The Fifth Season by N.K. Jemisin

What does it mean to be forgiven? The Fifth Season by N.K. Jemisin takes place on an Earth where there is excessive seismic activity. The plates of the earth move so frequently that they regularly cause what is called a fifth season - an extended winter marked by harsh environmental conditions from volcanic and tectonic activity, often killing its inhabitants. The world centers on types of humans and non-humans who suffer through these changes and, at times, exert a certain amount of control over the environmental conditions. Characters who can display power over the tectonic activity are called orogenes - people who can tap into the thermal and rock earth energies and use that to their advantage. Their powers are not limited to just the energies of the earth; they can also manipulate the heat energy of life within humans, too. The story focuses on three different plot lines that help establish how the various civilizations and powers that be survive through these conditions, always at odds with Father Earth. The Earth is masculine in this book and punishing. Orogenes are involved in a societal dichotomy: They are hated by “stills” (humans without orogeny) because of their sometimes uncontrollable power, while simultaneously, they are valued and utilized by The Fulcrum (a significant branch of one of the longest standing civilizations on this Earth in the capitol city Yumenes) for political ends. These biases and exploitations go back millennia in the history that N.K. Jemisin weaves through characters’ storytelling and the appendices. Through Father Earth’s treatment of his peoples and the clash between different species on his lands, Jemisin shows that forgiveness is not a concept that is present much at all in this world. Resentment, punishment, fear, and internalizing mistakes as shame dominate the characters’ motivations and internal processes over and over again. 

One thing that Jemisin does especially well is leaving the reader wanting more. This is my introduction to The Broken Earth trilogy. Jemisin creates a world in The Fifth Season where there are many loose ends. What does it mean that The Fulcrum created obelisks? What about Essun makes Hoa so interested in her? What about Alabaster’s relationship to stone eaters resulted in his state in the final scene? What are the motivations of the Guardians, other than just “control the orogenes,” and what does it mean when their “procedures go wrong” as Schaffa showed us in Damaya’s timeline? What happened to Jija and Nassun - the controversy that began the book? I would be remiss if I didn’t mention that Jemisin writes queer characters enmeshed in temporary throuples who watch each other getting fucked, who hide their queerness in dismissive summary of past events. I know that I will come back to finish the trilogy at another time because I have a lot of questions. And I want answers. 

The book as a whole serves as a strong allegory for various experiences of Black people in our real world. Most, if not all, characters are Black, and Jemisin makes that especially clear. As a white audience member reading this, it does not feel like my place to attempt to make conclusions about Jemisin’s experience as a Black woman and how that would influence her writing. What did pique my curiosity as a white reader, though, was which characters were symbols of white people within white supremacy in the book. It seems certain that orogenes take the role of Black people in the United States: hated widely by individuals because of who they are, but they serve a larger political purpose for those in power by being forced into school, abused, and trained, only to be exploited later. Logically, that would make Guardians an allegory for slave masters. In The Fifth Season, the Guardians do not take up a lot of space on the page. Though when they are present, Guardians are cruel, abusive, power hungry, and greedy. Guardians are appointed “matches” (for lack of a better word) with orogenes. In one scene, a girl orogene is sold by her mother to a Guardian. Orogenes who are pulled into the formal schooling system through The Fulcrum get paired with a Guardian who teaches them about history, obedience, and how to improve as an orogene. In this world, it seems that the pairing of the two requires that the Guardian abuse their orogene to ensure a power dynamic. From attempted kidnapping to broken hands to obsessive pursuits, Guardians know how to make someone feel fear and never forget it. This dynamic that Jemisin writes reminds me of a vital lesson from U.S. history that white people should understand: for so long in U.S. history, Black people were treated as property without any rights by every single white person. Black people’s existence in American history was as an object that served white people’s desires with severe violence as the consequence for disobeying. PBS has an article about Antebellum slavery that describes the dynamic between Guardians and orogenes: “Enslaved African Americans could never forget their status as property, no matter how well their owners treated them.” This rings true for Damaya’s relationship to Schaffa as a Guardian. How many times did Jemisin write that the love Schaffa expressed to Damaya was directly connected to his power over her, and his potential to harm her?

Jemisin takes good care to play with identity as a concept throughout her book. There are multiple reveals in The Fifth Season that make it apparent that true knowledge of someone’s identity has high stakes in this world. Orogenes regularly try to hide from “stills” that they are orogenes so they can stay safe and out of harm’s way (and away from pursuit by the Guardians). There are multiple characters from multiple timelines and species who encounter each other and take time to realize who, or what, the other might be. Identity by blood, species, and name matters a lot. Characters have what are called “comm names” and “use names.” Respectively, these reference which community someone is a part of and which social-labor role within the apocalypse the person takes on.

Fantasy as a genre grants writers the opportunity to prove just how much they can breathe life into a world - its written history and what is erased, and what it means that some things are saved and others are not. Which parts of history are designed by those in power, granting forgiveness or condemnation as they see fit. The appendices in the end of the book serve an important purpose for the reader: a glossary of terms for a new fantastical world and a history of the various seasons that have been recorded throughout time. The appendix that describes the various seasons gives the reader an idea of the depth that Jemisin writes with. She invents an entire history, rife with centuries of resentments and prescribed social roles between different factions in the world. This is what inspires my belief that forgiveness is such an essential element of this story. History in our real world begets questions of power and considering the source and who is being erased. Jemisin writes the lore and storytelling of The Fifth Season with emphasis that orogenes carry millennia of stigma against them, creating a barrier between them and ever earning forgiveness from the humans of the world, the established societies, the Guardians who haunt them, and Father Earth itself. Always having the worst assumed of them, orogenes must navigate a world where they are expected to be the villain and that any kindnesses from strangers (rare in the first place) will be stripped from them the moment their orogeny is revealed. This book is worth it if the reader values intriguing magic systems and power struggles with political ends and various characters’ timelines with excellent payoff. All with the end of the world as the stakes.