February 6, 2026
I finished reading The Fifth Season a few days ago and am now able to organize my thoughts. I am going to try and be as vague as possible since I know others are going to read this in the future. This book, in its simplest terms is about a mother searching for her daughter. We follow a main character that struggles with their identity as both a mother and an Orogene (someone who has the ability to draw power from the earth and manipulate its crust, among other things.) The author uses the Orogene as a not so subtle parallel to the discrimination of minorities in society specifically African Americans and the ways in which she makes those connections is very impressive. N. K. Jemisin does an incredibly good job at writing complex characters that each have their own flaws that follow them throughout the story and actively impact their decisions and interactions with the other characters in the story. Also I was pleasantly surprised to see multiple queer characters take center stage in the story which is something I was not expecting for a book published in 2015. Some warnings for people interested in this book: there are multiple descriptions of child sexual abuse. I do think it is well written but I did have to put the book down for a few days after a very specific chapter.
I’m putting a space here to make it separate from the sexual assault but the book is written in second person. I’ve never read anything in the second person before but the way it was written here was very strong and I feel added a lot to the story (also there is a story reason as to why it’s like that) it took a bit to get used to but I don’t think it could have been written any other way. However I can see people having there issues with it (I would disagree but to each their own.)
I am very excited to read the rest of the trilogy eventually. 4.5/5. It would’ve been 5/5 but there were a few hiccups near the end that I’m being nitpicky about.
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