N. K. Jemisin

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.

The Broken Earth

The Fifth Season

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.

The Broken Earth: Book 1

Lauren

Petaco

I just did not enjoy it. It did not go the way I thought it would. I liked the first half better than the second half. I won't be reading the rest of the books in the series. 

I did not care for any of the characters. I really only initially liked the part about the mother dealing with extreme grief. After a bit, I just hated the rest. I don't like the way it ended. And maybe I just didn't get it, but I don't think the story flowed very well. As if some parts of the story were written on sticky notes and they just HAD to be included (pirates?? Really??).

Bilge Ince

First thing first, this was a damn good book. I can’t wait to read the rest.

It was like a post apocalyptic time but in a fantasy way. I felt enjoyed, sad, furious and most of times curious while I’m reading. 

3 strong women in different ages and 3 strong stories will make them meet in the middle make them one. The first one is Damaya who is delicate but knows how to deal with the plots. The second one is Essun who is a mother of two and can do anything for them. And the last one Syenite who is fierce and cares her own freedom more than anything. Their life will cross in an unexpected way and nothing will remain same...

Jemisin create a world with whole package including own jargon and that impressed me a lot. I loved the protagonists as much as side characters Baster, Hoa, Binof they all are unique in their own way.

My only criticism of this book is the gap between chapters. After halfway through the book, I had a hard time keeping up with the changes in the lives of the characters in each new chapter.

Michaella 

charisa

This book is everything I love about science fiction/fantasy. I'm not just referring to the fantastic (!) world-building and rich characterization, but also what it infers and asks and challenges as a whole. Is humanity just a social construct? What are the consequences of viewing human beings as a biological construct versus a social body? What is a world, and is it worthwhile to preserve the Earth as a larger, physical entity if it comes at the cost of the smaller, pluralistic cultures within? Seriously just so, so good.

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 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.

I finished this and immediately bought the rest of the series. The film industry better not touch this one. 

Kaitlyn R

the concept is so good & it definitely deserves the praise it gets for doing something that’s never been done before but the writing is so clunky? unrefined? i didn’t enjoy it as much as i expected it to, though i have hope for the rest of the series :]

Very unique system of power and politics. Thoroughly enjoyed the character development and laying out of the world!

Anna

Anthony

As much as I enjoy fantasy, a lot of the books I've read have had similar underlying themes or ideas in them. They aren't always cookie cutter. But when they are, at least I enjoy cookies.

The Fifth Season didn't feel like that to me. The book has equal parts post apocalypse as it does fantasy. I'm sure there are other post apocalyptic fantasy novels but this was a first for me.

The characters felt very unique. Their perspectives were not ones I've typically come to expect from a fantasy. On top of that, the "magic" felt original as well. Some folks are connected to the Earth, so much so that they can control it. That often ends up causing chaos in the world.

My favourite part of the book was how the three storylines converged in the end. By the time it happened, you may have been expecting it, but it was still entertaining for me. I'm becoming more interested in the way people move through phases of their lives. Jemisin did a great job weaving that into her story. It's always entertaining when different threads are weaved together to make one coherent storyline.

If you like fantasy or post apocalypse (leaning more on fantasy), I'd recommend The Fifth Season!

Originally written for my blog: https://anthonymorris.dev/books/the-f...

Katherine Yang

QUICK LAST-MINUTE LOG RN FOR READING CHALLENGE BUT OH MAN IT'S SO GOOD

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Worldbuilding plot twists sharp writing queer people trans people polyamory complex relationships lots of mystery and suspense and tension cool fights and adventures!!! The amount of detail, I can't even imagine the planning and genius. Really sticks in your mind after the last page (and then the first few again shh!). Immediately on to the next one!

Gavin

** spoiler alert **
           Good for a YA book. Interesting lore, good structure, inconsistent worldbuilding, portentous/glib tone, painful slang. 

Lore: the Earth hates us, which is why there is so much suffering. Includes a (true) evolutionary gradient:

  Earth our father knew He would need clever life, so He used the Seasons to shape us out of animals: clever hands for making things and clever minds for solving problems and clever tongues for working together and clever sessapinae to warn us of danger. The people became what Father Earth needed, and then more than He needed. Then we turned on Him, and He has burned with hatred for us ever since.

She later ruins this interesting cosmogony by clubbing you over the head with a message (that the lethal climate shock Seasons started after people polluted the world too much).

The world is a blend of GoT survivalist folk religion and apocalyptically cyclical climate, X-Men despised chaos mages, Battlestar breeding body horror, Earthsea folk magic and wu wei, and superstitious racism. It mostly works.

