Taskmaster The Podcast - The Fifth Season

Episode Date: February 18, 2023

We begin Black History Month with an absolute chest punch of a book: The Fifth Season by N. K. Jemisin.  This is a story with a powerful exploration of race, slavery, and representation. Read it. Please. Read it then come listen to our conversation about how cultural myths affect real world acceptance and how cool it is to be a bisexual polyamorous pirate king.patreon.com/swordsandsocialismEmail: [e-mail] The Show: @SwordsNSocPodAsha: @Herbo_AnarchistKetho: @StupidPuma69 patreon.com/swordsandsocialismEmail: [e-mail] The Show: @SwordsNSocPodAsha: @Herbo_AnarchistKetho: @MusicalPuma69

🎵 bro are you fucking real man come on hello everyone and welcome back to sword sorcery and socialism a podcast about the politics and themes hiding in our genre of fiction. As always, I am Asha and I'm here with my co-host, Ketho. How's it going, Ketho? Howdy. And we are back here starting Black History Month with a book that is bisexual, polyamorous, transgender, and depressed. So it was written for me specifically. transgender and depressed so it was written for me specifically i as soon as as soon as we looked over it's like oh man poly bi and trans representation i was like they wrote this just for you like don't forget depressed we are talking today about the fifth season by nk jameson and oh my lord it has been a while since we've like read a book we were both like this is really good yeah aside from ones that like we knew were good like going back and

reading like leguin or something like it's been a while since we read a book that neither of us was familiar with where we both came away going holy holy shit. To be fair, I don't know if this has actually ever happened because usually one of us has read it. Usually one of us has read it. It's like the last time I can think both of us really, really liked the book. The same amount, like a lot was maybe canticle, which is a long time ago, but like in terms of both of us really loving it. Friends, this book is great. So while we usually don't do this, I'm going to preface this by saying, if you have not read this book, do not listen to this episode until you've read it.

I'm sorry. Like this is one, we, a lot of them, we say, you know, we can review it. We'll talk about it enough. You might kind of get it please. And even if it's bad for our numbers, please do not listen to this episode until you have read the fifth season. It's worth it. This is one where knowing what happens does kind of spoil the story for you. There are like twists and stuff that you really will not fully feel unless you're reading it through blind. Trust me, it's worth the ride. Even if like me, you are sort of off put by having one of the three point of view characters be narrated in second person. If you're unfamiliar with that, that means as you're reading it, it says, you know, you step through the doorway into your house

and you, you know you feel apprehension as you look around your living room. I will admit, I fully admit, I bounced. I tried to read this book like three or four years ago and kind of bounced off of it around that point because I really was uncomfortable with the second person narration. I went through this time and it was one of the best decisions I've ever made. So last warning, if you have not read it please turn this off come back when you're done this podcast will still be here and it'll be better yeah it will

it just will you need to let the themes smack you in the fucking face on your own before you listen to us talk about yeah and and this is this is the thing This is not a book that hides its themes. But at the same time, it is somehow more subtle than all of the... It is subtly beating you to death. It is somehow more subtle than all of the cyberpunk we've been reading. It's not beating you to death. It is subtly pulling your soul out through your fucking stomach, is what this book is doing. Right out the sphincter. It's pulling the soul out through the, through your fucking stomach is what this book is doing. Right out the sphincter. It's,

it's pulling the soul out of you and I, I being hyperbolic, but God damn, this book is really good. So that's your last warning. Spoilers abound ahead as always. The fifth season by NK Jameson published in 2015. So also what are the newest books we have read for this

podcast? Maybe so far, maybe the newest. Yeah, it's a fitting start to Black History Month. This one, obviously, the plot we're going to talk about sort of as we do the themes, but there's so many themes that I don't think we even have time for a full plot recap here like we do in some of the other books absolutely not a lot of things happen in this book a lot of things happen i'm gonna come right out the gate and i think we should just hit the main theme right off the bat like let's just let's go in both feet take out the big hammer because this is this is the big one it's the big one this is the big one the main theme of this book is slavery. Shocker.

But no, seriously, slavery and freedom are the core themes of this novel. But again, if you haven't read it, in which case you should have stopped listening. But if you haven't read it, it's not slavery the way you think a book like this would talk about slavery. This book is described, I think, accurately as being science fantasy because it is fantasy, but there are a lot of sort of sci-fi adjacent elements to it. It kind of gets to have its cake and eat it too by having a cyclical world where empires rise and fall. You have remnants of previously high-tech empires, you know, with like electric lights and like hydropower and stuff like that, while also having sort of fantasy archaic stuff

like glass knives and people living in mud huts and comms, but also having fancy underground mines that have air filtration systems. Like you get to do it, you get to have it all. So when you talk about the main theme is slavery it's not slavery in the way you think it's not chattel slavery it's a different kind and also more insidious kind yeah i was i was gonna i was digging for just the word insidious which sounds super star wars yeah no this is a very insidious type of slavery in the stillness in the in the world of the fifth season. So you have origins, these people that are born with the innate ability to do earth magic, to do earthbending, kind of. Kind of. Yeah. earthbending kind of kind of yeah as part of its science fantasy it sort of it kind of explains how how they're like the mechanics through which they do it kind of where basically you draw energy from

things around you be they living things or plants or from like the geologic power of the earth below you and you can funnel that either into seismic shifts or pinpoint accuracy, depending on how good you are at controlling it. I would describe it as a fairly soft magic system on the scale. It's like in the middle. It's in the middle. It's soft, but with parameters. Like the limits of it are basically how powerful the origin is. So because there is no real limitation to how powerful a person can be except the author,

I would call it semi-soft. Semi-soft. In other words, it's kind of like energy-based. It pulls from the earth or from any source of energy and heat nearby. So origins, when they do their stuff, they can do it with energy from the earth if it's nearby enough and they can gain access to it, or they can suck the life out of living things nearby, like the heat and energy out of them and freeze them to death. Essentially, so because that's the pseudoscience of it is that in order to have the

energy to do something else, you need the energy from somewhere. It's like the, you know, Newton's like conservation of energy, metal alchemist stuff. If I want to do some like earth bending, like I need the energy from somewhere.

