Discovering The Broken Earth

Just a quick blog today, since I’m in the midst of preparing that dreaded five-letter word: taxes! Ugh! So this is going to be a head-to-page, quick and dirty (no, not that kind of dirty) mostly unedited spiel about my first impressions of an award-winning SF novel.

After hearing all the buzz about N. K. Jemisin’s The Broken Earth Series, I finally picked up a print copy of her novel The Fifth Season—which, like every novel in her series so far, has won a Hugo Award, this first-in-the-series won in 2016.

In truth, after listening to her particularly spectacular acceptance speech after winning the Hugo for Stone Sky in August 2018 (and if you've never seen her speech, please give it a look below—she said many things that really needed to be said in this industry, IMHO, and she stated them with an eloquence that will make you want to cheer out loud), I couldn’t not read one of her books. Truth. Double negative notwithstanding.

Here it is. (Give her a minute, she was a bit overwhelmed at the start, but if you watch it all the way to the close, her powerful words just might bring tears to your eyes and a hellyes! fist-pump or two.)

Her dedication in The Fifth Season echoes some of the same sentiments she expressed in her speech:

For all those who have to fight for the respect that everyone else is given without question.

Hey, I’m an independent female science fiction romance author. That hit home.

The Fifth Season surprised me right from the onset. Granted, I hadn’t read any of the reviews or accolades about the book, because as I mentioned, that’s not why I bought it. I intentionally went into it blind because I wanted to form my own opinions about the story, so I really had no idea what to expect and that can sometimes lead to an experience that’s a bit unsettling. I like being unsettled by a book. I like being surprised in a good but uncomfortable way. I like being set a bit off-kilter by an opening. And I like being thrown head first into a strange and puzzling and wondrous fictional place with no preparation whatsoever.

First surprise…

N. K. Jemisin wrote the body of the novel (not the prologue--I’ll go there in a minute) in second person. What? That’s just not done. (Though I expect it will start or is starting to be done a lot more often now.) Now, before you run to Google that, let me just explain the mechanics. The main character (a female) doesn’t speak in the “I” frame as in first person and she isn’t described in a “she” format as in third person. Instead, the narrator tells you what YOU are doing and feeling and thinking, as the character.

Here’s an example in a very short snippet of the opening excerpt of the first chapter:

______________________________________

 1 

you, at the end 

You are she. She is you. You are Essun. Remember? The woman whose son is dead.

You’re an orogene who’s been living in the little nothing town of Tirimo for ten years. Only three people here know what you are, and two of them you gave birth to.

Well. One left who knows, now.

______________________________________

So much is said in that brief story opening that introduces Essun in such an unusual narrative. You are she. She is you.

But first there's the Prologue – subtitled “you are here”

It starts in third person. Without preamble. In sort of a “Here’s the current situation reader. You’re intelligent. You figure things out.” Excerpt:

______________________________________

Let’s start with the end of the world, why don’t we? Get it over with and move on to more interesting things.

First, a personal ending. There is a thing she will think over and over in the days to come, as she imagines how her son died and tries to make sense of something so innately senseless. She will cover Uche’s broken little body with a blanket…

______________________________________

The author does what I like to see in a story and jumps right into the world with no extensive prose about the history and the culture and the customs and what’s strange and what’s not, and just why things are the way they are. It’s often how I start writing a story as a writer and, as a reader, I enjoy reading these in-the-moment beginnings.

Don’t give me every minute detail. Don’t tell me what has happened and what’s about to happen. Let me just take it all in. Let me feel and breath and sense it through my pores. Let me get to know the characters as if we were just meeting for the first time, and I can form my own first impressions--erred or otherwise.

And the third surprising thing is that the story isn’t chronological. It jumps around from character-to character, and time-to-time, though the emphasis is on female characters. I have my suspicions they may all turn out to be the same person—or being—at different points in their existence. But that’s just a guess. And I may be proven totally wrong on that theory as I progress with this tale.

So now that I’ve told you a little about the book, let me tell you a little about the author.

She’s from Brooklyn. This isn’t her first novel. It’s not even her first series. She has won other awards—including The Locus and the New York Times Notable Book of 2015—and her short fiction has been nominated for Hugo, World Fantasy and Nebula Awards. Her work has shortlisted for the Crawford and James Tiptree Jr. awards. She's the first author in history to win a Hugo Award for Best Novel three years in a row. And she is a Science Fiction and Fantasy reviewer for the New York Times. (Yes. A reviewer.)

She may not have everyone's respect (yet), but she certainly has mine.

I’ll write a full summary of my thoughts at some point after I’ve completed the entire novel and had time to digest all this wonderful uniqueness in how it’s told. Meanwhile, if you’re looking for something new to read, you might want to check out The Fifth Season yourself.

If you'd like to know a little more, here's an intro by the author herself, in her own words, talking about the series and about how she was told she'd never succeed as an author. This, too, hit home.

Have a great week.