Nataliya's Reviews > The Fifth Season

“For all those who have to fight for the respect that everyone else is given without question.”

There is always that desire to split the world into “us” and “them” and then, of course, firmly establish yourself on the “right” side, the side of “us” which is good by default. And then the next logical step is the elevation of “us” by degrading, dehumanizing “them” — all the way to denying them the right to humanity. You are not people, you are tools, objects, weapons — and weapons need to be controlled, tools need to be used, and nobody feels bad about this. This is how the world works, doesn’t it? But do it smartly, keep the “tools” and the “weapons” just enough under control to make them a part of this system, just enough to keep them grinding but not quite breaking. Yet.

But the world is not permanent, and millenia of wrongs do not make a right simply by the sheer force of habit. The earth moves slowly. After all, the continental drift is imperceptible, yet the built-up pressure sometimes may just lead to the devastating shattering. And in that shattering, in the end of the world, who can tell the right from wrong? And does it even matter?

“Let’s start with the end of the world, why don’t we? Get it over with and move on to more interesting things.”

This book is nearly perfect. It’s slow and deliberate and beautiful — and so very angry. But not the kind of easy, screaming, cathartic rage but rather that slow bubbling anger built from grief that builds up and builds until you know the pressure won’t be sustained for much longer. Until you know something will break. The world, the peace, the hearts.

That narrative voice Jemisin chose is perfect. Several voices, actually, that blend together seamlessly. It’s probably the best use of second-person narration - someone, omnipresent, telling this story about, or perhaps to someone else, to a chillingly haunting and wistful (but never maudlin or sentimental) effect, interspersed with more “typical” third-person limited worldview. And the narration never pulls the punches. It mixes cruel and playful in perfect quantity, showing us the author who is very confident in her craft - and for a good reason.

“There passes a time of happiness in your life, which I will not describe to you. It is unimportant. Perhaps you think it wrong that I dwell so much on the horrors, the pain, but pain is what shapes us, after all. We are creatures born of heat and pressure and grinding, ceaseless movement. To be still is to be… not alive.

But what is important is that you know it was not all terrible. There was peace in long stretches, between each crisis. A chance to cool and solidify before the grind resumed.”

Set on a world where “Stillness” is a wishful name for the continent ravaged by uncontrolled seismic activity, where usual seasons are punctuated by the fifth - the season of destruction - The Fifth Season shows us the society divided between humans and Orogenes - those who have the ability to affect the seismic events and therefore are feared and subjugated (there are those who can control orogenes) and considered inhuman - good, weapons, things really. And over millenia, this was how the world worked. Except for it *didn’t* — not for those dehumanized.

“We aren't human.”
“Yes. We. Are.” His voice turns fierce. "I don't give a shit what the something-somethingth council of big important farts decreed, or how the geomests classify things, or any of that. That we're not human is just the lie they tell themselves so they don't have to feel bad about how they treat us.”

Three storylines of three women - little Damaya shaped into a future government-controlled orogene, young Syenite who is eager to prove herself on her first assignment and learns how the world actually works, and Essun who has lost her child to murder by his own father and is no stranger to grief and loss. These storylines come together eventually, and what comes out of them is pain and grief and clean anger. Because happiness of some cannot be built on the pain of others. Eventually it will all come to an end. And sometimes the end can threaten to take the world with it, to hurt the world back.

“She will pay no attention to the world that is ending outside. The world has already ended within her, and neither ending is for the first time. She's old hat at this by now.”

Sometimes grief and anger can move mountains.
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It shakes you up, this book.

5 stars. One of my absolute favorites.
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“This is what you must remember: the ending of one story is just the beginning of another. This has happened before, after all. People die. Old orders pass. New societies are born. When we say “the world has ended,” it’s usually a lie, because the planet is just fine.
But this is the way the world ends.
This is the way the world ends.
This is the way the world ends.
For the last time.”

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Also posted on my blog.