The Fifth Season

Fantasy

First published: 2015
Print length: 512 pagesOrbit, 2016

Hugo Award for Best Novel, 2016

Description

On the Stillness, civilization survives recurring climate catastrophes called Fifth Seasons, while people known as orogenes are feared and controlled for their ability to manipulate seismic energy. Now a powerful orogene has fractured the supercontinent, threatening a disaster beyond the scale of previous Seasons. Against that upheaval, three narratives unfold: Damaya, a child taken for Guardian training; Syenite, an ambitious Fulcrum operative assigned a mission with the formidable Alabaster; and Essun, who leaves her town in pursuit of her husband and daughter, accompanied by the mysterious Hoa. Essun’s journey is told in the second person, adding unusual intimacy to a story whose personal ruptures echo the broken earth. Survival depends on power that society both needs and punishes.

Reading profile

About this profile

Collected’s assessment, not reader ratings. Complexity runs from 1 (least demanding) to 5 (most demanding).

Writing: How much attention the sentences and language require.
Ideas: How much interpretation or abstract reasoning the book asks of you.
Structure: How much you need to keep track of speakers, timelines and connections.
Background knowledge: Prior knowledge needed to follow the book, beyond what it explains.
Emotional intensity: Emotional pressure, from gentle (1) to intense (5). Separate from difficulty.

Writing style

Atmospheric · Direct · Experimental · Lyrical

Pace

Variable

Tone

Dark · Intimate · Tense · Unsettling

Structure

Braided · Multiple timelines · Nonlinear

Focus

Character · Plot · World

Emotional intensity

5 / 5

Reading complexity

1–5 · higher means more demanding

Writing: 4 / 5
Ideas: 4 / 5
Structure: 5 / 5
Background knowledge: 2 / 5

Themes

FamilyNature and environmentOppressionPowerSurvivalTrauma

About N. K. Jemisin

N. K. Jemisin is an American science fiction and fantasy writer whose work combines expansive world-building with close attention to people living inside systems of power. Before writing full-time, she worked as a mental health and career counselor, and her fiction often shows a comparable alertness to the pressures shaping individual choices. Her debut, The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, introduced a body of work deeply concerned with cultural conflict and oppression, expressed through dynastic rule, subjugated gods, and contested ideas of civilization. The Broken Earth novels, beginning with The Fifth Season, place those concerns within a society repeatedly devastated by climate catastrophe and dependent on people it fears and controls. Jemisin characteristically uses multiple viewpoints, fractured structures, and shifts between direct and lyrical prose to connect private grief with upheaval on a vast scale. Even when her setting changes, as in the living, embodied New York of City We Became, she treats the speculative world as a way to make collective identity and unequal power concrete.

Series

The Broken Earth · Book 1

Book details

For the print edition listed above.

Publisher: Orbit
Language: English
ISBN: 9780356508191

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