The Fifth Season

This book is indisputably a great book.
The universe is so original, character well built, diverse etc... I've for sure never read anything similar.
But the writing was so difficult for me to get in.
The complexity of the informations you have to compute was important and due to English not being my first language I had difficulties to get in.
It is not a light reading !!
I am really curious to know what's going to happen in the next book now that I am more familiar with the all context. Would definitely recommend but not to people new to fantasy or reading in english.

My favorite genres in books are Action and Fantasy. I travel all around the world in my imagination by reading all the action/adventure spy novels I can find. And the other extreme is fantasy - to escape our world completely. Even though my favorites in fantasy are Tolkien and Harry Potter, I have read more of the YA dystopian and paranormal books; probably because epic fantasy deserves a more patient and immersive reading. Game of thrones has prompted me onto the path again and I decided on one very highly reviewed and award winning - The Fifth Season.

The world in the book is called Stillness, a little ironic considering it is constantly ravaged by seismic events - massive earthquakes, volcanic eruptions and tsunamis which occur every hundred years or so and destroy the world and its people. The only constant in the world is the struggle for survival. Here, there exist a group of people called orogenes who can control the earth's thermal and kinetic energy to quell the seismic events. Even though they help keep the world safe, they are the most controlled and oppressed by the leadership, with the masses brainwashed about the dangers of associating with them.

The book is about three women orogenes in different stages of their lives, their ordeals and the perils that follow them. Essun is an older woman whose husband killed their two year old son on discovering that he is an orogene. She leaves in search of him and their daughter to get justice. Damaya is a young girl whose family decides to inform and give her up to the Fulcrum as soon as they find out about her powers. What follows is her journey and life in the Fulcrum, training to control her powers and rise up. Syenite is a four-ringed orogene aspiring for more when she is tasked with producing a child with the only ten-ringed orogene known. They travel together on assignment, alternately hating and getting to know each other, helping with the quakes that they encounter on the way. Their stories and lives merge in a very unexpected way to give us a dark and gritty tale.

This book is not like your usual fare where all the plot lines converge to give you a satisfactory conclusion. Here, you get to know the expansive world, its atmosphere, the people, their trials and tribulations, the oppression of the orogenes, histories of the previous seasons that destroyed the world. This is a world where people believe that Father Earth hates them and they should do everything to survive. Amidst these brutal conditions, we get to see some beautiful relationships between unexpected people, small glimmers of hope and love in a world full of despair. This book is hard to understand for the first 20% or so but if you get past it, then what you get is a never before seen fantasy world with characters you can root for. I am eagerly waiting to read The Obelisk Gate.

Executive Summary: Dark, yet somehow not bleak. This book is in easily in contention for one of my favorite reads of the year. Not to be missed.

Audio book: This was first time listening to a book narrated by Robin Miles. She does a fine job, and is a good fit for the story. She speaks clearly and was easy to hear.

I put her into the above average category, such that while she didn't really add to the story to make this a must listen she doesn't get in the way of the story either, such that listening to this book is a good option in my opinion, but not a must listen.

Full Review
This is now the third book of Ms. Jemisin I've gotten from a daily deal. I never got around to trying either of her previous two series, but after enjoying this one so much, they have definitely moved up in my queue.

All of my friends were raving about this book earlier this year, but if not for a daily deal, I might have overlooked it. I'm glad I didn't.

It will be hard to put into words exactly why I loved this book so much without massive spoilers to the plot. Suffice to say, this book was excellently written.

The book starts off rather dark and that gave me pause, yet somehow Ms. Jemisin sucked me into the narrative so completely that I was never really bothered by it. It's not all bleakness either. Much like life there are ups and downs, albeit maybe more downs than many people experience in a lifetime.

The stories of Damaya, Syenite, and Essun were all engaging, and intermixed in a perfect way that while you hated to step away from one story, you were always just as happy to return to another.

The world building is really fascinating to me too. I have a lot of questions lingering at the end, that I hope will be addressed in the later volumes. The magic is unique and interesting. That's getting harder and harder these days. Normally I like well explained and structured magic systems the best. In this case however the mystery of the magic system and sense of discovery as the book goes on worked really well for me.

This book is full of social commentary, that may turn some people away who just want a “fun” story. It's their loss. I think Ms. Jemisin does a great job of exploring issues relevant to our own world while telling an incredibly engaging and entertaining story. In fact some of the things were so well done, that I didn't notice them at first, or didn't really give the much thought until after stopping for the day.

This review doesn't do this excellent book justice. I rarely give books five stars though, so that should hopefully give some idea.

This is a refreshing book in an oversaturated fantasy market. I hope the next two can live up to bar set by this one. In the meantime I might have to make some time to check out some of Ms. Jemisin's previous work, especially since I own the first book of each of her last two series.