In the prologue of The Fifth Season<\/i>, this was too much. Intrigued? Then it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s time for Mark to read The Broken Earth<\/i>.<\/p>\n
Trigger Warning: For death of a child<\/b><\/p>\n
Oh, what a day. WHAT A DAY, friends.<\/p>\n
First things first: Inevitably, as is the case when I start a new book or series on my sites, there is an influx of newbies! I review books slightly differently than folks are used to, so I encourage new folks to read this to understand how things work around here. This time, however, I would recommend returning readers to give this a look, too, as there is a big change this time around.\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n So!<\/p>\n Please do not spoil me or anyone else<\/b>. While I have extensively written about what constitutes a spoiler in my\u00c2\u00a0Rules<\/a>\u00c2\u00a0and\u00c2\u00a0FAQ<\/a>\u00c2\u00a0pages, there is a very,\u00c2\u00a0very<\/i>\u00c2\u00a0simple way of abiding by this: if what you are about to say in\u00c2\u00a0any<\/i>\u00c2\u00a0way refers to something I have not reached yet, don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t say it in plaintext. Just don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t. You don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t need to say it to me, I will survive to live another day,\u00c2\u00a0don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t<\/i>.<\/p>\n You may use rot13 to discuss spoilers, however<\/b>. The gibberish in the comments is\u00c2\u00a0rot13<\/a>, a cyphering tool that you can use to openly discuss all spoilers. Have at it!<\/p>\n Please read my\u00c2\u00a0Site Rules<\/a>\u00c2\u00a0before you participate in the comments<\/b>. Aside from my\u00c2\u00a0Spoiler Policy<\/a>, I also enforce a fairly rigorous set of standards for my community. I have a lot of moderators (who have blue IntenseDebate bars) that may ask you not to use a word or phrase, who may edit a spoiler, or who may delete a comment outright. They are volunteers trying to make this place safe and the exception to the rule for Internet commenting. Please treat them with respect or you will lose your commenting privileges.<\/p>\n If you missed the announcement<\/a> (as is probably the case if you weren\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t checking in during my Discworld<\/i> read), health issues have necessitated that I stop doing Mark Reads videos in order to not harm my voice. From here on out, we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re going back to the original style of Mark Reads reviews, which are all text. Please don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t try to commission video readings of the books I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m covering anymore; I will promptly refund you. (If you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re reading this and have an outstanding commission, please check your email, as I contacted you already! About 75% of folks have already responded, so there are a few people still left.)<\/p>\n That being said: Mark Reads can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t make any money right now aside from the pocket change I make from ads. Mark Watches keeps this place going, so if you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re digging this project and you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d like to support me, you can sign up for my Patreon<\/a>, where I post reviews early, give folks a behind-the-scenes look of publishing, host a Slack, and do monthly bonus commissions. You can also check out the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Support Mark\u00e2\u20ac\u009d menu above for other options!<\/p>\n In 2015, when I was at Arisia in Boston, N.K. Jemisin was the guest of honor. I was in the room for a reading of hers and heard what I think was the prologue of this book? All of this was deeply unfamiliar to me except for I remember it being about rocks and that it was in second person? Either way: I do like being upfront about knowing literally ANYTHING about a project, since being unspoiled is the whole point of this. So, I still don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t know shit about this trilogy, and I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m scared.<\/p>\n Because lord, did The Inheritance Trilogy<\/i> ruin me. RUIN. ME. (You can find the complete archive of those reviews here!<\/a>)<\/p>\n So, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s really fun and exciting to be returning to the work of N.K. Jemisin, someone who I look up to and respect. But I also approach this (and really, everything I write about on Mark Reads especially) from a different perspective. By the time I finished The Inheritance Trilogy<\/i>, I was still hard at work on a novel of my own, one at the time was science fiction and part of a greater plan for a trilogy. (I LOVE TRILOGIES.) It didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t turn out that way, but what I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d planned for a LOT of things didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t turn out as I expected. I say this because I now have something I never<\/i> thought I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d write coming out this fall: a fantasy book. I promise, this is not about promoting myself, but sharing that I understand something because I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve now been on the other side of the curtain.<\/p>\n Holy fucking shit, fantasy books are HARD TO WRITE.\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n And it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not like the other books I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve written were necessarily easy, but there is just so much more you have to do and take into consideration than I thought I was ready for. As I read the opening sentences of the prologue, as Jemisin slipped us all into the world of the Stillness, I could appreciate what a delicate, complicated, and masterful thing had just been accomplished. The first page alone is phenomenal, and what a way to open a book: with an ending. A cataclysmic one, too, all so we could get on to better<\/i> things? Entire books, trilogies, movements, longform series have been devoted to the notion of the end of the world. Jemisin starts<\/i> with it.<\/p>\n It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a weird fucking thing to be reading on May 31, 2020, too.