Your residence for beautiful scribbles.
This was my first poetry book by Makenzie Campbell. Set on the premise of love found and lost set up as her thoughts. I have to say I struggled to make it through this one. I tried hard to slog through but it felt more like random thoughts than poetry to me. The afterward includes comments about this meaning to be learning self-love, but I couldn’t find any of that within these pages. I had to rate this as a 1/5. This was aimed at a younger audience than me and my cynical heart.
This was my first N.K. Jemisin book and her writing style is certainly a unique voice. Her world building was a unique for me as well since the world itself isn’t just a passive observer. It has earthquakes and explosions and all manner of cyclical destruction. I gave this book a 4 out of 5.
There is widespread oppression of orogenes, who are mutant beings with powers to either create massive destruction or alleviate it within the earth’s crust. This creates fear and anger among the normal inhabitants, which bleeds into using them and their bodies in morbid unacceptable ways. Overall, between the world and its inhabitants, everyone grows up in this gritty world and defending their right to live. The most fascinating aspect of the lives within the world, is that they define their lives by how many ‘Fifth Seasons’ they have survived. Fifth Seasons are seasons where the entire earth dies. There is no food, and no food grows. The populations are used to this aspect, but they must survive however long these seasons are, until the earth begins to grow again.
The book’s story arc overlaps with three orogenes women as they progress through life and loss. An older woman, Essun, is living in hiding but she fails to tell her husband what she is. They have two children and when he finds out he murders one and abducts the other. Still reeling from her dead child, her only focus is to find the other and bring her home.
The mid aged Syenite is sent on a mission with a tenth ring master, Alabaster, to help a town with coral blocking their ship and fishing routes. Once they reach it, someone attempts to murder Alabaster leaving her alone to handle the coral removal. Heaving the earth beneath the waves, she pushes the coral aside to release an obelisk, hidden in the earth. No one really understands what they are for since they were created during a much earlier version of earth. Every orogene that works within the Fulcrum, like Syenite and Alabaster, have opposite assigned guardians. In case they ever turn to evil and murdering people, the guardians are sent to kill them. Without question. To Syenite’s initial confusion, they arrive and try to kill her and Alabaster because she was able to commune with the obelisk. Before they can be killed, a death eater saves them both, transporting them both to a far-off island where they must face their new life without the Fulcrum. As well as what the Fulcrum stood for, which surely wasn’t always for the good.
Finally, the young girl orogene, Damaya, is given away to the Fulcrum’s care after she accidently hurts a boy in her class. She is receiving the same training as Syenite. Damaya becomes obsessed with discovering every aspect of the Fulcrum, since they have free reign of the building and parts of it have been lost time, since it was first built too large. One day, an unknown girl infiltrates Damaya’s class but Damaya knows the other girls to know she isn’t meant to be there. At the end of classes for the day, she tries to ask if Demaya has ever seen a hexagonal room, since it’s supposed to have something special inside. Damaya learns her name is Binof and he is a leader and from a high-ranking family, but she is not orogene. They discover a cavern locked beneath the door that challenges every version of history that is taught at the school.
All three interludes create a beautifully woven world with equal parts, charm & heartbreak
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/19161852-the-fifth-season
