The Fifth Season
N.K. Jemisin, 2015
Fantasy Science fictionHistoryContemporary fiction
A woman with forbidden power hunts for her missing daughter as a world-killing season begins—and the novel keeps shifting the ground under your feet. Dread builds slowly through a lyrical, shifting voice, with moments of awe and hard-won power.
Feels like dread and awe. About adventure and power.
Who it’s for
You may like it if you enjoy fantasy that trusts you to piece together a fractured world and sit with unease. Be warned that the narrative shifts perspective and time in ways that can feel disorienting, and the mood stays bleak.
Why read it
Read it for a fantasy that treats catastrophe and power seriously, and for prose that can make a broken world feel immediate.
A page from the book
She doesn't hate him for being powerful. She hates him for being honest.
This is why she hates Alabaster: not because he is more powerful, not even because he is crazy, but because he refuses to allow her any of the polite fictions and unspoken truths that have kept her comfortable, and safe, for years. N.K. Jemisin.Jemisin won the Hugo for Best Novel three years running, 2016–2018, for the Broken Earth trilogy—the first author to do so.
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Where to get it
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Questions readers ask
- Is The Fifth Season for me?
- You may like it if you enjoy fantasy that trusts you to piece together a fractured world and sit with unease. Be warned that the narrative shifts perspective and time in ways that can feel disorienting, and the mood stays bleak.
- What is The Fifth Season like?
- Dread builds slowly through a lyrical, shifting voice, with moments of awe and hard-won power. Feels like dread and awe. About adventure and power.
- What should I read after The Fifth Season?
- If you liked The Fifth Season, try Annihilation (Jeff Vandermeer), The Gunslinger (Stephen King) and White Oleander (Janet Fitch).
A taste of the feed
What it means when a ruined place starts to look beautiful.
The effect of this cannot be understood without being there. The beauty of it cannot be understood, either, and when you see beauty in desolation it changes something inside you. Desolation tries to colonize you.
Annihilation · Jeff Vandermeer
What it sounds like to turn aiming a gun into a prayer.
I do not aim with my hand; he who aims with his hand has forgotten the face of his father. I aim with my eye. I do not shoot with my hand; he who shoots with his hand has forgotten the face of his father. I shoot with my mind. I do not kill with my gun; he who kills with his gun has forgotten the face of his father. I kill with my heart.
The Gunslinger · Stephen King
Hatred, praise. Love, suspicion. Love, humiliation.
Isn’t it funny. I’m enjoying my hatred so much more than I ever enjoyed love. Love is temperamental. Tiring. It makes demands. Love uses you, changes its mind. But hatred, now, that’s something you can use. Sculpt. Wield. It’s hard, or soft, however you need it. Love humiliates you, but Hatred cradles you.
White Oleander · Janet Fitch
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