Structure: Three quite different focal characters, later shown to be the same person over time. I didn't spot the first unification coming, and it was satisfying.

She leaves the big Soylent Green reveal until page 108; until then you're left wondering if all the grey objectification is justified by the terrible security risk. 

She's pretty glib about the two communities outside the Empire, full of earthquake witches who are shown regularly freezing or nuking things when even mildly irked. The utopian pirate community is also heavily rose-tinted - sure, they do kill people in order to take their stuff in a time of terrible scarcity... but hey they're really sexually liberated and not racist at all.

Inconsistent: High Fantasy (subsisting commune agrarians, feudalism, omnipotent wizards) which also boasts C20th science, somehow. An in-universe history book describes one catastrophe as:

  "aerosolizing sufficient steam and particulate matter to trigger acidic rain and sky occlusion over the Somidlats..."

They have penicillin without an industrial revolution, electric lights before steam. Ordinary C15th cannon are an experimental wunderweapon to them. 
More: most births have some risk (<1%) of being a giant nuclear volcano generator, but the Evil Empire does nothing to control reproduction, and has the parents administer very insecure self-regulation. 

Pretentious portentousness:

  There passes a time of happiness in your life, which I will not describe to you. It is unimportant. Perhaps you think it wrong that I dwell so much on the horrors, the pain, but pain is what shapes us, after all. We are creatures born of heat and pressure and grinding, ceaseless movement. To be still is to be... not.

Of a character which until about 10 pages earlier had been a despised / tolerated frenemy:

  now your eyes are drawn away from the horror that remains of your mentor, your lover, your friend...

I forgive Ada Palmer this style. But 1) she's not that bad; 2) she's aping the sentimentalist C18th, and 3) she has far greater philosophical sense.

Glib: 

  it turns out that the comm is called Meov, and the man who has stepped forward is Harlas, their headman. 
Also they're pirates.


  Syenite mispronounces vulgar words, inadvertently making them more vulgar, and makes instant friends of half the crew by doing so.


"lol, applause!"

Bad slang: "rogga", "comm", "orogeny" (every time, I thought "erogenous?"), really bad interjections (' "Evil, eating Earth", you whisper'; 'for shit's sake, she stilled a rusting volcano made by a broken obelisk'). The occasional good bit of slang (like "grits" for the young rock mages) is smothered in exposition: that's what she is now, an unimportant bit of rock ready to be polished into usefulness.... Better writers (Atwood or Le Guin or Banks) leave it up to you. Everything is spelled out here.

The book gets roundly worse in the second half, with two chapters (16 and 17) full of hollow plot devices and applause lights (Damaya only explores the Main building so she can drive the plot forward when the hollow character Binof arrives, immediately afterwards). Also arguably Innon, there to be objectified and let Jemisin write 'good sex' scenes.

Lots of Representation: polyamory, transgenderism, a dozen skin colours. Of course, fantasy doesn't represent anything, so strictly speaking that's a misnomer. It doesn't matter what the ethnic demographics of your lava-world are, relative to ours; you can have as much or as little typical sexuality etc as you like, any colour can be a minority, as long as it makes sense in that world. Do the choices of identities fit Jemisin's world? Is Tonkee's transgenderism, among feudalism, a personal idiosyncrasy? A hormone thing? A magic thing? We're given no reason for any of the identities she introduces to celebrate. But it mostly doesn't get in the way.


Jemisin fumbles the "in a corrupt world, lawful complicity or violent revolution?" angle. At least in this instalment, there's little acknowledgment that killing an entire city because a handful of people in its government committed atrocities isn't on: 'He's not crazy at all, and he never has been' 
"what right do worlds built on oppression and genocide have to exist?", asks one reviewer. Well, 'worlds' (institutions) don't have rights, people do: and people have a right to not suffer harm, e.g. the harm of having a great big earthquake dropped on you.

Maya Johnson

Andrea Navarrete

Entertaining.
I want to give more stars, but the thing is that, although I liked the characters, I found them extremely hard to connect with /: 
The plot was interesting, but I figured out what was going to happen like 5 or 6 chapters i, which is a big downer for me.

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.

Listen to the first book in the critically acclaimed, three-time Hugo award-winning trilogy by NYT best-selling author N. K. Jemisin.

I liked the way the story was told from three perspectives of the same person but from three different points in time. As the story flowed, they left more and more hints as to what was to come and you get more understanding of who Essun is. I felt more compassion for her as Cyanite as her world is truly uprooted in many ways. I still have a lot of questions about the world/Lore but overall I really enjoyed this book and will probably continue the series. I enjoyed the fact that it wasn't the usual "elves, dwarves, dragons, etc" type of fantasy. The different classes of "people" intrigue me the most. A very enjoyable read.

