Failed Fantasy

The Fifth Season 

by N.K. Jemisin

“After all, a person is herself, and others. Relationships chisel the final shape of one's being. I am me, and you.”   ― N.K. Jemisin, The Fifth Season





Sometimes award winners are not the books that appeal to my reading tastes. This is one of those instances when the book does not live up to the hype that surrounds it. I am not sure where to start. I guess the best place is with the language used by the narrator; a language which told me that there were tremendous dramatic things happening in this world, but did not effectively demonstrate the drama. The story was a mystery hidden among the multiple characters that were not very realistic. Frankly, I never got used to the use of the second person narrative which begins on the first page with the narrator talking to the reader (you) and trying to bring you in to the story by saying things like "Let's start with the end of the world, why don't we." The protagonist is she and she has a son, but that will soon change, not that I cared after several hundred pages of fantastic mish-mash.

As opposed to what some reviews seem to suggest, there is nothing resembling science-fiction here - it is pure fantasy. In that fantasy I found nothing that compelled me to keep reading - most of the time I was baffled at what was happening and by the time I figured it out I did not care any more. There is a sort of heroism occurring here, but it was really only a not so cleverly masked instance of deus ex machina.

I seldom recommend alternative books to read, but in this case, if this particular topic is of interest to you, your time would be better spent on something like Never Let Me Go from Kazuo Ishiguro. As a final note, the book presents a very specific set of moral values, but you have to look through the lens of our current political debates to see it. As soon as our talking points change this impact too will be lost.