Sponsored by Farrar Straus and Giroux/MCD Books.
From the author of Annihilation, a brilliant speculative thriller of dark conspiracy, endangered species, and the possible end of all things.
Welcome to Read This Book, the newsletter where I recommend one book for your TBR that I think you’re going to love! Genre fiction is my wheelhouse, and about 90% of my personal TBR, so if if you’re looking for recommendations in horror, fantasy, or romance, I’ve got you covered!
My recommendation this week is one that, if you haven’t read it yet, you really must add to your TBR. In truth, telling someone they absolutely must read something – though usually the phrase is more an expression of enthusiasm than a directive – makes me feel bossy, because at the end of the day what you read is entirely your own choice! However, I am going to have to make an exception and tell you that if you have not read this book then you really should pick up a copy and give it a try. It is a fantasy novel par excellence, one that I have only just recently finished myself this weekend and have been thoroughly ruined by.
The Fifth Season by N.K. Jemisin
Surprising no one who is familiar with Jemisin’s talent and unmatched worldbuilding, The Fifth Season, book one of The Broken Earth series, was a Hugo Award winner in 2016. And I am the idiot who has let it languish in her TBR for three years, which I regret almost as much as the fact that I did not purchase the sequels and now no bookstore in a 20 mile radius has seen fit to stock them. Catastrophe!
Rather like the catastrophe that opens The Fifth Season, plunging the continent on which the novel is set into a fiery, ash-strewn apocalypse known to the locals as “The Season”. But while the devastation that follows the cataclysm underpins the present day portions of the plot, the novel is actually told over three separate but related timelines. There is Damaya, a young girl who has been exposed as an orogene – one who can control the seismic activity of the ground around her – and in an instant becomes both hated and feared. Syenite, a powerful orogene who has been sent on a mission that goes terribly wrong, exposing the dark underbelly of the world she thought she knew. And Essun, a women who has experienced more loss and grief than I have words to quantify, who sets out into a world torn asunder and set afire to find her daughter.
Go forth and read!
Jessica