The Fifth Season
by N.K. Jemisin
published by Hachette
2015
It’s been a while since I read an expansive sciency, future/past work of fiction, so I am delighted to have found this book, the first in The Broken Earth Trilogy by N.K. Jemisin. There’s a lot of sciency stuff to geek out over, and I need to tell you just enough about it to tempt you, without spoiling anything about it.
In a future or alternative earth, humans and much other life on earth has nearly been wiped out by extreme seismic and volcanic activity. Periodic volcanic winters that last from years to decades have dramatically limited human habitation and survival, and people lead relatively simple lives while forever preparing for the next time ash blots out the sky. Civilizations have risen and fallen, over and over, scattering technology that no one remembers how to operate around the remaining large continent where people scrape by.
Some of the surviving humans have inexplicable skills in managing or controlling seismic activities. Those who can be trained and controlled by the dominant empire are exploited to minimize earthquakes for society, but are killed if they become too independent; those who aren’t controlled by the empire are killed by mobs, even if they are just children, due to superstition and fear surrounding their abilities.
The story follows the adventures of several individuals, but especially a woman who secretly has these seismic energy powers. She returns home to find the body of her murdered toddler, and pulls herself together just enough to begin a quest to avenge her son and rescue her daughter; this happens shortly after a major seismic event may have set off potential mass death across the earth again…
The characters, who are organized into three groups, are engaging and interesting enough that I got misty over what my favorites experienced; the societies we see are superstitious and nearly feudal, but the powers that trained seismic experts wield are advanced; there are subtle technologies that people can’t interpret as such; there are non-humans present that people likewise can’t interpret or perceive correctly; the many abandoned structures and mysteries of prior civilizations have me giddy with curiosity, even while people are almost completely disinterested for practical (if misguided) concerns about their immediate survival. And, as a multi-racial person, I am delighted with the descriptions of the characters, most of whom have brown skin of different shades, and kinky or curly hair. The fact that they have these characteristics is completely normal, as it should be.
This is an engaging, FUN, gloomy, interesting book! I recommend this book for other people who also have a go-bag ready for earthquakes, who generally object to empires, who wish people weren’t so suspicious of education, and who desperately want to know what the abandoned tech lying (or HOVERING ) around is for! I’m looking forward to the next two books in this trilogy.