The Fifth Season (The Broken Earth, #1)
Author: N.K. Jemisin
Publisher: Orbit
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Note: Trigger warnings are provided for those who need them at the bottom of this page. If you don’t need them and don’t want to risk spoilers, don’t scroll past the full review.
Cover Description
This is the way the world ends. Again.
Three terrible things happen in a single day.
Essun, masquerading as an ordinary schoolteacher in a quiet small town, comes home to find that her husband has brutally murdered their son and kidnapped their daughter. Mighty Sanze, the empire whose innovations have been civilization's bedrock for a thousand years, collapses as its greatest city is destroyed by a madman's vengeance. And worst of all, across the heartland of the world's sole continent, a great red rift has been been torn which spews ash enough to darken the sky for years. Or centuries.
But this is the Stillness, a land long familiar with struggle, and where orogenes — those who wield the power of the earth as a weapon — are feared far more than the long cold night. Essun has remembered herself, and she will have her daughter back.
She does not care if the world falls apart around her. Essun will break it herself, if she must, to save her daughter.
TL;DR Review
The Fifth Season is not just entertaining, it’s masterful. Between that and the unflinching racial allegory, it is not to be missed.
For you if: You have ever loved a fantasy book.
Full Review
“Tell them they can be great someday, like us. Tell them they belong among us, no matter how we treat them. Tell them they must earn the respect which everyone else receives by default. Tell them there is a standard for acceptance; that standard is simply perfection. Kill those who scoff at those contradictions, and tell the rest that the dead deserved annihilation for their weakness and doubt. Then they'll break themselves trying for what they'll never achieve.”
The Fifth Season has been on my mental list of books to read someday for a very long time. So when I saw that the Center for Fiction was offering a guided reading group on the Broken Earth trilogy, I was in. What a great decision that has turned out to be.
I honestly can’t believe I slept on this book for so long. It’s hard to understate how masterful it is — not just entertainment, but excellent, full-bodied craft. Jemisin builds this world carefully and precisely in a way that demands to be read slowly and contemplated deeply. The prologue alone is actually perfect. Every detail is intentional, and it builds an undeniable, unflinching allegory for racism and slavery.
The story opens on a character named Essun mourning the death of her toddler son, who was killed by his father for being an orogene (as is his mother, secretly). Orogenes — derogatory term rogga — have the ability to manipulate the earth and stone. The government in this world trains those who can be controlled, and kills those who can’t. At the same time, another orogene tears a rent in the earth itself at the empire’s capital, triggering the next Fifth Season — one that is sure to prove the end of the world.
I don’t think I can overstate how well done this is. Information is paced perfectly; you begin to suspect certain things just before they’re revealed. You are constantly intrigued by the unknown, hungry for backstory, eager for action. The characters are heartbreaking in how much they matter to you.
I tracked every chapter in my reading journal, summarizing what happened in a few sentences and noting down my questions and theories. (I highly recommend this.) I never lacked for things to say, not once after any of the chapters.
If you don’t want to take my word for it, consider: This book won the Hugo Award in 2016, and books 2 and 3 in the trilogy also won. Nobody else in the history of ever — man, woman, white, non-white — has done that before. Ever.
Trigger Warnings
Death of a child
Childhood emotional abuse
Racism and racial slurs
Attempting pregnancy
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