And if the only place I can get it is from the people around me, then that's where it gets pulled from. And they flash freeze and die because you've drained all the energy out of them because heat is energy. It's actually now that I'm thinking about it, very much like Full Metal Alchemist. Yeah. Yeah. Because in at least in Brotherhood, they pull from the tectonic plate movement of the earth is where they get. Which is definitely one of the main places that uh origins pull from yeah because

this universe is ironically the the continent is ironically called the stillness despite being the most tectonically active thing ever ever so to get back on our theme here the slavery of the fifth season is that you have these origins they They're just born this way. They are born with the power to do orogeny, but without training, it can be dangerous because you can accidentally like through like an emotional fear response or danger response or anger response. An untrained origin can accidentally flash freeze and murder a whole lot of people or, you know, destroy a town or move a whole fucking mountain. Yeah, there's not really even the weaker origins who you don't really get to see that many origins, to be honest. I mean, but they say repeatedly that even a child, even a child origin, because they can't control the energy can can like basically topple a mountain

and and they're pretty much impossible to hide because even in their sleep even subconsciously origin babies will prevent earthquakes in their area it's an inherent sort of like instinctual thing so they often end up standing out and due to the wild stories that we will talk about and societal ideas that have been built up about origins, either they get discovered and their parents or their neighbors or their leadership of their of their village, their calm, like report them to the fulcrum or they just get murdered. Yeah, pretty violently. Your options are either be violently murdered by the people in your city or your parents,

or you get reported to the fulcrum, which is where origins go to be quote unquote trained. And this is where the biggest themes of slavery and freedom and what those mean start to come out. Because you have the guardians, the guardians whose whole job is to be cops slash slave masters. That's their job. That's their job. They're very much in that, like what I want to call like the early late 18, early 1900s role of where they are both like slave masters and cops. You know what I mean? Like they're very much the like, I will kill an origin on site if in the way. But also we present ourselves as the people, as the only people that can keep origins safe from the general public. They are the most insidious part of this whole fucking thing. And they are straight up psychopaths. And this stuff gets shown off in the very first real scene that you get with.

What's his what's his name? It's Shafa and Demaya. Demaya. So between the two of them, this scene is uncomfortable. Extremely. You know what? I'm going to do it. I will say this.

The slight content warning. If you're sensitive to depictions of abuse. Yes. Specifically child, child abuse, child and physical abuse. I will give you a content warning right now. You may want to skip ahead a few minutes.

Yeah. So essentially I don't even remember exactly what Demaya does. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. She's not really anything. She's not really doing anything. Demaya is on the horse with Shafa. They're riding along, doing whatever.

She's about to like cry or something. She's going to cry. She's been talking about like, oh, you know, I want to go home, blah, blah, blah, blah. And he. Being a child. She is like. She's like. Nine. Eleven. Nine. nine ten something like that she

grabs her hand and slowly starts to squeeze and eventually breaks it slowly and intentionally breaks the bones in her hand and then essentially goes on this spiel about how he as a guardian will not hesitate to kill her if she disobeys disobeys or expresses this sort of emotion and threatens once again not just to kill her but also to potentially forever maim her hand um he threatens to to crush it also while doing this he's alternatingly like stroking her hair touching her face and reminding her that he is the only one on earth

that loves her and wants her to succeed so he breaks her hand and says I love you I want to protect you the only way for me to do that is for you to obey me in everything I say and do. And if you disobey me, I will kill you. Yeah.

It's textbook like emotional and physical abuse. This is someone who has gotten the science of abuse. Like these are people that have perfected abuse down to a science. Because you learn later that they do this to every origin child. All of them. Every single one.

On their way into the fulcrum. This is done to all of them. This is to instill in them the fact that they need to fucking behave or else. And then they are taken to their school that they cannot leave, basically not even under direct threat. It's just sort of they get the implication that if they ever tried to leave the fulcrum, a guardian would catch them and bring them back, or the townsfolk might just murder them.

Just before this kind of horrific scene of abuse happens, you have a story being told about the first guardian and an origin who was rogue and was murdering people for no good reason. Apparently for no good reason. It's an origin that just went crazy and got power hungry and was like destroying whole villages and then showed up to the capital and said, I will murder everyone in the capital if you don't let me kill the emperor. And this bodyguard kind of figures out a way to trick him and kills him. And this is the story that Shafa is telling to Demaya. And Demaya realizes after a minute that in this story, she's not supposed to identify with this cool, badass bodyguard woman who saves the emperor. She realizes Shafa is telling her this story to say, I am that bodyguard and you are that origin and I will fucking kill you.

All of this is just dehumanizing, intentionally dehumanizing. There's a concerted effort even throughout the rest of the book of moments where the characters will talk about how and get into arguments over whether or like not it's not touched on too much but whether or not they're human or their origins are human at all um because culturally writ large a lot of people do not believe them to be which i don't know if that sounds familiar to anybody yeah writ large across the culture starting with this story that Shafa tells as like an example, origins are not seen as being human. They are seen as being dangerous. I'd say demonic. They don't really have a concept of demons, but I think for us, like demonic is sort of the right idea that they are an inherent danger to your community simply by existing in it. And that the only way they can be trusted

is if they are under the control of the fulcrum. Wow. I wonder if this is a metaphor for anything. And anytime, even when these fulcrum trained and controlled origins are out doing the one thing they're allowed to do, which is doing work, saving everyone's lives. They are treated by basically everyone with rampant disrespect, suspicion, derision, dehumanization, everywhere they go. Despite being the people that are keeping everyone safe. Literally, despite being the only reason that there hasn't been a fifth season. For like 400 years.

They're the only reason. That there hasn't been a cataclysmic world event. For about 400 years. Is the origins. But they are still. Systemically dehumanized. Across the stillness. I don't know why I suddenly.

Thought of. I just thought of Kendrick Lamar's for free. It's like, nah, America, I picked cotton to make you rich. Fuck you. My dick ain't free.

