Author: N. K. Jemisin

I’ve heard this book for a very long time. It pretty much appears on every single book recommendation thread on Reddit, and the 3-Hugo-in-a-row phenomenon is also very intriguing. However, there is no Chinese translation, and after the misery of Oathbringer, I just lost all of my faith in reading long novels in English (I still read novellas and short stories from time to time tho).

It wasn’t until this winter vacation, after I had beaten all the games I bought in Steam winter sale (well not all, I dropped the Witcher 3, but that’s another story), and being triggered again by the r/fantasy yearly votes, did I have the courage to finally try it … and it’s great! Amazon Kindle is really a difference maker. Finished the book in a week. The first half took a lot longer than the second half tho, due to how it was written.

When I discovered that Broken Earth has the same author as Emergency Skin, I was devastated, because the story is so stupid, and I was afraid that the well-acclaimed Broken Earth is also just a wholesome 100 story. Fortunately, The Fifth Season turned out to be an exact opposite.

Overall

Not sure how to feel just yet, because there are still so many things unexplained. It’s pretty epic, but not self-contained, so its greatness is highly dependent on the later books. It does have every potential to be a masterpiece tho.

My favorite part is the ingenious use of different POVs. It just blew my mind that the 3 POVs are just the different stages of life of the same person.

Flashbacks are common, but never done this way. Think about 3 dots, both drawing their own lines, and somehow dot 1 finished at the starting point of dot 2, and then dot 2 finished at the starting point of dot 3, making a continuous curve. The entire history of the protagonist merged from 3 parallel POVs. Epic. For this point alone I upgrade the book to 5 stars on Goodreads, even though with the lack of so many explanations it’s just a 4-star for now.

It’s really refreshing to see a single POV (with a character being the unit value) in this age of multiple POVs. It helps you connect with the character deeper. I think all coming-of-age stories should have this kind of storytelling. I wonder if it’s her invention or if she learned from other works.

I like the fact that the world settings are scattered around the book, and you discovered them piece by piece, forming your knowledge about the world slowly. It makes the first 3rd of the book a bit of a chore tho, because you had no idea what this book is about and what those terms are until a certain point. Personally I don’t mind world settings being spitted out in pages as long as it’s not as r-slurred as the engineering math textbook-style wall of text in Seveneves.

8.5/10

Interesting world settings

One interesting thing about the world is the openness of sexual orientation, gender, sex (the sex in sexy sex), and relationship. I don’t think inclusiveness is the right word because it’s like that just don’t care. There are minimal rules or customs about those things. I think heterosexuality is still the most predominant, but when someone reveals themselves to be bi or gay, no one cares, so it must be very normal. And people also just kind of fuck around, as if they’re all polyamorous.

The world may have regressed to an almost tribal world due to the hostility of nature, but the culture in this regard is not like that of the tribal age or middle age of our world at all, which is kind of weird. They do have “breeder,” which is perhaps inhumane and even extreme by today’s standard (eugenics), but there should be other strange rules as well to keep them surviving. It just seems like they’re far too casual about those things. Not a single conversation in the book is about gayness or transness. Maybe it’s due to the nature of the world. If there are like 40% gays or bis and 10% trans, then of course they’ll be very open about that. I wish there are some explanations in later books.

The racial hierarchy is also kind of reversed, but this one is explained, though not in the story but in the appendix. Basically, because low latitude areas are more seismically stable, the culture in this area flourishes. As a result the equatorials rule the world, and are thus placed at the top of the racial hierarchy, while people in higher latitude are of a lesser race.

Comparison to other writers

I think Brandon Sanderson’s books are generally more self-contained. There’s a story for each installment, which Broken Earth apparently isn’t. I’m pretty surprised when I started book 2 (The Obelisk Gate) and found out that it started right after book 1’s end. That’s pretty unusual in modern-day book series really. Normally it’s like a bit after the previous’s end and then you only find out what happened at the cliffhanger afterward.

I think someone on Reddit explained it pretty well. The Fifth Season is a bit of mix of Brandon Sanderson and Robin Hobb, like an in-between. There are some plots going on but they’re not as strong as Brando Sando’s. Compared to Brando Sando’s books, the character writing is more focused and deeper like Robin Hobb’s, but also not as deep. I’d say this book is about as plot-driven as it is character-driven.

The Kindle experience as a physical book fan

I’m quite satisfied with the Kindle experience. It makes reading so much easier. I thought as a physical book fan I would not enjoy as much when reading on my iPad, turned out it’s only better. I can lie on the bad and read it, and check the definition or translation of a word simply by highlighting it. The popup won’t even cover the part you’re reading. Not sure how much my English has improved since reading Oathbringer, but reading through this book felt like a breeze thanks to Kindle. I struggled for Oathbringer (3x the size of The Fifth Season) for more than a year, while finishing this book in a week.

I’d say the readability index is about the same for both books, and I’d have certainly struggled a bit if I’m reading a paperback version.