Greetings everyone it's Ane, I hope
you've all been doing well.
I'm finally finally getting around to
filming my review
of "The Fifth Season" by N.K Jemisin, which
honestly
it's pretty up there in terms of
favourite fantasy series,
I would say at least top five, I
have so many feelings about this book
and it's been very difficult for me to
order my words but I feel like, i'm, i'm
ready to talk.
So "The Fifth Season" is one of those
books that I know divides people quite a
fair bit,
it's one of those stories where I feel
like you either really really like it or
you really hate it.
For me when I initially first read it,  it
was probably
took after the first 50 pages, like I
always tell people this
it took me a while to get into this book
and I was reading it because
the first, or the the person we follow,
it's in first person and so
I did not enjoy that aspect of the book
and it wasn't until we
really got into the flow of the next
character in the story that's when I kind of got
hooked on the book.
Now the story is set in a world, or a
land where it's
pretty unstable, every so often
the world just basically implodes on
itself, the
plate shake, stuff happens it's basically
catastrophic
events from the the world, and
it's called a fifth season, and so we are
following pretty much one of the worst fifth
seasons um as it's taking place in the
story.
We follow a few different points of view.
I forgot to mention that one of the
characters comes home to find their son
has been murdered
by their husband, and also the daughter
has been kidnapped by him as well
it's not a spoiler it is in the blub of
the book and it happens pretty much like
straight away,
but I also think it's worth noting that
there are a couple of
instances in the book where child abuse
takes place, so I think it is very important to note
because that might be a trigger for some
people.
and what I really liked about that is
this world,
it's not a kind world to the Orogene, the
Orogene are a people who,
they are able to control the plates so
they can control earthquakes and they
can fix it through
sessing which is like sensing the
disturbance in the plates.
So we get to follow these different
characters and what I liked is that
because
they are different ages and we get to
see how the society
treats these people, we get different
points of view
from how the society is because it's not
a kind world
if you don't fit into what their society
likes.
Now in terms of, in terms of that I was
able to draw a lot of parallels
because I think one thing I would say or
not one thing, but I think a point that
might basically frustrate people is that I
wouldn't recommend really reading this
as an audio book because a lot of the
time there's a lot of reference made to
different um races and ethnic backgrounds in the book.
Now I  could definitely draw parallels in
terms of what was,
what the author was trying to say and
our world
because a lot of the times you'll find
that you'll talk about
this certain um you know race of people,
group of people and how
their attributes and their physical
attributes were beneficial to this
specific world because
you know you were assigned you're sort
of assigned a
group within the society in terms of
your usefulness
should a season occur, and it was sort of,
you know having,
if you're a woman having broad hips
because then you could be somebody who
is, I can't remember what the word for it is,
you're basically there to populate the
land if a season goes down, and so for me
I really really like the parallels that
I could draw there,
but also until it wasn't until I really
grasped what those differences between the
people were or the different um
races that she was talking about that I
got a better grasp
of the book, and I think if you're not
someone who, if you don't pay attention
to that it can become a bit,
a bit confusing because there are
different names and different ways of
describing people and their physical attributes and
you know whatever race that they might
be a part of, that's why I said it's
beneficial to physically read the book
because there is a glossary at the back
that is definitely a big help. Now when I
first read the book I read,
I think I read the first uh two thirds
of it
physically and then I jumped into the
audio book towards the end, because I
wanted to listen whilst I was at work
and so I really enjoyed the audiobook I,
I can't see someone enjoying it if you
don't start off
um, if you read it all the way through
that way because I think
if you don't pay attention it can be
really confusing, it's easy to get
confused in this book. I think because
Jemisin does a lot of weaving, all the
weaving, and a lot of information is held back,
there's still information that's held
back by the time you get to the end of
the book but she drops a lot,
enough for you to want to keep reading
and to want to continue on with the next
story, and certain things
are revealed in the book that
keep you wanting more. Now you might not
enjoy that if that's not for you, for me that's
definitely something that kept me going
and kept me wanting to read, and
is the reason why I have like all the
books in the series on my shelf and also,
her whole backlist. So let's talk about
the world building
because we do follow a few different
points of view, we are able to get
those different views of the world and I,
for me personally I was really able to
build a very big and complete picture of the
mechanics of this society and how,
how they work to keep people down
but at the crux of the story I think
that's a big part of the mystery as well,
it's finding out why it is that the
Orogene are so looked down upon,
and there's also this discussion drawn
about you know you hear a lot about um,
history is written by the winners,
and there's a lot of the history of the
Orogene people that is
kept back and I think that's pretty much
the overarching story and mystery within the book, it's
um you know, how are these people the way they are?
why are they the way they are? and
through certain characters in the
book we kind of get droplets of um
we kind of get droplets of why we should
start to question the information
that is presented to us in the book. To
me it feels like a world that is really
well thought out and actualised
and I don't really feel like I have any
negatives about the world building at
all and it's probably one of my favourite
parts of the story just because of how rich it feels, how
much of a history there
is and between each uh chapter of the
book you get excerpts of the, I think it's the
stone lore, so you get told about what happened
in past seasons and what the seasons
were called.