Kind of. It's kind of, that's like alabaster's attitude. That's yeah. It's basically alabaster. Alabaster of course is the, so the, the origins are basically given like a power ranking after being able to show certain amounts of control or ability or whatever.

They get a ring for each finger. And the more rings you have, obviously, the more powerful you have, the more they trust you to do stuff. And Alabaster is the most rings you can have. He has 10. He's the only person currently alive with 10. And you find out that he would have more if they gave you more. If they have the ability to rank you more. He is basically, I think, he's like the single most powerful person in the entire book and the entire empire writ large. Potentially the entire ever.

Maybe the entire ever. He might be stronger than even that historical, historical like origin that tried to kill the emperor. Well, seeing as he also is, I mean, at least to some extent figured out how to tap into like the obelisk, not as well as. Cyanide. Yeah. Also, like, like Alabaster is powerful enough that he can like go in and remove poison from his own blood. is powerful enough that he can like go in and remove poison from his own blood he's he's powerful enough to use other people other origins like erogenous yeah and use it himself which is the thing that you're supposedly not able to do but that goes back to what i think we're talking about

this sort of systemic racism systemic slavery and dehumanization of the origins is that people go on and on and on about stone lore. Stone lore are basically what I want to call like the ancient rules of society, like how society should function, how society should be run and what to do in case of a season. You know, the fifth season being when there's volcanoes and earthquakes and ash and all that other bullshit. Yeah. So this stone lore is projected to all of the comms, to all of the people across the stillness as propagated by the leaders of the old Sansa empire and now humanists more or less as being this sort of ancient infallible font of advice and wisdom. And the stone lore is full of being like origins are shifty fucks.

Don't trust them. They'll kill you. Stone lore is full of it. And there's multiple scenes where alabaster is pointing out to cyanide that there are tablets of stone lore that aren't taught. He's found them and read them. There's stuff on the tablets that's been scratched out. There's stuff that's been removed.

There are tablets that are missing. to that again that societal system of how people are perceived is controlled by the stories that society tells itself and like if you sit down and think about it this extends into like it's this world i'm just gonna it's so creative i can't even there's so much going on here i think back to the original story of the first guardian and it's a point it's the reason she tells that story i think is very similar to the reason that she includes a bi poly big man and a trans woman. And it's, it's because, and she presents them as good people. Um, is the point of that first story is that representation does matter and how they're being represented does matter. Yeah.

So this story with the first, the origin and the first guardian as presented by Shafa, who is representing what I want to call the dominant narrative, is rogue origin murdering everyone for – just because they're crazy. And the heroic first guardian saving the humanists. To me, when I look at that story, I see an analogy for representation in fiction and cultural histories and like media as well. Oh, there's a gay character in the story. They're the villain, though. It's like because so many marginalized people can only look at themselves in media as villains or as the bad guy, never as the hero.

as villains or as the bad guy, never as the hero. And Demaya's reaction to that is probably fairly accurate to how someone would react to that in the real world. It's despair. There's disparagement. There's a little bit of self-hatred. A lot of self-hatred. I would say one of the underlying themes of this whole story is Demaya Cyanide Essen dealing with internalized self-hatred. A lot of self-loathing.

Self-loathing given to her by the fulcrum, by society. By her mother and father, by her mother and father. When she's a child by Shafa and the teachers at the fulcrum, when she's a girl by the fulcrum hierarchy and society writ large, when she's a young adult working for the fulcrum, even into like trying to sublimate it and hide it when she's essence it's a story about how this society's racism i'm just gonna call it racism this society's racism and sort of slavery state of origins despite not physically keeping them in chains enslaves people in a multitude of other ways because we learn later

a different version of that first story of that origin guardian story and of course it comes to us from alabaster whose sort of whole purpose is to be like kind of the ascended one i guess yeah he's he's the conscious one he's got all the information he's well he's powerful enough to have been able to sort of step over the boundaries without being murdered at least up to that point yeah um he could do pretty much whatever he wants as long as he doesn't completely flout the rules um so you want to tell us what what happened in the real story getho well in the real story the emperor of sanza because the season they were in it was like the season of the long teeth is the the colloquial name for that each

each fifth season has its own unique name just Just to distinguish it, there was very little food and no supplies. So the Sansa took to raiding and cannibalizing other comms, including the comm of the origin who got power hungry or whatever and started killing people. Apparently his entire tribe was taken and eaten uh with the exception of himself and he came back for revenge not for power hungry reasons so there was no there was no evidence that he was just wantonly murdering people no he was literally trying to avenge his tribe who were cannibalized by the sansa now i'm of course inclined to believe alabaster but yeah as i think you're intended to yeah but there's also you know it's like like like you said history is super unreliable so

there's no real way to know but it's definitely not at the very least it's not black and white and it's not it's not as simple as this the origin is the bad guy and the guardians the good guy at um yeah and there's evidence of that and the entire sort of thesis of this book is the idea that the origin bad guardian good has been so entrenched in the cultural consciousness across the stillness that origins don't need to be in chains. They don't have to be because it's not necessary to ensure their obedience. The implicit threat of murder, either by random townsfolk or by the guardians, and the sort of drilled into them self-loathing that they are given as children is enough to ensure the survival of this sort of like apartheid state within the stillness

an apartheid state that isn't just necessarily apartheid for the origin so they probably definitely have it the worst or they face the brunt of it there's also like a strange caste system a use caste system a very broad like you're born into this category well i don't it's yeah basically from being a child you're sort of like assigned to a category and so your name is like your your given name then your cast then your cast then your com so your entire identity is a personal name a cast name and the city name that that's what you go by and they even have a cast of people that just have children. They call them the breeder cast. Some of them exist just to have children.