<\/p>\n From there, there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a monumental task set forth, one I found increasingly difficult to manage myself. Look, in a fantasy narrative, the reader needs to know about the world. They need to know what\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s different from our world, or what\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s the same. Is it a secondary world? Contemporary? A portal to a new realm? How does any<\/i> of it work? And by \u00e2\u20ac\u0153it,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d I mean\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 well, literally every aspect of a society or a community or a world. Except you can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t know everything, right? A writer has to choose what has meaning, what matters to the story, what remains in the background, what sits in the forefront. What\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s the context that informs the decisions of major characters?<\/p>\n All that is still the tip of the iceberg. What\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s the framing device, then, by which an author can reveal this information? A lot of fantasy books do this thing where this exposition\u00e2\u20ac\u201dwhich is<\/i> necessary, to some extent\u00e2\u20ac\u201dis dumped upon the reader. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve read books in the past year where these info dumps are the first fifty pages, and it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a challenge to read through them! I understand that there has to be some form of onboarding when it comes to many of the speculative fiction genres, but I also want to be intrigued. Entertained. I need to care.<\/p>\n Look how quickly Jemisin introduces a character, gives us an emotional conflict IN THE SECOND PARAGRAPH, and makes it very clear what sort of tone we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re getting here. I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t mean that solely in terms of emotional heaviness; on the second page, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s also obvious that the narration is going to be very different from one might expect from a fantasy novel. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m a huge fan of voice-y novels, and look at the voice of this narrator! I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t know if they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re a character we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll meet at some point. They could be an interested third party. They could be.. no one. Just the narrator. But oh, I love it. The use of second-person intrigues me, too. I can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t tell what Jemisin is doing with it to accent the story, but something feels more than intentional about it. Someone is telling<\/i> this story to someone, giving them bits and pieces that are important, that provide context, that ground this story in a long history. So\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 who is The Fifth Season<\/i> speaking to? Why does that matter?<\/p>\n The brilliance of this risk\u00e2\u20ac\u201dbecause second-person is exceedingly rare\u00e2\u20ac\u201dis that it allows Jemisin to provide exposition in a stylistic, poetic way for the reader and<\/i> whomever is intended as the recipient of the narrator\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s story. (Which still could be us, now that I think about it. Oh, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m in for a ride, aren\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t I?) And while this narration is lyrical and gorgeous, I also love that Jemisin plays with the notion of the literal and the metaphorical. There is a boldness in declaring a detail like a balcony to be a sign of defiance, for example. Literally, they make no sense in a world like the Stillness, and yet that one bit says so much. How do people defy the geological nature of their world? Is it safe to assume that there is an element of luxury in this, that it winks at the reader and tells us that this is what the privileged do? They build in defiance of what is sensible because they can<\/i>. It speaks in a metaphorical sense about what it means to live in Yumenes, one of the equatorial cities that is stable only relative to the rest of the land.\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Yet later, Jemisin toys with metaphor very directly:\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Up close, however, any hypothetical observer would notice that her skin is white porcelain; that is not a metaphor. As a sculpture, she would be beautiful, if too relentlessly realistic for local tastes. Most Yumenescenes prefer polite abstraction over vulgar actuality.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Because there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s the direct rejection of a metaphor in that passage, and yet, the image means something else. What does realism mean to the people of Yemenes? Why do they prefer abstraction over actuality?\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n What don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t the Yemenes want to see?<\/p>\n So, there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a beautiful use of language throughout this, one that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s having a direct conversation and another between the lines. With this, Jemisin paints a picture of a world about to end: of how Yemenes constructed high in defiance of a constantly-moving world, and yet, everything comes to an end. There\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s an end in Uche\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s life, and there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s an end in the emperor. There\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s an end in Yemenes. And it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s all because of an unknown man who has a connection to this world that I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t quite understand. From context, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m thinking that \u00e2\u20ac\u0153sessapinae\u00e2\u20ac\u009d is something in the man\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s body, and it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s how he sense other life, maybe? Regardless: we know his companion has existed since basically the beginning of time, and she is here to witness what is about to pass.\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n She is also a stone eater.<\/p>\n (Is that what the creature is at the end of the prologue?)<\/p>\n This is the end of the world. Something I assume the stone eaters, who live belowground, have seen over and over again. Why did this one seek out the man who ended the world? And what does this mean?<\/p>\n His fingers spread and twitch as he feels several reverberating points on the map of his awareness: his fellow slaves. He cannot free them, not in the practical sense. He\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s tried before and failed. He can, however, make their suffering serve a cause greater than one city\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s hubris, and one empire\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s fear.