"The Fifth Season"

Anagram: Eons shift aft, eh?

"The Fifth Season" is another of the books I discovered¹ while reading the NYT series of mini-articles discussing prescient works of science fiction. The story is set in "The Stillness," an ironically-named world whose exceptional seismic activity regularly causes extinction-level events, known as fifth seasons: supervolcanoes, fissures across continents, sky-blotting clouds of ash, and so on. Jemisin explores the society that arose to cope with these fifth seasons and weaves the beginning of the worst fifth season yet into a very human story of striving and loss.

Minor spoilers below.

Key to The Stillness's survival is its civilization's preparedness for future fifth seasons. Society is set up as a federation of self-sufficient city-states that stockpile food and other supplies and give each community member a clear role to perform should disaster strike. Some people have the ability to sense impending seismic events, and they are highly valued; others, known as Orogenes, actually have the power to manipulate the energy stored in the earth to prevent or induce earthquakes. Orogenes are feared and repressed by most, and enslaved and put to work by a few.

It quickly becomes clear that the titular fifth season was actually caused by an Orogene, and the book explores his desire to destroy civilization by weaving together three stories, two set in the past and one in the present. The multiple narratives structure didn't completely work for me, but it does simultaneously provide an outsider's, insider's, and disillusioned exile's viewpoint on society. As the reader, I felt as though I learned about the world's rules along with its characters.

My highly subjective rating: an engrossing read and fascinating example of world-building. Recommended to any readers who enjoy fantasy.


1 The others I've written about are Fahrenheit 451 and Use of Weapons. (back)

2021-06-08 update: I've reviewed the sequel "The Obelisk Gate" here: https://phives.blogspot.com/2021/06/the-obelisk-gate.html