Some of them exist to basically give approval for certain people from other cast to have kids if they have desirable characteristics. Just hardcore eugenics going on continent-wide. And that occurs to the origins as well where – Most explicitly. Yeah. occurs to the origins as well where most explicitly yeah um where they and and alabaster admits this that it's not it's frustrating to the fulcrum and to the sansa that they can't actually control the creation of origins um like they can do their best to influence it. But at the end of the day, there are what they would call feral ones,

which are just born from two normal people, non origins, just having an origin child. They're frustrated. They can't control it, but they still attempt to by essentially pulling a eugenics. And since Alabaster is a 10 ringer, they can't control it but they still attempt to by essentially pulling a eugenics and since alabaster is a ten ringer he is the one who gets picked to have lots of kids so other like female

origins of a certain like level are essentially sent to him and required by the fulcrum to fuck every day until they get pregnant and have a kid. And then ideally the kid will also be an origin who can then be trained in the fulcrum. Unfortunately, it's kind of revealed, not kind of, it is revealed what generally happens. What happens to kids who don't make it through the fulcrum? And some of them are implied to be alabaster's kids what happens is one of the most fucked up things in the entire book i i would maybe argue in terms of the actions that the the the sansa take it is probably the most

fucked up thing um so across the Empire there are these they call them stations? Yeah, node stations. Node stations, which are basically they're all told an origin is stationed at and their whole job is just to basically constantly feel for earthquakes

and to calm them down. I'm going to put another content warning in here. Just, you know, what do you even call this? Child abuse, child,

body, horror, child abuse. So yeah, just skip a couple minutes again. Yeah. Like five, 10 minutes.

So the, the other fulcrum origins are told that there are these these node stations and that you know basically that um origins that don't are are okay but not great basically get sent to a node station to hang out and quell earthquakes in the local area and that's like their whole existence yeah there's uh there's like a funny thing that goes on in the lead up to this where alabaster's like you should visit one of these stations and she's like why and well she notices that alabaster is like quieting as many earthquakes as he can himself that he's just quieting the tremors around him and she finds out that he's doing it because he wants to take the

pressure off of the the node stations but she doesn't really know what's going on at the node station so she just thinks it's a guy standing around bored uh quelling all these quakes and so she's just like why are you doing this for them it's like they're probably bored this is probably the only thing they like enjoy doing is like quelling quakes and he he doesn't even actually get mad at her in the moment he's just like you should probably see one of these stations and as it as it occurs an event happens they get to go visit one and then you find out the real fucked up shit that in each of these node stations there is not an origin station there who just hangs out. It is a child who failed out of the fulcrum, who has often one that has powerful or orogeny, but no control.

subconsciously and inherently? Well, they have taken these children, lobotomized them and hooked them up to like a chair with like feeding tubes and colostomy bags and a bunch of other stuff and just stuck them there in this chair in a permanent state of like being highly drugged, like a permanent state of stupor, locked into this chair until they die and that's their whole existence is being locked into this chair in a state of stupor to subconsciously quell quakes subconsciously quaking earthquakes and there is a network of these everywhere across the continent and like if they manage to wake up and that's what sets this off is they can literally just start volcanic eruptions well also if they come out from under there are basically their drug-induced stupor at all they are in constant excruciating pain if they wake up yeah and what happens is one of them

kind of wakes up it is implied because some people like to watch them suffer people pay for the privilege for it's it's implied to be for sexual reasons it's implied for sexual reasons they like kind of let the kids wake up a little bit like like people will pay a lot of money to do it a lot of money basically for the right to abuse these children and this kid woke up a little too much and nearly caused a volcanic eruption that would have started an entire new season and then you find out that kid is probably one of um alabaster's kids because he has like 12 he's like he's like he's like 12 kids the kid looks like alabaster and he's also just inherently very powerful based on what he did.

And like the, not even the Sansa anymore, but like, cause Sansa doesn't really exist anymore, but like humanists and the fulcrum and by extension, the guardians are maintaining this network of child abuse, just the most sickening kind of child abuse across the continent. And the fulcrum is in full knowledge of this and they run it. Yep. So yeah, fucked, terrible, horrible.

It's real fucked. Just again, a further showcase of how far the dehumanization has gone, that people are willing to do this. And, and it's, you know, with dehumanization and this sort of slavery,

you, you, you kind of wonder as chicken in the egg where it's, you know, with dehumanization and this sort of slavery, you kind of wonder as chicken in the egg. Or it's like, did they do this and then came up with the justification post facto of them just not being human and it doesn't matter? Or was it the other way around? Did they like get dehumanized first and they were like, oh, we can use them like this? I think it was that way. I'm inclined to believe it was that one that they've been dehumanizing them anyway and then they were just like we found a use for these kids we can't

control yeah i mean in a way that parallels real world racism where it's like they got it was probably the opposite where they were dehumanized as a post facto justification for enslavement. So you're right. I mean, it maybe could be that way because that is how it happened in the real world. I mean, either way, it's incredibly fucked and has parallels to the real world, which makes it even more fucked. I mean, this entire book is just a treatise on real world racism and the history of slavery

on black people in America. And this, and that is exactly what I was here for. So this book really does kind of kill it on that front. One point going back, I wanted to mention when I was talking about how like cultural narratives can be changed over time. So people don't remember all of it. It also kind of made me think of what I want to call like the invention of whiteness and how like cultural narratives can be adapted to fit with the new times. Cause everyone knows you go far enough back and like, you know, the Irish weren't considered white or Italians weren't white or whatever. Right. Like we're

all aware of those stories. So if you imagine that as, you know, stone lore, well, eventually over time, it became more useful to American society to consider Irish immigrants as white people. So we simply eliminated that part of stone lore because it's not useful to us anymore. It's all about cultural control or control of the cultural narrative and how people are presented within it. I I'm sorry, friends, as you know,

because you've read the book as you should have by this point, shame, if you have not fucking depressing. Yeah. Because even, even the glimmers of hope are short, short or brutally snuffed out like her first child. Yeah. And her second and her first child. Yeah.

And her second and her second child. Well, her third, I guess, I guess. Yeah. Third. Technically I forgot the order that she had them in.

