The Fifth Season

Stonelore is as old as intelligence. It's all that's allowed humankind to survive through Fifth Season after Fifth Season, as they huddle together while the world turns dark and cold. The lorists tell stories of what happens when people – political leaders or philosophers or well-meaning meddlers of whatever type – try to change the lore. Disaster inevitably results.

I don't read a lot of Fantasy – mostly because I'm disappointed (bored or annoyed) when I do – but I liked Fifth Season just fine. It has interesting world-building, the tension of mysteries slowly revealed, and as the first volume in a trilogy, it lays a solid foundation for upcoming conflict. I wasn't fascinated or breathless during this read, but I was certainly interested and entertained throughout. What more could I ask for?

This is what you must remember: the ending of one story is just the beginning of another. This has happened before, after all. People die. Old orders pass. New societies are born. When we say “the world has ended,” it’s usually a lie, because the planet is just fine.
But this is the way the world ends.
This is the way the world ends. This is the way the world ends.
For the last time.

The world of Fifth Season appears to be Earth, but in an epoch far in our own future. We have prompted some ecological disaster (the details of which are hinted at) that wipes out our own civilisation (just one of many deadcivs the planet's current residents dismiss as useless nonsurvivors; some future deadciv will send obelisks of semi-precious stone spinning into the skies), and the Earth we leave behind is so unstable that periodic supervolcano eruptions cause decade- or century-long famines that humanity struggles to survive. An Imperial system of continent-wide government arises (the map provided looks like a recast North and South America with added sections of the polar regions) that provides stability from the top, but when a “Fifth Season” occurs, individual survival depends on the preparedness of one's comm (or community); a walled city with caches of food, a reliable water supply, and the right mix of workers, leaders, breeders, and defenders. Although Fifth Seasons might be centuries or millennia apart, daily life inside the comms is all about disaster preparedness: teaching stonelore to the children (the proven rules for endurance passed down on tablets from the original survivors) and constantly evaluating the population – being wary of strangers who try to move into your comm, and especially, watching for the presence of orogenes; and this is where it gets interesting.

Somehow along the way, humans have evolved sessapinae; an ability to sense the slightest shifts in the tectonic plates. And in a small percentage of humanity, this sense is so acute that these people – the orogenes – can draw power from the Earth's core and use it to quell tremors before they start; or use it as a weapon against the ungifted. In far-flung comms, when an orogenic child is discovered (usually as an infant who doesn't understand and can't control his actions), he'll be killed out of fear. But proper procedure involves notifying officials in the capital city of Yumenes so that the child can be put under control of a Guardian (another type of human who has evolved [or been enhanced with?] the ability to nullify an orogene's powers), who will bring him to the Fulcrum – a training centre where orogenes develop the control over their gifts necessary to keep the world stable. 

There was an age before the Seasons, when life and Earth, its father, thrived alike. (Life had a mother, too. Something terrible happened to Her.) Earth our father knew He would need clever life, so He used the Seasons to shape us out of animals: clever hands for making things and clever minds for solving problems and clever tongues for working together and clever sessapinae to warn us of danger. The people became what Father Earth needed, and then more than He needed. Then we turned on Him, and He has burned with hatred for us ever since.

That's the world, and here's the non-spoilery plot: Fifth Season follows three orogenes at different stages of life – a child as she is first brought to the Fulcrum, a young adult as she is sent on an Imperial mission, and an older woman who is searching for her daughter in the chaos at the beginning of a new Fifth Season – and as a format, this does an excellent job of setting up all the ways that this world works. The storyline I liked the best was Syenite's: as an ambitious young woman raised at the Fulcrum, she understands the limits of her options and how to advance within the Imperial system. When she is paired with an unhelpful mentor, Alabaster, for her first big mission, Syen determines to take care of everything with or without his help. But as they travel through the countryside and Alabaster shows her how stability (geological and governmental) is actually achieved – as he opens her eyes to the fact that orogenes are brainwashed into slavery despite their superior powers – Syen gets the first behind-the-curtain glimpse of systemic iniquity; the first notion that rebellion is possible.

This is a war with many sides, not just two. Did you think it was just the stills and the orogenes? No, no. Remember the stone eaters and the Guardians, too - oh, and the Seasons. Never forget Father Earth. He has not forgotten you. 

We (the we of our present I figure) must do something pretty awful to the Earth that will make us forevermore personalise the planet's efforts to wipe us out; and that's an interesting topic to consider (and perhaps dread) in the world of today. As author N. K. Jemisin is a woman of colour, I appreciate that she wrote strong female characters; that the highest standard for beauty in her society is a mixed race with bronze skin and athletic builds; genre fiction is stronger when written in a variety of voices. And despite recognising this as a female voice, Fifth Season isn't chic lit; there's plenty of unladylike sex and violence, politics and coarse language (and as I see this book is rated highly by men as well as women, it must not come across as too feminised). Our future selves seem to accept without comment a range of sexual and gender fluidity, and that's good, too. So here's my only complaint: even in a book approaching five hundred pages, I understand that the first volume in a trilogy needs to focus on setting up the eventual true conflict (and in the Fantasy genre, with its world-building, this is probably even more true), so not only did Fifth Season feel a little underplotted, but I didn't connect with any of the main characters either (and never understood Alabaster, Hoa, or other foreground males). But while this feels like a slight drawback now, I assume the second volume will read like the place-setter of all mid-series books, and trust that Jemisin has big plans for the finale; this is my familiar dilemma with all trilogies, but I trust this author's imagination to pull it all off. This was maybe not a perfect read, but I am intrigued by Jemisin's world, have already picked up the next book, and am giving four stars to rank Fifth Season against other Fantasy I have read.