. Something about the book jacket description turned me off, I guess.
But recently I picked up How Long ‘til Black Future Month on sale, and realized that Jemisin really was someone I should be reading. And so I finally read The Fifth Season.
And goddamn did it not disappoint.
This is a rare one, right here. Holy shit, is this a rare one.
Where do I start?
How about the prose? I noticed in How Long ‘til Black Future Month that Jemisin likes to play around with the narrator, and that comes up in The Fifth Season as well, with some parts being told in second-person, some in third-person, and some addressing the reader directly to make little jokes or point out things you might have missed. In a different book, this would be annoying as shit. In Jemisin’s hands, it’s great. The changes in perspective are plot relevant in ways that are too clever for me to spoil for you.
Or how about the setting? An utterly original world of perpetual apocalypse, forever sundered by earthquakes and shadowed by ash clouds and exploding with strange and horrible geologic cataclysms. It’s inhabitants call it The Stillness, because they have a weird sense of humor.
Or how about the first line in the book? “Let’s start with the end of the world, shall we? Get it over with and move on to more interesting things.” That one’s getting a prominent spot in my list of great opening lines.
Or how about that last line in the book, which I won’t spoil for you but which is really fucking good?
This is the best bit, right here.
I spent the entire book knowing more about the world’s mythology than the characters in the book did. This is a world perpetually in a state of apocalypse, or busily preparing for the next apocalypse. Lore has been lost, many times. As such, none of the characters know as much about their world as they should, but the reader, with their knowledge of our modern Earth, can put some pieces together that no one in the setting would really be able to. If you read this book–and I heartily encourage you to do so–then I recommend that you pay attention to what is said, and also what isn’t said, what things are notable by their absence. Because everything pays off. Every conclusion that you make, every background “Oh hey, that’s neat” realization, is important. The amount of attention that Jemisin pays to what information she gives to the reader, and how that information might be combined with real-world knowledge, is fantastic.
I’d figured out the revelation inherent in the last line of the book far, far earlier, but hadn’t thought it actually had anything to do with the plot. I was wrong. Everything comes back.
“This is how the world ends,” says the prologue. “For the last time.”
Except that can mean two different things, can’t it?
Goddamn this is a good one. Read it. You’ll figure out what I’m talking about.
The second in the series is already loaded into my Kindle app.