Yeah. This woman basically saw two of her children murdered. You could argue that she murdered the first one, but cause she have technically did, but she did it in order to make sure that fucking Shafa wouldn't get it. Yeah. And that's probably for the best. I mean,

it was, well, from her perspective, from her perspective, it was better for the, the child to die than to become a slave of the fulcrum. And that's, that almost feels like a uh

like a thesis statement right there um i kind of is because honestly after that the last like two chapters are kind of a denouement you know like the last couple chapters the last the very last chapter is really just there to establish what will be the next book. Yeah. The chapter, the second to last chapter essentially officially does the reveal that all three women you've been following are the same person. And that Hoa has been the narrator for like the second person chapters and, you know, reuniting with Alabaster. You know, that's sort of the that second to last chapter but i like the real end of this book and like the giant fucking exclamation

point of its themes is the fight on on maav on the island with the guardians the guardians versus the polycule guardians versus the polycule where enon gets brutally killed extremely she kills her own kid to save him to save the child from the fulcrum alabaster gets yoinked the cyanide kills basically everyone basically friend and foe alike and and then escapes. Somehow. That's like, that's basically the exclamation point. The climax of the book. And this is,

this is the hallmark, I think of a good book. The climax happens. And then there's like a chapter, like, like an intro, like a, is it like an interlude in a chapter? It's an interlude.

And then two short chapters and the book's over. And the book over and the book is building all building it's not you don't even get to the end going it's still going you can say you're like what the fuck what the fuck what the fuck yeah and you you know it's coming you know it's coming you get you don't you don't know what but you know it's coming yeah because, because you know that eventually Cyanide has to get to Essen. Just to become Essen, yeah. And because you know there's a gap there and because you know, you're like, oh, something absolutely horrible is going to happen. And it does. Something horrible does happen.

It does. Something horrible does happen. They murder our giant, smooth, bisexual pirate king. They do murder the giant, smooth, bisexual pirate king, which is a lot of descriptors for one person. He deserves them. Yeah, he does. My fucking funniest bits. Like, it shouldn't really be that funny, but it's funny in abstract when he fucks Alabaster and then rolls over and just fucks Esalen.

Fucks Cyanite? Well, because Alabaster's like tuckered out. He's tired. But Enon's like, i ain't done yet alabaster and cyanide are like because of the weird forced to have sex thing yeah they literally directly explained that like because cyanide alabaster were forced to fuck for a while they never liked each other that much and so they don't like to have sex with each other but they both really enjoy watching enon fuck the other one and and it's just funny because like i don't know it's like the two of them are emotionally in the polycule just not physically and it she calls it a two and a half some yeah it's she's like it's not a it's

not like a triangle you know it's not a real full polycule it's not a th's not like a triangle. You know, it's not a real full polycule. It's not a threesome because they never fuck each other. It's just a it's a two and a half some, which is just funny. I should point out is almost all of the marginalized peoples being presented in this book are presented in a well, I mean, maybe they're presented in a good way. Yeah. Alabaster is obviously a complicated figure. Yes. But Alabaster is bisexual. At the very least.

At the very least. Maybe slightly more gay. Then, you know, if it's a spectrum, I'd probably say he probably leads more towards the gay side than the straight side of the bisexual continuum. His bicycle swings hard to the men. Swings hard to the men. E9 is just like i like fucking he is he really is just a horny bastard he's just a big strong man who likes to fuck which i can respect and then you have you know you have cyanide who's straight but like it's cool at the

poly cool too so you've got like some bisexual polyamory going on. And again, it's like at most, it's like some of the, the village people are like, Oh, look, isn't that silly? All the three, the three hottest people are all fucking each other.

There it's, it just goes along with her idea of positive representation. She's like counteracting the world that she's presenting in her story by giving you positive representation within the story that she's writing it's a good book and then again talk about positive representation you have the character of tonki who is who is referred to as a woman the entire book is gendered properly the entire book and then at one moment when she's like bathing it's like huh she's got a dick also she gets real crabby when she runs out of her drugs and starts to grow a beard when she runs out of drugs yeah same uh um well it turns out that science well the essence knew tonki before way back

and that tonki's been kind of like tracking essence down because essence has this weird connection with the giant stone obelisks yeah so sort of sort of like um hoa tonki has kind of been trailing essenceen Cyanide for a long time. Yeah, and Hoa is... Hoa's been this freaking narrator the whole time. I don't even know if we can even get into what the Stone Eaters are, because I feel like that's not actually

going to be fleshed out until the next book. Yeah, there's a few things that strike me as stuff we're not really going to understand until we move on and read the next. But we're going to have to wait a minute before we do that. But flashing back, positive representation. Tonki is a trans woman. It's like mentioned once. And then just in the way that like Essin is noticing it.

But then like, nobody says anything. Like that's just it. Well, not even like nobody says anything like that's just it. Well, not even just nobody says anything there. There's an element of people didn't like before. Tonki kind of got ostracized because of it, but is going to this place where people don't really give a shit. Because where they all end up in the final secret calm underground is explicitly like a nonjudgmental open calm where everyone

can be who they are and there's a there's a glimmer of hope here mostly because the um i think fundamentally what's what's most interesting is is essen at one point brings up the idea of the stone lore or at least thinks it or it's like it might still make more sense to follow the stone lore, or at least thinks it, or it's like, it might still make more sense to follow the stone lore on this so we don't die. But they're pushing against it. They're kind of intentionally doing something different. A community intentionally going against the established societal norms on purpose. They are saying, we know these are the norms. We're ignoring them on purpose because we feel that the stone lore as a whole is more harmful than it is helpful. I guess if there's anything hopeful in this book, it's this community. That being said,

there's still two more books. I don't hold out a lot of hope that it will survive. Yeah. But weirdly, for a book so depressing, it ends on a slightly positive note of like they have at least found a new place that is transgressive and accepting of all of them and their identities. What I think was most shocking just in general about this book, this isn't really a theme. This is just me being impressed, is you start the book thinking this is going to be about Esen tracking down her husband, Jijo. Yeah, you think that it's going to be a story about her tracking him down. And you realize, you learn later, it's just a story about her. And it's really more about her past than about what's going on in the present. It's really a story about about Essen coming to terms with who she is and where she stands in the world. And you coming to terms with who she is at the same time.