\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n This is a weird fucking thing to be reading on May 31, 2020.\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n One thing that stuck out to me in this prologue was how debris and hubris seem so close to one another in this world. The people of Yemenes constructed a city that stretched to the sky\u00e2\u20ac\u201dthat had balconies!<\/i>\u00e2\u20ac\u201deven though there is no certain other than the world eventually tearing itself apart. So, in the world that comes next, will the rubble of Yemenes be like the obelisks that float in the sky? Will it be stripped of meaning in the eons that come and pass? Will people wonder what was once there, and will they event stories to explain it? This book is, indeed, another story being told about this place. How many more will be added?<\/p>\n After all this, though, Jemisin narrows the focus, and we fully meet Essun, Uche\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s mother. I might be misreading this, but there seems to be some sort of in-world similarity to colorism happening here, given how Essun\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s skin is described:<\/p>\n Her skin is unpleasantly ocher-brown by some standards and unpleasantly olive-pale by others.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n The use of the word \u00e2\u20ac\u0153unpleasantly\u00e2\u20ac\u009d is fascinating. Whose<\/i> standards? Why do some look down on her for dark skin? Why do others see her as too pale? Even more interesting:<\/p>\n Mongrel midlatters, Yumenescenes call (called) people like her\u00e2\u20ac\u201denough Sanzed in them to show, not enough to tell.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s an intentional term, one meant to invoke a very real-world slur. So what\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Sanzed\u00e2\u20ac\u009d? Another people? How does that affect her appearance?<\/p>\n She liked nursing Uche here. She thinks he was conceived here.<\/p>\n His father has beaten him to death here.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Hi, what the fuck<\/i>. Hello???? Why are you doing this to me???<\/p>\n But there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s one more enormous twist here, and it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s the object. The object that appears in the remains outside of Tirimo, Essun\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s home. The object that\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 births? Someone?? Who also isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t a child??? Who eats the crystals from inside<\/i> the object? Except now I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m re-thinking the use of \u00e2\u20ac\u0153appears.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Was that thing always in Tirimo, or did it arrive after<\/i> the quakes? WHY IS HE TRYING TO MIMIC BEING HUMAN???<\/p>\n As if all this weren\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t enough, I can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t get over the final line of the prologue:<\/p>\n This is the way the world ends<\/i>.\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n For the last time.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n If the end of the world is this seismic upheaval, one caused by the unnamed man earlier in the prologue, then\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 what\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s coming? What upsets that cycle? Essun? The strange character who is imitating a human boy? Something else?<\/p>\n This feels so appropriate, y\u00e2\u20ac\u2122all. Beginnings and endings. The story opens with the end of the world, and here, at the end of this introduction, we get a glimpse of where it will all go.\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s fucking brilliant, and I, for one, cannot wait to find out what all of this.<\/p>\n Notes<\/b><\/p>\n Since there are no longer videos, I wanted to bring back something I did irregularly back when I did Mark Reads without that aspect. The videos achieved a neat thing: y\u00e2\u20ac\u2122all got to see instantaneous reactions to things. But you also got all my asides, many of which never made it into reviews. I was always conscious of this notion of keeping them separate: they were each their own form of criticism, in a sense, so I didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t want my reviews to just be a repeat of the video.<\/p>\n This is the first review I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve written since\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 shit. 2012? 2013? Somewhere around then was when Mark Reads videos were introduced. What I used<\/i> to do was read with my Notes app open, and I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d put all my preliminary thoughts and reactions into it. Some of this stuff made it into the final review, as you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll see below! Some of it didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t. Either way, you can enjoy this stream-of-conscious nightmare, as I plan to include these at the end of every review.\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Thanks for being here with me, friends.<\/p>\n Mark Links Stuff<\/b><\/p>\n – You can now pre-order my second YA novel, Each of Us a Desert<\/i>, which will be released on September 15, 2020 from Tor Teen!<\/a> In the prologue of The Fifth Season, this was too much. Intrigued? Then it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s time for Mark to read The Broken Earth.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[569,570],"tags":[571,413],"class_list":["post-5201","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-the-broken-earth","category-the-fifth-season","tag-mark-reads-the-broken-earth","tag-nk-jemisin"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5201","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5201"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5201\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5201"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5201"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5201"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
\n– Not only that, but my very first pre-order campaign is now live for North American readers! If you submit proof of pre-order, you can get a limited edition print that comes with the book<\/a>.
\n<\/strong>– If you’d like to stay up-to-date on all announcements regarding my books, sign up for my newsletter<\/a>! DO IT.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"