Highlights from The Fifth Season by N.K. Jemisin
The Fifth Season is the first book in the Broken Earth trilogy of fantasy/science fiction novels by N.K. Jemisin. Each book in the trilogy won the Hugo Award for best novel the year after its release. It took me awhile to get into, but once I was hooked the book went pretty quickly. Here are the passages I highlighted on my Kindle for one reason or another. (See past book highlights.)
Note: This ebook didn’t have real page numbers, only Kindle location markers. Sorry about that.
Further note: I’ve been reading Kindle books checked out from my local library via Libby. It’s been challenging because the loan period is typically not long enough for how slowly I read. But I did discover that you can view your notes and highlights for all of your Kindle books, including expired ones, so I don’t need to worry about exporting them before my loan ends.
Location 52 (I like the obviousness of the opening lines):
Let’s start with the end of the world, why don’t we? Get it over with and move on to more interesting things.
Location 102:
There is an art to smiling in a way that others will believe. It is always important to include the eyes; otherwise, people will know you hate them.
Location 208 (see Addressing Climate Change Is Not About Saving the Planet):
When we say “the world has ended,” it’s usually a lie, because the planet is just fine.
Location 1,161:
The people we love are the ones who hurt us the most, after all.”
Location 1,488 (saving this for the next time someone argues about the “natural order of things” or similar bullshit):
Survival doesn’t mean rightness. I could kill you right now, but that wouldn’t make me a better person for doing so.”
Location 2,061 (on surviving in the immediate aftermath of loss):
So you must stay Essun, and Essun will have to make do with the broken bits of herself that Jija has left behind. You’ll jigsaw them together however you can, caulk in the odd bits with willpower wherever they don’t quite fit, ignore the occasional sounds of grinding and cracking. As long as nothing important breaks, right? You’ll get by. You have no choice.
Location 2,298 (emphasis mine):
Once Damaya would have protested the unfairness of such judgments. The children of the Fulcrum are all different: different ages, different colors, different shapes. Some speak Sanze-mat with different accents, having originated from different parts of the world. One girl has sharp teeth because it is her race’s custom to file them; another boy has no penis, though he stuffs a sock into his underwear after every shower; another girl has rarely had regular meals and wolfs down every one like she’s still starving. (The instructors keep finding food hidden in and around her bed. They make her eat it, all of it, in front of them, even if it makes her sick.) One cannot reasonably expect sameness out of so much difference, and it makes no sense for Damaya to be judged by the behavior of children who share nothing save the curse of orogeny with her.
Location 2,311:
The world is not fair, and sometimes it makes no sense.
Location 2,703:
“Home is people,” she says to Asael, softly. Asael blinks. “Home is what you take with you, not what you leave behind.”
Location 3,359 (the uncanny valley of hyper-graceful motion):
The stone eater’s arm rises, so steadily that the motion surpasses graceful and edges into unnatural.
Location 3,546:
Friends do not exist. The Fulcrum is not a school. Grits are not children. Orogenes are not people. Weapons have no need of friends.
Location 4,155 (out of context this is weird but it made me lol):
Did you need a dick — any dick, even my mediocre, boring one — that bad?”
Location 4,314:
We are creatures born of heat and pressure and grinding, ceaseless movement. To be still is to be… not alive.
Location 4,369:
She loves her son. But that doesn’t mean she wants to spend every hour of every rusting day in his presence.
Location 4,446 (ISO an affection dihedron):
They can’t stand sex with each other directly, but vicariously it’s amazing. And what do they even call this? It’s not a threesome, or a love triangle. It’s a two-and-a-half-some, an affection dihedron.
Fewer highlights than usual…lots of plot = fewer highlights, I think. I enjoyed reading this book, but it also didn’t propel me right into the next book in the series (unlike The Three-Body Problem). Maybe in a month or two?
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