By going through her past as Demaya and Cyanide. Yeah, it kind of fractured way. I mean, she kind of gives it away in having Demaya become Cyanide fairly early. in having demya become cyanide fairly early it's not it's about halfway through maybe a little a little after because after that there's no more there's no more demya chapters yeah there's no more demya chapters after that so i think it was kind of there were hints at it um throughout which is just made looking back through the first few chapters really interesting just going in it with that information um and seeing the hints that she was drawing. Oh, yeah.

She definitely was like leaving you the clues. The biggest one being that people have these different names and that people can have different names throughout their lifetime. And you're like, oh, that's why she told us this. All of the stone lore that she drops at like the end of chapters is all very much like this is foreshadowing. Yeah. Well, yeah. At the end of every chapter, there's the only way that that sort of thing can come across as actually good writings if it's foreshadowing. And it also foreshadows.

It always is. Which is, thank goodness, because otherwise I usually get really tired of like quotes or things at the end or beginning of. She did do it differently by putting at the end of the chapter as opposed to opening the chapter with it. Because then instead of you reading the quote and being like, oh, this is what's about to happen in this chapter. It's more like this is a reflection of what just happened and is going to happen the next time you get to this perspective, which might not be for a couple chapters. If you get something at the end of a Demiah chapter, you've got to go through an Essen and Cyanide chapter before you get back to Demiah. And you've got to kind of like remember what was in that end of chapter quote, you know? Yeah, I kept flipping back to double check because, yeah, they're foreshadowing for the next bundle of chapters.

So it isn't immediately obvious. Some of the Stone Lord is just really interesting. We're back to a book with an appendix. Oh, God, I love an appendix. Look, again, call me a Tolkienized bitch. Give me a map. Give me some appendices with definitions. Man, love a good map.

And there's a good map at the beginning of this book. Let me go to the back of the book and look up how to pronounce words properly and like how people relate to each other. Love an appendice. Love a world building that requires me to look at a dictionary at the back of the book. Yeah. I'm not joking joking that's not sarcastic i do like that i mean it is true there is there is a dictionary there's like a glossary of terms commonly used in all court coordinates of the yeah amazing good um love it do that more often it even has a list of all the different races and of of people and the class the cast's com name com list oh it's so good yeah this is some of the animal amazing just like

general world building from nk jameson here like all of the themes and stuff aside her writing is very good her writing is compelling it's smooth it's the way she breaks up paragraphs adds to like the building of the tension in certain scenes the way she puts yeah especially especially the climax the climax has a bunch of paragraph breaks like right before everything happens it's just like boom boom boom boom boom um and it really speeds everything up it's it's a very well-paced novel and no point was i like yeah okay i get it let's move on yeah there was there's no wasted and it's not a short book but it is there's nothing wasted here it's yeah it's yeah it's an amazingly well-written science fantasy novel on top of being the most like thematically heavy and to the point story i have read in quite some time and and talk about whiplash i'm sorry oh yeah to go from snow crash to this is like i think i've said it on twitter as well the most

jarring transitions in tone i have ever encountered between two books I've read. Because it's not just a difference in tone. This is not just a return to us reading something that is fantasy, first of all, which has been a minute. It's also a return to us reading something with themes we agree with. Yeah. Yeah. And, and themes that we appreciate more. It's like with cyberpunk, I feel like we, we,

we, we read some things and we weren't even the stuff that we jived with more like ghost in the shell or Acura had these caveats, these big asterisks attached, or in the case of like neuromancer didn't go far enough or in the case of snow crash just forgot there was supposed to be a critique and the fifth season is almost explicitly a really well-written piece of fantasy is also just a really good thematic look at the slavery versus freedom, what those mean just as a main system,

societal control, like abuse. It is a disturbingly modern novel. I mean, which makes sense for having, you know, been published in 2015. Speaking of that and the politics of it,

I wanted to do a little chat here about, we're talking about politics, right? Let's talk about alabaster. This is not something I talked about in our pre-show. So I'm going to hit you with this one right now. Let's talk about alabaster. I'm going to talk about this in through a lens of how you respond to

things and the let's call it legitimacy of violence. Oh, because he cracks. So Alabaster, even when we first meet him, like in his travels with cyanide is very much like it's all fucked. I'm one of the few people that knows how fucked it all is. And at early on, on well not early on but up through their stay on on may of alabaster's response to entirely how entirely

fucked up the world is is to try and escape right all of his talks all of his talks with cyanide he's like, look, we can't change the system. He says that to her when they're talking about how fucked it is. Cyanide is like, yeah, you're right. This is really fucked up. I'm now aware of how evil all of this is. We need to go do something about it. Alabaster is like, the fuck are you going to do about it? We're not powerful enough to do anything about it. We can't change it. And so what is his deepest wish?

It's for them to stay on Maeve hidden as long as they can. Hopefully forever. That's what Alabaster wants. Until they get tracked there too. And now if you're working in the timeline of the book, the next time Alabaster appears on the stillness, what is he doing? I mean, he's causing this new fifth season.

He's splitting the- He's literally causing the fucking apocalypse. And now you realize, because you hear people talking about it earlier in the book, he is causing a season that will be worse and last longer than any season that StoneLore has recorded. They're talking about a season that will last hundreds of years. We're talking hundreds of years of ashfall, volcanoes constant seismic activity one that most comms will not live through if any that is is very arguable that that's sort of the

implication you're getting that if anyone lives it will be very few that is where alabaster goes once his like dream of escape from the system is destroyed by it the next time we see him he has gone full then i will tear this world down by its fucking pillars and i think there's a not a critique or discussion to be had about the idea of say like i don't know the, the quote unquote innocence of all the people of all the comms of the stillness, let alone like the citizens of humanists. I don't think I don't think that Jemisin wants you to agree with Alabaster's choice. With Alabaster's choice. I think that's correct. But I'm asking us to discuss it because when you're talking about, dare I call it, justice, retributive justice to the hundreds and hundreds of years of systemic slavery that Alabaster and his people have been subjected to.