Laura Newell

Jamieson

this book is spectacular. smart, clever, well crafted, well timed, full of great characters and great scenes. I love fantasy but it lets me down a lot. Sometimes I feel it's the same plot rehashed, over and over. The Fifth Season is unlike anything else I have ever read. No wonder it's so popular, and N.K Jemisin won not one, not two, but THREE Hugo awards for this trilogy. 


  But this is the way the world ends. This is the way the world ends. This is the way the world ends. For the last time.” 


At first this book is hard to get into. it throws you a whole bunch of terminology and plot with little explanation. On top of that, one of the perspectives is in second person point of view, which is not my favourite. But you've just gotta stick with it, because it'll be all worth it. The payoff in this book is unbelievably good and turned what I hated in the beginning to something I completely adored. 

So it takes a little bit to get moving, but when it hits it’s stride it is truly un-put-downable. N.K Jemisin throws us straight into the Stillness, a world that experiences semi-regular apocalyptic events. At the beginning of this book, the end of the world is starting, but this apocalypse is looking to be a lot worse then the previous ones.

From here we follow three main characters: Essun, a woman who’s son has been murdered by her husband, and is now trying to find him and her missing daughter. Damaya, an Orogene (magic user) taken by the Guardians to learn to control her abilities and Syenite, a level four Orogene who is sent on assignment with Alabaster, one of the most powerful Orogene’s alive. 

I really liked how N.K Jemisin interwove these characters stories and gave each their own unique development. At first I didn’t like Essun’s chapters, because they’re in second person, but they soon became really interesting and I didn’t even notice the tense.

Syenite was my favourite character, and her storyline with Alabaster was also my favourite. I loved that this book mostly followed strong women and also that there was a large focus on diversity within this world. Fantasy is notorious for being unrepresentative but N.K Jemisin’s world is very inclusive. 

N.K Jemisin does an amazing job at making you CARE about these characters. As the story continued I found myself more and more invested in their lives, and my heart BROKE when certain things happened to them. I also think these characters have a lot of depth and potential, and N.K Jemisin presents characters who subvert tropes and explores multiple sides of various characters.

Finally, I have to say there is a romance in here that KILLED ME. IT KILLED ME DEAD. This is a polyamorous relationship and oh my god ,, I loved it so much. It was truly WHAT I DESERVED. 


  “But human beings, too, are ephemeral things in the planetary scale. The number of things that they do not notice are literally astronomical.”


One thing I loved about the plot of this book was the subversion of the typical magic user trope. In this world, magic users are the oppressed class in society. This felt very different to typical fantasies, and I liked how N.K Jemisin was able to create a dichotomy between the power of these people, and the hopelessness of their situation. It was interesting how Jemisin constructed this power relationship and for me was one of the most intriguing parts of the plot/world.

I genuinely think N.K Jemisin has come up with such an innovative and unique plot line, and this made my appreciation for this book grow a lot. I think we all get tired of seeing certain plots reused but N.K Jemisin made everything fresh. There were so many "oh my god" moments in this book, because N.K Jemisin is clever. She understands how to play with your expectations and then totally undermine them. 

I am so glad I finally picked this book up at first I was so unsure, I even thought about dnf'ing it. I am so glad I stuck with it. It has become of the most intriguing, most unique, and most clever fantasies I have ever read. And I am literally embarrassed I haven't started the second book yet, because I just feel this is going to get better and better. 


  “For all those that have to fight for the respect that everyone else is given without question.” 


This is the most iconic dedication, we are blessed

natalie

“This is what you must remember: the ending of one story is just the beginning of another. This has happened before, after all. People die. Old orders pass. New societies are born. When we say “the world has ended,” it’s usually a lie, because the planet is just fine. But this is the way the world ends. This is the way the world ends. This is the way the world ends. For the last time.”


I had a hard time rating this book because while it was enjoyable, I also found myself bored or confused many times. Some parts of the book made me want to rate it four stars, other parts made me want to rate it three stars. 

This book is confusing; to me at least. There were a lot of explanations for the world it takes place in, but a lot of other factors that fantasy novels have that made my head hurt; descriptions for example. Usually, a description is easy enough for me to at least make a solid picture of, even if it wasn't necessarily what the author had in mind, but for this book, I could barely form an image. Of course, I'm not blaming the author, it was just how my experience went. 

Despite all that, I think the world and the plot are great. Very creative in my opinion, as I haven't seen anything else like it. 

