{"id":1686,"date":"2019-10-02T15:00:17","date_gmt":"2019-10-02T21:00:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/?p=1686"},"modified":"2020-03-05T19:59:35","modified_gmt":"2020-03-06T02:59:35","slug":"book-the-fifth-season-2015","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/2019\/10\/02\/book-the-fifth-season-2015\/","title":{"rendered":"BOOK: The Fifth Season (2015)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong><u><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft\" src=\"https:\/\/i.gr-assets.com\/images\/S\/compressed.photo.goodreads.com\/books\/1489795090l\/19163174.jpg\" alt=\"The Fifth Season\" width=\"200\" height=\"303\" \/>The Fifth Season<br \/>\n<\/u><\/strong>Year: 2015<br \/>\nAuthor: N.K. Jemisin<br \/>\nLength: 927 minutes \/ 15.45 hours<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s been a while since I\u2019ve read a fantasy book with such a unique magic system in place. I truly enjoyed the amount of thought that went into a world where the main source of power was that of the earth itself. From magma to solid obelisks, the ability to control the vibrations of the planet (either to amplify or dampen) had an interesting and logical follow-through in its characters and storyline. I\u2019m honestly looking forward to eventually starting the next book in the series since the world was built so well. It\u2019s no wonder that it ended up winning the Hugo Award for that year.<\/p>\n<p>While I suppose <em>The Fifth Season<\/em> is also partly a pseudo-post-apocalypse story, it was only shown in small snippets and references here and there. Consequently, this would make this story almost \u201cmodern fantasy\u201d in comparison to some of the classics. Additionally, this would explain some of the character elements added with little to no explanation or relevance to the plot. It sometimes seems like the sexual encounters and fluid genders of these characters are included to merely hit a checkbox of \u201cinclusivity.\u201d Sure, people who relate to these characters feel like they&#8217;re represented, but if these traits don\u2019t affect the plot, then it doesn\u2019t matter about their sexuality at all.<\/p>\n<p>I also found the bold choice of second-person POV to be a bit jarring when it spliced in the more traditional third-person narrative. Initially, I thought these segments were striking in the way that it pulled me into the story. That was until I was given a name and a purpose and any number of other traits that made the \u201cyou\u201d in the story into a character that was basically repeated throughout. I get how these different characters interacted to tell a much broader story (which is again, part of the book\u2019s strength) I just didn\u2019t care for the reader\u2019s identity to be given to them via the second person POV.<\/p>\n<p>A uniquely written and crafted fantasy with one or two minor flaws, I give <em>The Fifth Season<\/em> 4.0 stars out of 5.<\/p>\n<h2><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone wp-image-647\" src=\"http:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/255px-Five-pointed_star_svg-150x150.png\" alt=\"255px-Five-pointed_star_svg\" width=\"50\" height=\"50\" \/>\u00a0<strong><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone wp-image-647\" src=\"http:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/255px-Five-pointed_star_svg-150x150.png\" alt=\"255px-Five-pointed_star_svg\" width=\"50\" height=\"50\" \/>\u00a0<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone wp-image-647\" src=\"http:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/255px-Five-pointed_star_svg-150x150.png\" alt=\"255px-Five-pointed_star_svg\" width=\"50\" height=\"50\" \/>\u00a0<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone wp-image-647\" src=\"http:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/255px-Five-pointed_star_svg-150x150.png\" alt=\"255px-Five-pointed_star_svg\" width=\"50\" height=\"50\" \/><\/strong><\/h2>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Fifth Season Year: 2015 Author: N.K. Jemisin Length: 927 minutes \/ 15.45 hours It\u2019s been a while since I\u2019ve read a fantasy book with such a unique magic system in place. I truly enjoyed the amount of thought that went into a world where the main source of power was that of the earth [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,54],"tags":[33,55,789,2030,2028,8,2031,2029],"class_list":["post-1686","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-4-0-stars","category-book","tag-33","tag-book","tag-fantasy","tag-hugo-award","tag-n-k-jemisin","tag-review","tag-the-broken-earth","tag-the-fifth-season"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1686","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1686"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1686\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2059,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1686\/revisions\/2059"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1686"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1686"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1686"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}