And all of the people, particularly of humanists, but of the stillness in general, whose lives only exist because of the horrific exploitation of the origins. So does Jameson Wattis agree with Alabaster? I don't think so, but you and I both know if we look across sort of the breadth of people, even within our relative side of the political spectrum, there's going to be plenty of people who do. Oh yeah. Is there such a thing as an innocent citizen of humanists? Oh man,

mother of God. That is a big boy question. That's why I'm not answering it. Yeah, you got to point it at me. Shit, don't make me answer this question. No, it's easy. Is there such a thing as an innocent guardian? No, absolutely not. Then you got to take the next

step that's that's that's very what about what about the next step what about like leaders of the leaders of the fulcrum even ones that are origins themselves oh no no that's i mean they're they're uncle tom's they're complicit right okay what about the leadership cast of ali, of Humanus? Jesus, this is going to keep going. This is going to get further down until we find the line. Exactly. I'm not going to make this go any further.

I think that makes my point, though, is that like all these people, not every single individual, but all these comms across the stillness also all just inherently display the racism against origins i mean and there there are some even in the story that died that we that i would say are innocent to a degree or at least have shown that they're not everyone on the isle of may of well yeah but i I think of the guy who helps Essen leave town and like the mayor of the town, essentially not actually the mayor, but the same functional purpose. Yeah, he leads her out of the town and tells the guards to open up the door and let her go. Tries to do the right thing. Tries to do the right thing and dies. Is killed by her.

Because it's killed by Essen. because the guards try and kill her and oh boy i can see i can see why jemisin wrote the ones who stand and fight um his sister was a origin right the mayor i think it was his sister was an origin yeah he talks about it and so there's sympathy there yeah he does try to do the right thing but that speaks to within a system set up the way theirs is can you do the right thing are you is it even possible to do the right thing? See, this is obviously difficult to answer. And I'm not,

you know, my point here is simply to, as a, as a white guy, I mean, this is obviously a greater, bigger question because, you know, we have,

you know, as is clear, like we're both white. We can't answer these questions from like a perspective of slavery, which is why I have generalized them to systemic violence. You know what I mean? Like I've sort of extrapolated it a little bit because neither one of us can speak truly to the experience of, you know, of slaves or the descendants of slaves.

It's not a thing that we can do. But I feel like these are questions that you should consider after reading something like this because they're questions it raises or it can raise if you let yourself think about it for a little bit i tell you guys this book is good brutal it's brutal but it's so good yeah this is this is the best book we've read in a while yeah um even for dark fantasy month it's like there was some good stuff in there but like i like the black company it was fun yeah i'd like i enjoyed it it just it just wasn't as meaty no it was just you know it was silly pulp fantasy this was uh very intentional directed incisive social critique yeah like if you read this and can't apply it to the real world you are being being like intentionally thick.

Like it is impossible to read this and not like understand the context through which NK Jameson wants it. I think like you said earlier, it, now you under, you know, you understand better where Jameson was coming from with her, the ones who stay in fight, the, the response to the ones who walk away from obelos and i mean i think we even said i don't remember what we said in that episode but i can say now that you and i have both come to the conclusion obviously that uh like leguin's greatest failing was being a pacifist yeah and i think jemisin would agree and i think jemisin would make the

argument she was a pacifist because she was white yeah i think Jemisin would agree. And I think Jemisin would make the argument she was a pacifist because she was white. Yeah, I think Jemisin would definitely argue that Le Guin had the privilege of being a pacifist. Yeah, the privilege to be a pacifist. And that's fundamentally the biggest argument against pacifism like it's a very privileged position in order to be able to be a pacifist you must be in a position which your life is not immediately threatened your existence is not through much so which you know yeah clearly jim and that's why i think it's interesting that jameson has alabaster be the way he is but like we're not necessarily supposed to agree with him literally trying to you know end human life on the stillness. Yeah, I don't I don't think Jemisin is advocating for the end of human existence as a method to stop abuse.

Alabaster himself tries to argue that he had to start a new season because he has a plan to end the seasons altogether. He has a plan to make sure there are no more fifth seasons. And it somehow involves creating the moon. Well, the moon does actually do some things with tectonics. Yeah. Yeah. It, it, it mostly just interacts with gravitational stuff, but yeah, but alabaster ends the story by saying, Hey, I need your help. We're going to end seasons for good. Have you ever

considered the concept of a moon? And I'm sure that's mostly a setup for the next couple of novels, especially since one of them was called the stone sky. Yes. That reeks of a fancy word for moon. If people have never seen a moon. Yeah. That reeks of a fancy word for moon. If people have never seen a moon. Yeah. Cause there's like a hint that like people don't know the moon is missing from their sky because they've never had one. And so they don't know that they're missing it.

I think the funny thing to me is that most people, when they are coming up with a fantasy setting are like, what is my moon going to be like? What are my moons? And I usually see people like i have a moon that's shattered i have a moon she's like what if there isn't one there's no and it's partly why we have unstable tectonics and that's that's an important plot point that there's no moon and no one knows what a moon is and alabaster the first person to go what if we had one man god this

book is good oh brilliant oh my god like it's weird because this i don't know if we've mentioned this but she is the first person to ever win the hugo award three times in a row and it's for the three books of this series yeah she won three three hugo awards 2015 2016 2017 boom boom boom which also means that she had this whole thing planned out before she even published the first one because there's no way for how good these books i'm assuming the next two are she published one and thought oh shit i gotta write another one within a year oh no the fact that she's like you ever heard of a moon like she knew big she knew this entire arc before she started or at least early on man now we're gonna have to wait a year orogeny is a great is a cool like sciencey

magic system it's fun it's got elements of other magic systems it's not too hard to find it's not too softly defined yeah it's like got rules that make that can like make logical sense but also can be expanded depending on like the narrative importance of the moment and how strong the user is you know again give this book mad props for positive non-judgmental representation in media. The most powerful origin to like maybe ever exist is like a weepy bisexual guy. A weepy bisexual guy who is, if I'm remembering correctly, is like dark chocolate black. I think so. Like so black, almost chocolate black. Uh, I think so. Like, so black,

almost blue, black. Yeah. Skin. So black. It's almost blue. His hair is dense, tight,

curled stuff. And he was whipped cord thin. So he's like, yeah, he's dark, dark black. This, this middle-aged bisexual wimp.

