Fifth Season, N. K. Jemisin

Jemisin brilliantly illustrates the belief that, yes, imaginative world-building is a vital element of fantasy - but also that every character is a world unto herself Fantasy novels often provide a degree of escapism: a good thing, for any reader who has something worth escaping. Too often, though, that escape comes through a fictional world that erases rather than solves the more complex problems of our own... In Jemisin's work, nature is not unchangeable or inevitable. The Fifth Season invites us to imagine a dismantling of the earth in both the literal and the metaphorical sense, and suggests the possibility of a richer and more fundamental escape. Heartbreaking, wholly unexpected, and technically virtuosic, THE FIFTH SEASON is a tour-de-force. I felt every shock--and the book is packed with them--in my marrow. It's no exaggeration to say that Jemisin expands the range of what great fantasy can be Book Description:- Winner of the Hugo Award for Best Novel, and shortlisted for the Nebula, Locus, World Fantasy, Kitschie and Audie awards, this is the stunning first instalment in a fantasy trilogy set in a world of volcanoes and earthquakes, where the power to control the earth is the most dangerous of all. The New York Times calls The Fifth Season 'intricate and extraordinary'