The Fifth Season

Reading N. K. Jemisin's profile in The New Yorker this January (https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/01/27/nk-jemisins-dream-worlds) put The Broken Earth trilogy on my hazy “to read” list, but then the rest of 2020 happened. I'm slowing clawing my way back to book-reading, however, and this seemed like a great place to start. The thing I'm most dazzled by is Jemisin's world-making. She has many other tremendous skills as a writer, including deft and novel descriptions, great control over pacing that sometimes grinds to a halt when cataclysmic events in her world unfold and other times drives forward relentlessly, crackling dialogue, etc. All that effort receded into the background as I felt compelled to know more about the Stillness and its ugly history and what was going to happen to the characters. I stayed up too late reading, but is it “too late” if you don't regret it? I guess some people might argue that 2020 isn't the time for apocalyptic fiction, but I think it's probably exactly the right time. Her science fiction lens had me wrestling with the realities of power, subjugation, and freedom in ways different from the daily grind of the news, and I'm grateful for it. Ordered the next two, and can't wait for The Obelisk Gate to arrive, because this one ends with quite a cliffhanger!