Yeah. He's like interpersonally kind of wimpy and soft and like, like, you know, sensitive, but also the most powerful person, like literally ever who's, who's a bottom.

Yep. The most powerful person in, in the universe is a bottom, which again is the most fantastical aspect of this entire thing. Sorry. Sorry. Bottoms. I don't know if, if being the most powerful being aspect of this entire thing. Sorry, bottoms.

I don't know. If being the most powerful being in the universe did not require big muscles. Which it doesn't. It doesn't. There would just probably be more bottom powerful people. Be a lot of bottoms. The true power bottom, Alabaster. Yeah. Again, positive representation of Enon, who's just like this big muscular pirate,

like mayor, who's just like, he's like, oh, you want to have sex with me? Cool. Oh, your friend wants me to have sex with him. That's cool too. Just, just a polycule chilling, you know, cyanide who like literally doesn't even for a second judge alabaster at all for being bi. She's like, oh, he wants to fuck him, too. That makes sense.

Yeah. Again, it's silly, but positive representation. It matters that Tonki is like a eccentric, hyper fixated weirdo trans woman. Is she trying to say something i mean i'll say it i can say it i'm allowed yeah you can't say it you know our trans woman who has like a hyper fixation on certain like technological things that she just has to understand will monologue at the drop of a hat about the specific things she's interested in never heard of that stereotype before in my life couldn't possibly imagine wow i wonder if anyone has made a podcast where that is a feature it couldn't possibly be

couldn't possibly um you know that like donkey's trans and it just doesn't really matter at all it just mentioned in passing that she gets crabby when she runs out of hrt and has to shave more often and she's like this fucking sucks and it's like yeah i get it and i i just can't get over the fact that it is jameson herself showing the right thing to do when like the the narrative of the book is showing you the what not to do you know yeah the book is showing you the book is showing you the not to do. You know? Yeah. The book is showing you the power of negative representation and the sort of cultural

scars that can leave, honestly. Yeah. The age-old myths that they can perpetuate. Like, how that can lead to, like, intense self-hatred and self-loathing among marginalized people

because you've internalized all the propaganda about you. And that's kind of what it boils down to. It almost, it just is propaganda in a way. It is. It's, I mean, the stone law is some useful information,

some propaganda. And then all the stories they tell are definitely propaganda. Yeah. You know, anti origin propaganda. Like there's even a slur for um for origins they're called raga and like they treat it the way you expect that word to be treated as a slur for origins or even reclaiming it like i mean alabaster is yeah alabaster's alabaster's pulling a James Brown. Yeah. He's reclaiming that word.

He gets cyanide to understand it and use it intentionally to know what it means when it's said. Again, if you can't match it to the real world, you need to try slightly harder. Yeah.

Think a little better. Just try just a little bit. This book's really good. You should read it again if you already read it. Read it again. It's very good. Go ahead and read the next one. We're not going to talk about it until next year, though, so sorry. So don't hold your breath.

With something this good, we need to space it out. Also, I need to emotionally recover for a little while. So, you know. Yeah, the climax of this book is really sad. Yeah, one of the saddest things I've read in quite some time. So, you know. Speaking of a canticle for leap with, I'm just joking.

By finishing the book, talking about space. Do you have any final thoughts on this? It's one of those ones where we could talk about it for a while or we could just be done because it's, it's great. Yeah. A lot of it speaks for itself. Go read the book. Yeah. I just wanted to make sure everyone had a chance to see it, you know, the way we saw it and bring up some of those things. This is a great book and it's a great, this is hitting off, um, like history month with a fucking home run of a book.

Yeah, and all because I bought it on a whim. Yeah, and I bought it years ago and then just never didn't finish it. You bought it on a whim and were like, this seems like it might be a good choice. A lot of people like it. Boy, was that a correct assessment. Yep, this was really, really good. So I'm excited about the next couple.

Coming up. Coming up next, we have Binti by Inedi Okorafor. this was really really good so i'm excited about the next couple coming but coming up coming up next we have binti by inedi okorafor which is an african futurist sci-fi horror novel that should be fun that this might be our first horror it might be our first real horror on the podcast which i think we've probably should allow ourselves to dip into because we talked about in our episode on the history of fiction which is to go back and listen to oh do you want to know something funny about uh yes version i i saw i was just looking up a version of the book the most recent version of binti has a foreword by nk j. Well, perfect. That makes sense. So we're going to read Binti.

After that, we are going to finish off Black History Month by reading The Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler. So this is going to be a month of, again, just absolute home runs for books. Look forward to you guys being for that.

We still haven't decided what the bonus episode for this month is going to be. We'll pick something soon. Yeah. We'll let everybody know. It'll be, you know, a movie or a video game or some other alternative media. But still obviously on theme for black history month.

Then the month after that is hope and despair month. Month after that is CS Lewis month. CS Lewis. hope and despair month month after that is cs lewis month cs lewis month easter month is cs lewis month that's right baby so thank you all for listening uh thank you all for sticking with us through our sort of uh two and a half month cyberpunk month because both of us had a lot going on in our personal lives and it just was difficult to get things together, but we should be back on track now. Thank you all for sticking with us. If you, again,

if you like what we do, you can sign up for the Patreon. I think it's like $3 a month. You can get a bonus episode. It's about once a month. We do something that's not a book, either a movie or a TV show. We just,

the one that was out for January was one on sort of environmentalism versus like industry in media. We talk about avatar. We talked about princess. We talked about for in Gully, the last rainforest, the best environmental movie to come out of the nineties. Just kidding. But you know, come out of the 90s. Just kidding.

But, you know, all sorts of stuff like that. You can go back to listen to one of our best episodes we ever did, which was on Everything Everywhere All at Once, back last summer. But yeah, go ahead and sign up for the Patreon. Thank you all for listening. And, you know, keep an eye on our Twitter. If you don't, we will post all the books upcoming

that we know we're going to talk about. We will keep them posted on the twitter account uh thanks for listening bye bro are you fucking real man come on