The Fifth Season

Kinda feel like a killjoy on this, given my social network loooves - nay, looaafffs this - but I just couldn't get into it. Magical fantasy worlds are a hard sell for me, even though this does check the box of being an intentionally NON-Medieval European LOTR rehash, thank the Maker. That's a necessary, but - alas - not sufficient! - condition.

Story: So it's maybe a far future End Times Earth, where the planet has one big continent full of tectonic drama in the style of that one scene from The Land Before Time. Every so often, these giant, scorching, hellfire earthquakes crack open the land, fill the sky with ash and kill all plantlife and fauna. The poor humans must scrabble hard to survive. These apocalypse moments are called “Seasons”, the “Fifth Season” being the end-all, be-all super killer one.

Amidst this geological drama, human civilization is interestingly weird - but also depressingly familiar. The weird bits: there are people called orogenes, who have magical rock telekinesis. People live in “comms”, and have “use-names” for their “use-caste” and “comm-names”; mine would be Angela Innovator Pittsburgh, I like to think. The depressingly familiar stuff: the world is a rigidly structured survivalist nightmare, full of oppression and superstition and despair. Orogenes are especially persecuted, where their best hope is a life of near-enslavement in the “Fulcrum”, a sort of Game of Thrones-style Hogwarts. Every orogene is watched over by a Guardian, a person who has a magical power to negate rock telekinesis, but mostly just intimidates their orogene by crushing their tiny hand in their much larger hand (ah, the old ‘crush your hand to teach you self-control' style of pedagogy).

We follow three journeys: of Demaya, of Syenite, and of Essun - all three are orogenes. Demaya is a poor, abused girl who gets rescued out of her village nightmare by Schaffa, a creepy Guardian dude (with giant hands, be warned). Syenite is a snarky mid-level orogene with the Fulcrum, who is sent on a public works project + obligatory breeding vacation with Alabaster, a super skilled and super bitter orogene in the mold of Lord Byron. Essun's son has just been killed by her husband, cuz he found out their son was an orogene. He may have also kidnapped their daughter. She's on a mission to track husband and daughter down.

There are a couple excellent side characters - I loved, LOFFED, the Stone Eaters (creepy monotone rock people, very very rock people), and the uber-charismatic, bisexual pirate king on that one utopian island of tolerance and good vibes.

But! But, while I really liked the meta of this book (all except possibly one character are people of color; LGBTQ stuff is portrayed as supremely normalized; there's some potentially interesting notes about the dehumanizing effects of oppression; this is a big glorious Bechdel test pass; also, this book was on the social justice side of the recent SF/F culture wars - google “sad puppies hugo” if you want to ruin your evening), anyway, while I liked the meta, I didn't really enjoy the book itself. First, the writing's tone was jarringly modern-American-snarky for something that (1) was meant to be super-brutal and sad, and (2) was taking place in some freaky far future. I'm not saying ya gotta roll out the purple prose of Gene Wolfe (NEVER DO THAT), but maybe some Dune-style weird cadences and words or I don't know. And sometimes the snarky tone felt jarringly at odds with the brutality on-screen: Essun's tale, especially.

Another complaint was the overuse of people's jaws flexing as a sign of Emotions Happening, the repeated words (‘and - and - ‘, ‘but - but - ‘), and the sometimes monotone personalities of the characters: Alabaster was a hurt/comfort fanfic writer's dream, while Syen had one setting (Snark). Bah, I'm sorry, I'm a killjoy.