Like all good fantasy, the allegory of own world is clear, but at the same time the fictional world offers us the opportunity to explore with new eyes, exposing our own biases and assumptions. Jemisin’s nuanced world-building is designed not to impress with its innovation, but rather to bring us into a deeper understanding of how histories are forgotten and rewritten over time and how caste systems are built over generations. At its core, The Fifth Season is a study of fear as a method of social control, determining who is “us” and who is “other,” who is a person and who is merely a tool. This summary makes the novel seem primarily environmental in its concerns, but Jemisin is after more than a warning about the dangers of massive ecosystem collapse. When a massive earthquake shakes this fragile land, it initiates a “fifth season” of ash and death, forcing characters to make difficult choices about how to survive. In brief, the story involves a tectonically unstable world in which one small group of people possess the power to sense and control these tectonic shifts. At its core, The Fifth Season is a novel about power, oppression, and the costs-physical, emotional, and psychological-of living in a world that denies your humanity so thoroughly that you cannot even recognize it in yourself. To identify this book as “fantasy” or “post-apocalyptic,” while accurate, would also be wholly inadequate.
0 kommentar(er)
