The Fifth Season

The Broken Earth, Book 1

By: N. K. Jemisin

Narrated by: Robin Miles

At the end of the world, a woman must hide her secret power and find her kidnapped daughter in this "intricate and extraordinary" Hugo Award winning novel of power, oppression, and revolution. (The New York Times)

This is the way the world ends...for the last time.

It starts with the great red rift across the heart of the world's sole continent, spewing ash that blots out the sun. It starts with death, with a murdered son and a missing daughter. It starts with betrayal, and long dormant wounds rising up to fester.

This is the Stillness, a land long familiar with catastrophe, where the power of the Earth is wielded as a weapon. And where there is no mercy.

Listen to the first book in the critically acclaimed, three-time Hugo award-winning trilogy by NYT best-selling author N. K. Jemisin.

PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying reference material will be available in your My Library section along with the audio.

©2015 N.K. Jemisin (P)2015 Hachette Audio

An honest review.

I read every review of this book after I finished it, and I have to say "thank goodness" because one of the reviews (which I reported) spoils part of it.

With that said, it seems that nearly every review is either glowing or mad and nothing in between and I have a sneaking suspicion that it's political so, with this review, I aim to be as unbiased as possible so that at least one of these rusting reviews is honest.

For starters, the narrator is flatter than Nebraska. Her range is so limited that it's hard to tell her characters apart with a couple exceptions. Schaffa the guardian is unique and Hoa is unique but the rest could be interchangeable as far as her dialect choices go. I had to give her a 3 star rating because it wasn't terrible but it was definitely not good.

The story flow is...odd...the first 1/4 of the book I was having a hard time keeping sh*t straight because there are 3 arcs that jump between first second and third person perspectives. Around the 3-4 hour mark I was able to start detangling them and they all made a lot more sense, and thus the book became much more enjoyable. "Slow burn" as one reviewer put it, is an understatement. With that said, the story is very enjoyable in my opinion and I gave it a 5 rating.

Now for the reason I feel like nearly every single review is biased: this book has LGBTQ elements (more on that in a bit) and goes out of its way to point out the color of most characters skin and the characteristics of their hair as pertaining to their race. Look, I'm gonna get this out of the way so that Leftists don't think I'm a nazi and Righters don't think I'm a "crying lib": I'm a center right republican and a normal human being that finds politics and their forced injection into every single facet of life to be tedious and monotone trash talk. So with that out of the way, I do feel like the LGBTQ stuff is kind of forced. Almost none of it serves a purpose other than to virtue signal, and it drags the parts of the book down because of it. Not because it's there but because it simply serves no point, and that's an objective statement. With that said, there's almost NONE OF IT throughout the entire book, so it was easy to just roll your eyes and get right over it. Simply put, it might mean a lot to someone that is LGBTQ and if it makes them happy to see it, then fine. Quite frankly it's a small part of the book so if it bothers you, you may need to reassess what you're doing with your life that you get butthurt over the mention of a female character having a penis (no joke, the time it took you to read that sentence is longer than most mentions of lgbtq). As far as the race goes, it's just as important to the story as it would be if you were describing real life races. People on the northern coast are white, equatorials are brown. That's exactly how it is in real life, so why should it matter when the author mentions it here? There's no demonizing of the white skined people as one reviewer mentioned, in fact the main character says how strikingly attractive many people find them. Having the main characters be black simply shouldn't matter, if it bothers you so much that a character in a book is black, maaayyybe you're an actual racist. I actually found myself thunking how awesome this book could be as a limited series of 7-10 episodes for the whole thing with a 90% black cast. Not only would it fit because it was written as such, but it's an awesome story as I mentioned before. No joke I got goosebumps when the Aurogony (no clue how to spell some of the goofy words in this book)battles and even the basic uses were going on. How freaking awesome of a concept to steal heat from everything around you as a source of power? And no that isn't a spoiler, it details it within 20 minutes of the book starting.

So any way, in short, this book is neither a perfect 5 star as many people probably rate it for the LGBTQ and black characters, but neither is it absolute trash as the homophobes and racist reviews paint it out to be. From an absolutely neutral standpoint, I think the author did a very great job with the story but her direction was questionable at best (she seriously destroys every single ounce of future tension with a plot twist about halfway through...WHHHYYYY??) but the narrator should have been literally anyone else.

3 on performance
5 on story
4 overall

Hope this helps some of you that are on the fence

Let's start with the end of the world

“After all, a person is herself, and others. Relationships chisel the final shape of one's being. I am me, and you.”
― N.K. Jemisin, The Fifth Season

This year, I'm trying to read more women, more minority voices. One advantage of this book was N.K. Jemisin presents the ability for a twofer. I had heard amazing things. With all things fantasy (or even the fantasy side of scifi, I am always a bit hesitant. I do have biases against fantasy). Reading Jemisin, for me, was like discovering Ursula K. Le Guin for the first time. Jemisin is a genius at world-making and characters. Her set-up is amazing and the reader only grasps what she is carefully unfolding with the three primary protagonists when you are about 4/5 done with the book. She is careful. She is at times beautiful. Her prose, for me, is almost there. She is wholly original. That doesn't mean there is no heredity to these books, but it doesn't mean she isn't confident to make big ideas hers; to bend and fold the genre to include issues on race, sex, gender, sexuality, family, class, community.

This is a book about power and control. Like all good scifi writing, it tells us, through scifi, hard things about ourselves. I am going to assume since this book (and her next two) won the Hugo that she is able to maintain her control over the next two novels. This amazes me. She is basically writing 400+ page novels in about a year. She is like Vollmann or King. She can write well, while writing BIG. I'm excited to see how the next installment plays out.

👍🏽👍🏽

I don’t know about some of the reviews I read which made me a little skeptical to start the series , as the book is solid and well rounded from world building , character development, and plot line. Maybe some people like a little more “simple” and straight forward of a story.

The book has a unique feel in the fantasy genre with still that old world journey. I have fully enjoyed this first installment and will continue ~

Emotional

This is a sad story. The main character checked into Heart Break Hotel and never left. I may need to borrow some tissues, have a long cry and call my mother.

Definitely worth it

Best science fiction book I've read in a long time. Definitely got my mind thinking about all the different possibilities in the plot, just to find out I was wrong each time. Wonderful narration too. Anyone else might have gotten it wrong.

slow and boring

Just kept going nowhere and I had to stop before it bored me to death.

spectacular

wonderful world building, compelling story and characters, amazing voice performance. a truly unique fantasy world.

It starts slow but blooms into a real page turner.

I am looking forward to the rest of the series. a world perilously balanced by powers and deceptions is slowly unveiled as a child grows into a powerful force. Forged stronger by a lifetime of abuse a hero finds their way to the stark realities of the world. Though I find many parts of the story easily telegraphed I am still left wanting more.

So DAMN good

I never noticed how uncomfortably comfortable I’d gotten with botched or clumsy depictions of LGBT characters and stories in media until I read this book. This book made LGBT people exist so naturally in the space that it felt seamless. The identity of these characters was neither ignored nor the core of their motivations, it was a noteworthy aspect that informed a more well rounded set of drives. That is to say - they were PEOPLE. It’s so simple but it’s something I literally never knew I had been longing for until I had it. A fully fleshed out queer characters?! WHAT! I cannot say enough about this book. It breaks your heart in all the right ways and manages to express something profound without laying it bare for the lazy reader. GOD I LOVE THIS BOOK AND AUTHOR.

Captivating!!

I LOVED the book and the narration! it kept me on the edge of me seat and wrapped up in this world.