N.K. Jemisin, one of the most significant science fiction and fantasy writers of our generation, has penned novels where enslaved gods walk through twisting halls, people harvest magic through dreams, and cities are literally alive. She made history by winning the Hugo Award for Best Novel three years in a row. Her books make regular appearances on best of lists. The accolades go on and on.
If you’ve never read an N.K Jemisin work before, you’re certainly in for a treat. Her stories are filled with diverse characters, inventive premises, intricate worldbuilding, and stunning prose. They also often blend genres or cross them. Don’t expect to see your science fiction kept separate from your fantasy here. And while some authors make successful, long-lasting careers out of writing different iterations of what is fundamentally the same story, Jemisin does not. Her trilogies and duologies could not be more different from each other if they tried.
Jemisin’s bibliography contains short stories, novellas, and novels. Here is an overview of the highlights.
The Fifth Season
We can’t talk about N.K. Jemisin’s works without mentioning The Fifth Season. The first installment of The Broken Earth trilogy is perhaps her most well-known work. Included on countless recommendation lists, The Fifth Season won the Hugo for Best Novel… and so did its succeeding installments, The Obelisk Gate and The Stone Sky, something which had never happened before and hasn’t happened since.
The novel takes place on planet plagued by seismic instability. And occasionally, that instability results in an additional season to the four we already know: a season that causes apocalypses. But humanity is stubborn, and its found a way to survive until. Because the fifth season that is descending upon the world now might be the last, once and for all.
The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms
Jemisin’s debut novel, The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, tells a story of family dynasties, legacies, and gods. It follows Yeine Darr, whose mother was once heir to the powerful Arameri throne. After her mother’s murder, she’s summoned by her estranged grandfather to the Arameri seat of power. There, he names her heir to the throne.
Unfortunately, her two cousins already have the title, catapulting a still-mourning Yeine into a chaotic struggle for power. Now, she must learn to play the game of politics, which includes understanding the roles played by the enslaved gods that serve the Arameri family.
The Best American Science Fiction And Fantasy 2018
John Joseph Adams has been overseeing the Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy anthology series for several years now. One highlight is that each year, he selects a literary luminary from the science fiction and fantasy genres to serve as guest editor. Not only is it a great way to discover the best SFF short fiction from a given year, the approach also gives insight into an author’s perspective on the genres they write in. After all, what else is curation but a reflection on a person’s tastes?
In 2018, N.K. Jemisin was the guest editor. The table of contents hosts some names familiar to SFF readers: Carmen Maria Machado, Charlie Jane Anders, Samuel R. Delany, and Tobias Buckell. But it also includes SFF short story writers that might be less familiar to novel readers, such as Rachael K. Jones and A. Merc Rustad.
Emergency Skin
This novelette contains elements familiar to fans of Jemisin’s works: solid world-building, themes of oppression and revolution, and well-grounded scientific references. In it, an unnamed person from an exoplanet colony is sent back to Earth to retrieve a crucial resource. You see, the colony was founded when Earth was on the verge of collapse.
Humans survived in their new home, but society is stratified with Founders deemed to be elite and lower-class people like our protagonist not even deserving of skin, instead dwelling in a synthetic body. He expects to find humanity’s ancient home to be a dead ruin. Instead, he finds something else entirely.
Worlds Seen in Passing
Since its inception, Tor.com—now known as Reactor—has published short fiction. It’s featured writers like Leigh Bardugo, Jeff VanderMeer, Max Gladstone, Kameron Hurley, and, of course, N.K. Jemisin. Worlds Seen in Passing collects selected stories from Tor.com’s first decade of publishing fiction. The table of contents includes science fiction, fantasy, horror, and everything in between because if you know some of the authors on this list, you’ll know that some of them blend and cross genres regularly—Jemisin being one of them.
In her short story, “The City Born Great,” she explores the concept of a city and injects a hefty dose of the fantastical. What if, when a city becomes large and old enough, it is “born?” And what if the next city to be “born” is New York City?
The City We Became
Sharp-eyed readers might guess, based on the title, that “The City Born Great” is somehow related to this novel. In fact, it’s a prequel. An urban fantasy, The City We Became was Jemisin’s next novel after her stupendous The Broken Earth trilogy and is as different from it as The Fifth Season was from The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms. Here, cities have human avatars,and when the avatar of New York City falls into a coma, five new avatars appear, each representing one of the city’s boroughs. A mysterious enemy caused the primary avatar’s injury, and now the other avatars must fight them… or not.
How Long 'Til Black Future
In addition to novels, Jemisin has written many short stories. In fact, like many great science fiction and fantasy authors, she began publishing in that format. This collection includes a selection of those works, from earlier in her career like “Too Many Yesterdays, Not Enough Tomorrows” to later like “Henosis.” If you’re interested in seeing Jemisin’s creative range beyond what’s already been demonstrated by her novels, start here.
