I’ve never thought of myself as a reader of particularly high standards: I read for fun as much as I read for enlightenment and catharsis. If anything, I’m suspicious of those whose reading list is only filled with Proust and Nabokov and Sand. More than 30 years of heavy reading will, however, establish some standards almost against one’s will. You’ll be less patient with cliches and plain bad writing, more difficult to impress, less likely to feel awe. It often seems like a loss, rather than progress.

If I’ve never been an especially harsh judge, I’ve not been quick to praise either. I’m analytical by nature and will, by Jove, analyse every book I read! And if you analyse long enough, you’ll always find something to critisise. It is rare for me to give five stars out of five, to offer total endorsement. Sometimes, I think, it’s a defence mechanism. On the intellectual level, I want to make sure people know I’ve noticed the shortcomings of the text in question – I’m not a thick, shallow reader! A kinder (and also true) interpretation is that I’m obsessed with being fair and not misleading anyone who might take my reviews seriously. More importantly, though, nothing is more revealing than love. Telling people that something is extraordinary and beautiful and speaks to your soul makes you vulnerable. What if they don’t agree?

As you can probably guess, I’m here to tell you about my love for N.K. Jemisin’s Broken Earth trilogy: The Fifth Season, The Obelisk Gate and The Stone Sky. If you are a regular fantasy reader, you have surely heard of it, with its two Hugos and many other wins and nominations; the third Hugo may be on its way for the last book in the series. Almost every single review I’ve seen has been positive, but I feel that the trilogy still isn’t read as widely as it deserves. I suspect it’s partly because no blurb can really tell you what it’s about. I myself put off reading The Fifth Season for two years, thinking it wouldn’t be quite to my taste, that it’d be apocalyptic and dark.

Oh, and it is. It’s manifestly apocalyptic and dark, the first book in particular left me in despair on several occasions. The books are never defined by this darkness, however, as there is so much more – or maybe it’s more accurate to say that the darkness is such an organic part of the story that you cannot object to it, because there would be no story without it. And you very much want the story to exist.

Much has been made of the world-building of the series and entirely justifiably. Stillness is ironically named, it’s a place of constant upheaval and tectonic restlessness. The earth is dangerous here and life fragile. While things are tough during the best of times, they become unbearable during the Fifth Seasons with their volcanic eruptions, acid rains and poisoned seas. As the first book opens, the worst of these seasons is about to start, possibly to end everything.

I read a fair bit of fantasy and I can say with conviction that I’ve never encountered a world like this. Not only is it unique and meticulously thought through, but the descriptions also turn it into a visual, visceral experience that is almost movie-like. There are also things that don’t fit this world very well – giant obelisks floating in the sky and ruins from ancient civilisations. The explanations will slowly be revealed throughout the books, like a massive but prolonged gut-punch.

If forced to pick, I’d say Jemisin is better at world-building than characters, but it’s a very close call. Her insane world is populated by people defined by survival, with their use-castes and walled communities and rules. Then there are orogenes, people able to control the energies of this restless world, both feared and hated for that ability. And there are the Guardians, tasked with controlling – and to a certain extent, protecting – the orogenes. Most mysteriously, there are the Stone Eaters, people who seem to be made of stone and have their own agendas and powers.

We start out, in the first book, following a young orogene just found by a Guardian, another working and still learning her craft at Fulcrum and a third hiding her true nature in the countryside. This is Essun, about to be exposed, find her son killed and her daughter Nessun kidnapped by her husband. It’s not a spoiler to say that mother-child relationships play a big role in the books and form in many ways the emotional core of the story – a universal experience to balance out all the strangeness and epicness.

From this pretty crazy starting point, Jemisin will take you on an equally insane journey in many directions at once. In the end, we will understand why the world is the way it is and there will be if not a happy ending then closure. The way we get there is nothing short of amazing: Jemisin juggles so many different strands, timelines and themes that it seems impossible that one person can hold all this in her head. Everything is incredibly well constructed and she does a wonderful job with reveals – you start out with very little knowledge (in fact, the start of the first book is quite slow, so if you’re an impatient person, just stick with it), but constantly learn fascinating stuff. I appreciate very much that not all the revelations are crammed into the end of the books, while the first two books still finish with such a bang that NOT reading the next one becomes impossible. The Stone Sky is, in the words of a Bookstagram friend of mine, a “never ending orgasm” of figuring things out and subsequently being blown away by them.

In addition to being super clever and emotionally engaging (this seems like such a weak word for what it is, my non-native English betrays me), it’s also a parable. You can read The Broken Earth simply as a mindblowing story without any “message” and still enjoy it immensely. I would advise against it, however, as the moral foundation of the trilogy is where it gets much of its power. And I’m usually a person who hates terms like “moral foundation”.

There are many aspects of human existence that Jemisin addresses and I cannot cover them all. I’ll just say that I’m impressed how she manages not to sound preachy, her beliefs and hopes and rage simply inform the story, so things almost never need to be spelled out. But there are two central themes that run throughout the entire trilogy and have to be mentioned: exploitation of the environment and exploitation of people.

I wrote recently about why I read science fiction and fantasy, from a very personal point of view. Another Bookstagram friend replied that people who deride genre fiction simply don’t get the power of symbolic storytelling. When I was reading The Broken Earth, I kept thinking: this is exactly it! Of course, oppression and environmental degradation can be tackled in non-fiction and literary fiction. In fact, they must be. But fantasy gives the writer a different toolbox, allows her to make a point in a different way. There is a reason why metaphors and analogies exist, they illuminate things for us and pierce our defences. Things we have been blind to become clear, our own prejudices are exposed (if you are white, when in the first book did you realise that the protagonists are not?), the structures of exploitation and discrimination, usually obscured by overfamiliarity, suddenly stand out in stark relief. And then the questions: how to change the world? Can it be changed?

By creating a new world, you can create an emotional, intellectual and moral argument that has its own, unique power. This is exactly what Jemisin has done. The Broken Earth is a tour de force. It’s the best thing I’ve read this year, among the best things I’ve ever read. It’s groundbreaking (pun intended).

Read it.

PS I’ve been absent because I’ve lost my iPad and have been unable to post (posting this from work, in fact). I will try to sort things out soon and resume normal service.