Review: The Fifth Season

The Fifth Season by N.K. Jemisin
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

The Fifth Season is the first book in N.K. Jemisin’s The Broken Earth trilogy, and my feelings on this one are extremely mixed. I spent the majority of the book equally loving and loathing the story I was reading – I both wanted to put the book down without ever returning to it and I wanted to power through the book so I could jump straight into book two. It was a strange way to be feeling, and if asked when reading whether I was enjoying it I would answer ‘I do not know’ without a moment of hesitation.

By the end, I slipped closer to the loving than the loathing feeling. This is mainly due to the ending winning me over, leaving me positive I wanted to jump into The Obelisk Gate. However, to use the word ‘love’ to describe my feelings of the book overall is to falsely advertise my emotions. I felt more positive, sure, but this was just enough to have my rating become a three-point-five-star rating in the end. A rounded down three-point-five-star rating at that.

In many ways this book has confirmed what I have felt for a long time – the books that win the big awards are not for me. I like to consider myself well read – I’ll read across so many genres, I read so many different authors, and I try not to discriminate without having first given an author a try despite the consensus – but there are times where I question if such is really the case. I never seem to get what the winners of awards are about, finding my enjoyment to be nowhere near that of other readers. In many ways, it makes me feel stupid. Like less of a reader. It’s the same with the classics. I have read a few, but nowhere near as many as most readers are able to claim. This is a fault of my own. Then I stop and think about whether people are really enjoying these books or whether people are forcing themselves to read such books due to some unspoken convection. I know there are people out there who enjoy the classics, I know there are people out there who enjoy all these award-winning books, and yet I question whether everyone is as honest about these books as they should be or whether there is some elaborative truth twisting occurring.

I’m not saying all these five-star ratings are lies – I can see why people will enjoy this book, why so many people have. I’m merely musing about why I never seem to enjoy these books as much as everyone else, and whether more people feel the way I do than I’m aware of.

Such is neither here nor there, though. I’m sure you’re much more interested in why my feelings are so mixed about this one. Note, however, what is to come may be somewhat incoherent, as it’s difficult to say much about this book without giving away spoilers.

I’ll start with the world building, saying it was interesting. It was something different, something I have not seen before. I can draw similarities between certain elements, but as a whole it offered an interesting new world to dive into. However, I feel as though I did not understand it for much of the book. We were constantly being told about things, yet my knowledge was so limited and certain things were going over the top of my head. Although the world building was fun, it was not as solid as I like it to be at the start of this one – we seemed to be thrown in the deep end, and it took longer than I would have liked before someone instructed me on how to swim.

The characters were interesting, also. With multiple stories being told, I found my attention drawn more to some than others. There were certain stories I wanted to dive deep into, certain stories I wanted to follow throughout. There were interesting characters throughout, but some interested me more than others.

The storytelling is where I was lost somewhat. As I said, we were following multiple storylines and it was difficult at times to work out what was going on. It took me longer than I would have liked to realise the timeline of things. I know it was some smart ploy to make us go ‘oh wow’ later on, but it caused me a bit of frustration when the third person perspective did not seem to match up with the second person perspective.

As the story progressed, things did become clearer, though. I did work certain things out long before they came to light, but it was still fun to watch as the truth came out. It simply did not hit me as hard as I would have liked for it to, as it was intended to. I think the fact my feelings were so mixed throughout prevented me from being hit as hard by this one as I could have been.

However, the details that came out in the last few chapters really pulled me into the story. Although there was plenty happen throughout this story, it never really felt like much was happening. I never felt much, never really experienced the adrenaline that goes with action, until close to the end. With the details that came out, with the possibilities opened up for the future of the series, I found my feelings shifting slightly more towards the positive than the negative.

I’ll certainly be reading book two, and I hope it resonates with me more than this first book. A small part of me hopes I will connect with book two much better now book one has done the hard work of pulling me in, and that this means I will enjoy it more, yet a small part of me is unsure as to whether this series will win me over. Nevertheless, I am willing to try.

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