See also it's almost like this like
history of the various seasons
and it just really helps to add colour
to what is already a very bright world,
like oh she did
so brilliantly. Now whilst I say this is
a fantasy world it's very much so um rooted in sci-fi
as well more specifically geology
based sci-fi, because the orogene people
are able to
control um the plates
and mountains and rocks and boulders,
they're very like
elemental so I think um earth benders,
that that's how I kind of imagine it
without all of the
the moves to go along with it because
they can simply think and they do,
so that's how I see their magic within
that and I really enjoyed that because I think
geology it's not really something that
you hear too much about especially in
terms of fantasy, I could be wrong, I maybe need to read
more fantasy or like sci-fi
but geology-based um sci-fi or fantasy
books aren't something that I know very much
about and if you're not
into sci-fi and if you're perhaps if you
were perhaps not expecting it to have such heavy
reliance upon that then you know it might not be something
that you would enjoy,
I think you do kind of get hints of that
considering that you have
characters names like Syenite and you
have um like certain cities and things named
after rocks and geology
and stuff like that, it's very much
ingrained within the story
um but I, I really enjoy that aspect and
I think it's something that
added to the flavour of the book so
i'm not mad at that aspect, but yeah just
to let you know it's
it's got very much heavy sci-fi elements
to
it. Just touching back on the magic
system of the world as well
we're so very used to people having
a magical ability and them having some
sort of limitation in some shape or another I
found it interesting that
Jemisin chose to subvert the limitation
because essentially orogene are actually
very dangerous,
their power is from what it feels like
it's very
limitless and their limitation comes
from
the guardians within the world. So
essentially the guardians are there to
dampen down the power of the orogenes, so when there's a guardian nearby
then the orogene's power doesn't really go
to full effect,
but I have been, i'm really intrigued to
find out
what it was that caused the society to
turn against the orogenes
and made them, I guess ignorant to their
history and their culture, they didn't
just arrive something happened
to either make them that way or they may
be lived peacefully at some point.
I think we kind of get clues and hints
to that um through one of the characters who
seems to be more of the
um the questioning characters within the
book, and that's something that i'm very
excited to learn more about as I get
into the story. We follow three main
characters in the story which really
gives
us a fantastic overview of the
treatment of the origins within the
world because you kind of see what
happens
when um their power manifests and
how children are treated once people
realise that they do
hold this ability how their family turns
on them  um and how it's sets in motion
them becoming basically forced labor,
and then you also see how it is when
they go to, if they're "fulcrum trained", which is
basically the training school
to hone in the power of the orogene
and then you kind of see um an older
point of view
and how an origin can kind of live their
life or how they're trying to live their
life within the society.
Now usually i'm kind of hit and miss on
split perspectives I think sometimes
certain stories really need them
and sometimes they don't and I think in
this case it was definitely
something that I welcomed within the
story because you're not getting the
same old
story from different points of view,
you're kind of getting
um it from different eyes so to speak,
because a child is gonna have a
different
um a child is gonna see the world
differently to an adult might see it so
I think that really added great
dimension to the story. We do also get an
interesting array of side characters
which I think only adds to the story and
the world building,
and also a bit of the mystery as well
because there's still more that I want
to find out
especially with certain side characters
that we are introduced into the story,
they add that kind of layer of
mystery to the book. and if it we're going to  talk
about the plot and
I guess the writing of the book I think
it's written in a way that you're
fed nuggets of the story, you're fed
enough to want to, especially from each point of
view you're fed enough to want to keep
going because
you can sense that we're leading up to
something, and when we do get to that
something it's really a shock but
it's the kind of story whereby because
she did so much weaving,
and so much tangling that when you get
to the end of the book i had to read it
again, I just don't feel like "The Fifth Season"
is a story that you can read
once and then be done with it like you
have to read it
and go back with new eyes because this, I
read it, wanna say June and when I reread the
story I definitely
got so much more because you start to
obviously notice the little nuggets that she was dropping
here and there, and I think it really
adds to it because by the time I finish
on my second round of reading the book I ended
up loving it even more. In conclusion I would say that
"The Fifth Season" is a very well-rounded,
actualised um book and
it's a world that I would say is
verging on grimdark, a lot of characters
that you kind of question whether or not
you should be rooting for them but then
you kind of
are considering that the world that it's
set in like it does leave you conflicted
and definitely leaves you thinking, like when you finish
reading the book I dare you to not have this book like,
stay with you when you're done reading this but when I
finished reading this I had to,
I need a minute I needed to read some
romance to cleanse my palette but as you can
probably tell it's a book that I
absolutely love
and I am more than excited to get stuck
into the next books in the series.
i've been waiting to get this review
done so that I can
like read the next books and not
accidentally
add spoilers from book two into this
review, so now I can pick up book two and
I am so unbelievably excited to get stuck in.
So folks that was my review of "The Fifth
Season" by N.K. jemisin,
a book that I think is an actual
masterpiece
but I do know it does divide people, so
let me know below if you have read this
book and what your thoughts are,
if you agree or disagree with me would
love to hear from you,
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Bye
[Chill music playing ]
