The Fifth Season

The Broken Earth, Book 1

By: N. K. Jemisin

Narrated by: Robin Miles

At the end of the world, a woman must hide her secret power and find her kidnapped daughter in this "intricate and extraordinary" Hugo Award winning novel of power, oppression, and revolution. (The New York Times)

This is the way the world ends. . .for the last time.

It starts with the great red rift across the heart of the world's sole continent, spewing ash that blots out the sun. It starts with death, with a murdered son and a missing daughter. It starts with betrayal, and long dormant wounds rising up to fester.

This is the Stillness, a land long familiar with catastrophe, where the power of the earth is wielded as a weapon. And where there is no mercy.

Read the first book in the critically acclaimed, three-time Hugo award-winning trilogy by NYT bestselling author N. K. Jemisin.

Critic reviews

"Jemisin is now a pillar of speculative fiction, breathtakingly imaginative and narratively bold."—Entertainment Weekly

"Intricate and extraordinary."—The New York Times

"[The Fifth Season is] an ambitious book, with a shifting point of view, and a protagonist whose full complexity doesn't become apparent till toward the end of the novel. ... Jemisin's work itself is part of a slow but definite change in sci-fi and fantasy."—Guardian

"Astounding... Jemisin maintains a gripping voice and an emotional core that not only carries the story through its complicated setting, but sets things up for even more staggering revelations to come."—NPR Books

"Jemisin's graceful prose and gritty setting provide the perfect backdrop for this fascinating tale of determined characters fighting to save a doomed world."—Publishers Weekly (Starred Review)

"A must-buy...breaks uncharted ground."—Library Journal (starred review)

"Jemisin might just be the best world builder out there right now.... [She] is a master at what she does." —RT Book Reviews (Top Pick!)

"The Fifth Season is a powerful, epic novel of discovery, pain, and heartbreak.... It is a novel that demands much of its readers; it rewards them aplenty and is one of those novels that becomes more powerful after deep consideration and subsequent readings."—SFF World

"This is an intense, exciting novel, where survival is always on the line, set in a fascinating, original and dangerous world with an intriguing mystery at the heart of it. I can't wait to see what happens in the next book!"—Martha Wells

"Brilliant...gorgeous writing and unexpected plot twists."—Washington Post

"[A]ngrily, beautifully apocalyptic."—B&N.com

"Heartbreaking, wholly unexpected, and technically virtuosic, The Fifth Season is a tour-de-force. I felt every shock--and the book is packed with them--in my marrow. It's no exaggeration to say that Jemisin expands the range of what great fantasy can be."—Brian Staveley, author of The Emperor's Blades

"With every new work, Jemisin's ability to build worlds and break hearts only grows."—Kirkus (starred review)

Extraordinary

If you like deep science fiction/fantasy with philosophical significance, you will almost certainly appreciate this book, and the others in the series.

I found it a little boring.

First person to third person shift was somewhat annoying. Had some good writing, but not enough development to make me care deeply about any of the characters

Fantasy based on real horror

This story is heart stopping and mind blowing and immersive in a way that pulls you in and then won’t let go.
I think that your enjoyment of it will depend on the privileges you enjoy and whether you’re ready to face the truth of how much others have suffered In order for you to continue to enjoy it.
My heart is pounding just thinking of the profound choices Essun is forced to make. Choices none of us should face. Her bravery is awe inspiring and terrible all at once. Ms. Jemisin is taking us on a journey that feels eerily familiar.
When oppressed people have had enough, they will destroy what oppresses them - even if it means destroying themselves. Because something as corrupted as the world The Guardians have built and the just one Essun once longed for are mutually exclusive. God. This book makes you think. And feel. So deeply. I’m nearly frightened to read the next book. But I’m also very very excited. I LOVED It.

holy cow!!!

I'm hooked! and the narration! wow wow!!! I strongly recommend this to any fiction lover!

A stunningly good book

Our story begins with the fall of civilization.

Our story begins with a woman who has just found her murdered son's body.

This is a world with a long history of civilizations that fall, when the arrival of a "fifth season," a years-long winter triggered by earthquakes and volcanoes, lasts long enough that larger political systems can't outlast it.

This is also a world with a body of traditional knowledge, the Stone Lore, that is passed down even through the fall of civilizations and the rise of new ones, because it's about how to survive these unpredictable "fifth seasons.." And it's about the orogenes.

Essun comes home from teaching at the local creche, and finds the body of her young son, beaten to death. Her husband is gone, and so is their daughter--she assumes their daughter is dead, too, and wants to find her body. She knows why her husband killed them; he realized that their children are orogenes, people able to control the movements of the earth, in a world where quakes and volcanoes cause extinction level events every few hundred years.

Essun is an orogene, one who fled the Fulcrum and the capital, and hid her ability, telling no one in this small town.

In alternating sections, we get the stories of Essun, Syen, and Damayo. Syen is an orogene sent out from the Fulcrum to deal with a coral-blocked harbor in an outlying town. Damayo is a young girl who is discovered to be an orogene and is taken by a Guardian to the Fulcrum to be trained to serve the empire.

Syen is partnered with an older orogene, a ten-ring, senior orogene, a man whom she comes to believe may be crazy. She she doesn't know how right she is, and most of all she doesn't know why.

Damayo meets a girl of the Leader caste, and they find a very, very strange room, which turns out to be unexpectedly dangerous.

Essun, while tracking her husband, meets a very strange boy, and then an equally strange woman, who wind up traveling with her.

These three stories interact and overlap in interesting and deeply moving ways.

This isn't a cheerful book. It starts with the collapse of civilization and doesn't get more cheerful from there. And it's the first of a trilogy. Those are reasons I had chosen not to read it, until it became a Hugo Finalist. Now, though, I'm glad I did. It's an excellent book, thoroughly deserves its nomination, and may well win.

Highly recommended.

I bought this book.