When N.K. Jemisin’s The Fifth Season was first published in 2015, it won critical acclaim and awards, including the Hugo for Best Novel. The next two books in the trilogy, The Obelisk Gate and The Stone Sky, would both go on to win the Hugo for Best Novel in their respective publication years. This meant Jemisin accomplished a momentous feat and became the first person to win the Hugo Award three years in a row for all books in a trilogy.
Speaking of which, the three novels make up a science fantasy trilogy called The Broken Earth. As hinted by the name, the books take place on a seismically active world plagued by apocalypses that, unfortunately, teeters on the verge of its final cataclysm. Many raves and compliments accompany the novels these days, but one of the trilogy’s defining traits is its use of second-person point of view (POV).
What is second-person POV? It means the narrator uses the pronoun “you” as the vehicle through which the plot unfolds, inserting the reader into the story. For example, here is how Chapter 1 of The Fifth Season begins:
"You are she. She is you. You are Essun. Remember? The woman whose son is dead.
"You're an orogene who's been living in the little nothing town of Tirimo for ten years. Only three people here know what you are, and two of them you gave birth to.
“Well. One left who knows, now.”
As a vehicle for both concealing and revealing the truth, The Broken Earth demonstrated the many ways this often-maligned perspective can be used to great effect. While this POV does remain less popular than third-person or first-person, it has been used by other science fiction and fantasy authors.
If you haven't read The Broken Earth, it's as good a place as any to get started with the second-person point of view. But if you loved The Broken Earth and want more of that style, here are some suggestions you should try.
Our Second-Person POV Favorites
Harrow the Ninth
Being the second installment in The Locked Tomb series, it’s best to read the previous novel, Gideon the Ninth, first since the events of that book immediately lead to this one. In short, Harrowhark Nonagesimus has accomplished her goal of becoming an immortal necromancer and serving at the side of the Emperor.
But not everything is as it seems: Her ascension was imperfect and large swaths of her memory are missing. Told in alternating second-person present-tense and third-person past-tense sections, Harrow the Ninth is equal parts mystery and a meditation on grief. The way the second-person and third-person narratives intersect and collide is a revelation—very similar to the way that the second-person sections in The Broken Earth trilogy were.
This Is How You Lose the Time War
Thanks to a viral social media post last year, many SFF readers are already familiar with This Is How You Lose the Time War. For those who don’t know it, it’s a science fiction epistolary novella about two time-travelling enemy agents who fall in love. The second-person sections come in the form of the letters the two women exchange. The stories they tell each other come from the heart of what makes second-person POV so effective.
The Raven Tower
Better known for her science fiction novels, including the award-winning Ancillary Justice, Leckie ventured into the fantasy genre with The Raven Tower. Loosely based on Hamlet, the novel follows a prince seeking to overthrow his uncle, who’s usurped the throne. The trick is that this world is inhabited by gods, which are bound by a single rule: They must speak the truth.
If the gods ever speak a lie, they must alter reality so that their falsehood becomes true, even if the energy required to do so means their own self-destruction. Why is this important? Because the novel is narrated by one of these gods and is split into two alternating viewpoints: a first-person narrative that tells their own story and a second-person narrative that tells a part of that same story to someone else.
The alternating viewpoints allow certain truths to be hidden until the end, something that fans of The Broken Earth will appreciate.
Halting State
For readers interested in second-person POVs that are more straightforward than the twisting timelines and hidden identities of The Broken Earth trilogy, Halting State delivers a science fiction thriller. The plot, however, contains plenty of complexity: When a cybercrime is committed in the virtual world of an online RPG, the seemingly simple robbery has real world repercussions. First, the robbery itself is supposed to be impossible and second, the fact that it happened threatens the start-up company behind the game.
In the aftermath, a detective, an insurance fraud investigator, and an out-of-work programmer come together to delve what really happened. Alas, the truth may be even more shocking as it involves government fronts, hacking, and espionage.
A Dowry of Blood
Structured as a confessional love letter, A Dowry of Blood begins with Constanta, the first wife of Dracula. And if you’re familiar with Dracula, you’ll know that “wife” here refers to the vampiric brides that haunt his castle and accost Jonathan Harker. Here, though, readers start at the beginning.
For Constanta, living as the wife of an undying king should be a miraculous boon for a poor peasant. But when her husband draws more people into his orbit, she realizes that love isn’t always good and pure and that, in fact, it can be toxic and isolating.
Romeo and/or Juliet: A Chooseable-Path Adventure
When you ask about books that use second-person POV, one of the most common responses is the Choose Your Own Adventure series of children’s books. For those unfamiliar, these books place the reader in the role of protagonist. The basic idea involves reading a few pages of the book until you’re presented with a choice. Each choice corresponds to a different page, which will continue the story based on that selection.
The reader continues this pattern again and again until they reach the ending. Romeo and/or Juliet updates that concept for an older audience. Placing the reader into one of Shakespeare’s most famous plays, you can choose to be Romeo, Juliet, or maybe a few other surprising iterations and take the familiar tragedy into new and unexpected directions—at least one of which may or may not involve giant robots.
While a different take on the second-person POV than the offered by Jemisin’s Broken Earth series, North’s novel still features the twists and secrets that often characterize the second-person perspective.
The Night Circus
While the other books in this list use second-person POV as a means of telling a story to someone or of placing them into the role of the protagonist, Morgenstern does something different in her debut novel. She uses those sections to bring the titular circus to life. Famously written during National Novel Writing Month, The Night Circus revolves around a magical traveling circus that’s open only from sunset until sunrise.
Appearing in new locations without warning, the circus features impossible attractions beyond imagination. In reality, however, the circus is a battleground for the apprentices of two powerful magicians. But there’s a complication: The two apprentices fall in love.
