THE FIFTH SEASON: BOOK REVIEW
In the wake of Game of Thrones, works labeled “dark fantasy” have pervaded the literary market. The meaning of this genre is self-evident – it’s fantasy, but edgier – but it’s a capacious descriptor, and it rarely refers to an actual tone or set of tropes. I’ve picked up two kinds of self-declared “dark fantasy” books in the past year: vanilla fantasy with nary a brutal element, and simplistic bro-fantasy that revels in white patriarchal nihilism. N.K. Jemisin’s The Fifth Season, however, has sharpened the diluted genre label in my mind. Her 2015 Hugo-earning novel, the first in a trilogy of subsequent winners, uses its apocalyptic bleakness for a tangible, relevant impact. It avoids navel-gazing and violent spectacle, channeling its uglier elements into hard-hitting commentary on marginalization, climate change, and sexual politics. It says what it means without flinching, redefining “dark fantasy” and unearthing the specific literary purpose it should serve.
Since 2010, N.K. Jemisin has published ten novels and many short stories. After a self-described tough journey into the publishing world, she has used her platform to speak out against racism, climate change, and gentrification, among other social issues. Her Broken Earth series, beginning with The Fifth Season, is the first trilogy ever to win a Hugo for all three novels, which also makes Jemisin the first author to win three Hugos consecutively.
The Fifth Season primarily follows Essun, a woman concealing orogenic powers to channel the earth’s energy. She lives in a small common within the Stillness, a geologically tumultuous continent prone to Fifth Seasons, long eras fraught with cataclysmic natural disasters. When her husband discovers that their children share her supernatural talent, killing one and abducting the other, Essun embarks on a quest to save her daughter. As a red rift erupts along, the Stillness and another Fifth Season begins, she discovers unexpected truths and allies. But her world is poised to end, and her past will not keep silent – if she fails to confront her own immense power and identity as an orogene, they will surely consume her.
The Fifth Season’s subplots (spoilers ahead) trace Damaya and Syenite, two past names and eras of Essun’s life. As a child, one of the enigmatic and terrifying Guardians recognizes Damaya’s power and takes her to the Fulcrum, where his order trains orogenes to stabilize the Stillness. Inside, Damaya uncovers the brutality her world inflicts on orogenes. As a young woman working for the Fulcrum, Syenite discovers its full extent on a mission to destroy a mysterious underwater mass and reproduce with Alabaster, another orogene of legendary power. She begins to understand her connection to the massive, floating obelisks that remain behind from dead civilizations, and she learns to weaponize them against the Fulcrum. She and Alabaster flee to a secret pirate colony before the Guardians return to blow Syenite’s new safety apart.
As you likely gathered from this summary, The Fifth Season does not offer many answers about its world or its characters. Clearly the first in a trilogy, it presents little more than a compelling start – but it is, undeniably, compelling. The book primarily functions as an introduction to the protagonist in all her stages of development. However, it doesn’t reveal its three point-of-view characters as the same person until close to the end. This twist gives the book its entire structural backbone; it also gives Essun remarkable layers. She lives every type of orogene experience within the Stillness, from a child with no understanding of her power to a Fulcrum agent bound in service for it to a mother hiding it for the sake of her children. Thus, she understands the full weight of life as an immensely powerful minority, feared and used by the people around her.
Essun gets a broad view on her fragmented civilization that no one else attains, making her the perfect entry point into this world. Her continual trauma and grief present a perspective on worlds in tumult, like our own, and her unique power makes her an earth-moving titan and a target for oppression alike. Through Essun’s experience, Jemisin crafts a nuanced allegory for living in a troubled world with a marginalized identity – pointing mostly to racial identities, but keeping the metaphor broad enough to apply widely. She posits that difference begets power, but only when the “different” seize their own identities through radical resistance and self-acceptance.
The Fifth Season leans hard into existentialist theming through its characters’ relations to the world. Every time the Stillness faces a Fifth Season, civilizations and much of humanity die. Apocalypse is a recurring certainty in this universe, and its people believe that human life matters little. The Fulcrum sacrifices orogenes readily to steady the earth with their magic. Institutions and nations rarely last very long. When Fifth Seasons occur, comms and cities turn completely inward to survive. It takes Essun decades to develop a conception of personal worth, specifically because of her subjugation as an orogene but broadly because the Stillness has no concept of meaningful individualism.
Beyond its political and existential scope, The Fifth Season functions well as a high fantasy work. Jemisin engages a comprehensive knowledge of genre tropes through extensive detail and subversive worldbuilding. She builds from the ground up (pun intended), starting with the geologic tumult of the Stillness and crafting her civilization around its brutality. The continent’s culture infuses every scene, though Jemisin never stops dead to explain; she introduces a complex caste system and chain of leadership through reference and background detail alone.
I found The Fifth Season’s magic system, orogeny, particularly unique in context. The concepts of randomly empowered people and oppressed magical minorities are nothing new, but Jemisin allows orogeny to impact the Stillness far more than traditional fantasy would allow. In any other world, orogeny would feel ridiculously overpowered; orogenes can suck energy from their environments and command the earth’s elements to a seemingly limitless degree. Their power could easily tear the world apart – but this works in The Fifth Season, because the Stillness, by nature, rips apart over and over again. Jemisin has accepted apocalyptic destruction as a fundamental aspect of her world, so cataclysmically powerful magic fits in. The narrative never shies away from mass destruction, and orogeny fits right in.
There are many aspects of The Fifth Season that I haven’t touched upon; the text is remarkably layered and thematically dense. It’s difficult to analyze certain elements of this work, including Alabaster’s philosophy and the purpose of the mythical stone eaters, without reading the next two books. Nevertheless, I’d recommend The Fifth Season to fans of openly political and character-focused fantasy novels. It does “dark fantasy” with thematic purpose, and it serves as a thrilling opener for a series well worth reading.