Hopefully, the rest of the series satisfies me more.

An amazing start to the series. There are some innovative concepts here that make for a really compelling read. Definitely not your standard fantasy/SF fare.

Kyle Sawatsky

Shona Tiger

Sade A

Alright i'm just going to say it. I'm torn on the rating for this book on the one hand i feel it's a comfortable 3.5 stars on the other hand it feels like an awesome 4 star rating.

So hear me out this book has a lot of really positive things going for it:

The writing was AMAZING. Jemisin weaves magic with her words like there's not much else i can add to that (Fun fact: i actually thought the writing was weird when i initially picked the book up about 2 years ago. pfft what do i know right?). Without too many clever words, Jemisin creates a world you'll want to go behind the curtains and experience.
PoV's: Jemisin's work employs more than one literary type of story telling. First person and not first person (lol i didn't pay that much attention in literature class, sorry) I'm always in awe of authors who can successfully carry readers along with a first person PoV. More often than not you come off feeling like a bystander in this story but in this case Jemisin immerses you completely in Essun's story. Right off the bat she wants you to feel a connection to Essun, she tells you:
"You are she. She is you. You are Essun" 
as you go on this journey with Essun, every "I" every "YOU" where the character Essun is concerned speaks to the reader as if you were sharing her struggles and pain. From the word go, Jemisin wants you to connect with this character and her writing doesn't disappoint in immersing you in this story.

Diverse Characters: You know i admit i've never really examined closely or been bothered a whole lot by the fact that most book characters tend to be a certain race, certain sexual orientation and all the other little things that come with having type cast characters. But whoa, this book was a Rainbow (hint hint) of diversity and it was beautiful and i absolutely loved it. Definitely going to make a more conscious effort to pick up more books like this.

Now that i've been through all the good parts i'm wondering why i was considering 3.5 star rating. What is wrong with me??.
I will say that because this is book 1 i suppose, this is an introduction of sorts, a feel your way into the world and while there isn't an over load of information, things do get mighty strange and somewhat confusing sometimes especially when there's all the geological talk going on. Not a lot mind you, so that's good.

P.S: If you get stuck on trying to imagine the powers i just tended to think of Orogeny as Earth Bending's crazy scientific relative.

All in all a truly beautiful book, you won't regret picking up.

Rachel Kanyid

Okay, at first I didn't care for this very much.. It flowed strangely and I wasn't following the story-line very well, but then the further I progressed the more it captivated me and things started to align and make sense. I will definitely be checking out the next book!

tina

3.5 
I'm so conflicted by this book because I really appreciate the unique concept, the interesting characters, and even the structure of the story even though that was something that I was bothered by in the first few chapters. But it took sooooo long for me to care about what was happening. I literally almost dnf'ed this book. However, once I did started caring, I flew through it and read like 200 pages in one day (which is a big deal to me). Idk but I think I am still interested enough to read the second book, especially since there were still so much left unanswered in this book, and mayhaps I'll like it more.

Becky A

I know I am basically the last person in the entire world to read this book but holy crap it's so good, and I'm glad I waited until the rest of the series is out because that's now my weekend plan. WOW.

Also, (view spoiler)[given the thing with the moon and the overall post-apocalyptic-ness, I feel like THIS book is giving me what I WANTED out of that crappy last 200 pages of Seveneves, tbh (hide spoiler)].

Ryan LaFerney

The Fifth Season is the start of a multi-award-winning fantasy series and it’s easy to see why. Groundbreaking in many ways, the book plots fully rounded characters in a fully grounded world. Its intricately constructed narrative will surprise you and leave you hanging out for more (although admittedly it is a bit of a challenging read). It was awarded the Hugo Award for Best Novel in 2016. It is the first volume in the Broken Earth series and is followed by The Obelisk Gate and The Stone Sky. 

 It's the tale of an alternate earth called the Stillness, which is plagued by constant seismic activity. This leads to frequent near-extinction events called "Fifth Seasons" that keep humans on their toes. The evidence of past civilizations litters the planet -- ruined cities, incomplete 'stonelore' handed down from earlier generations, and strange obelisks that float through the atmosphere like low-altitude satellites and serve no apparent purpose. The civilization that we meet in this book, the Sanze Empire, has survived for centuries by harnessing the power of orogenes -- people born with an innate ability to control their environment. The orogenes can stop earthquakes or start them. They can save cities, or draw power from living creatures and "ice" them. Their powers are terrifying yet essential, so the empire develops a caste of Guardians who have the power to neutralize the orogenes when necessary. The orogenes are held in contempt and called "roggas" by ordinary humans. Despite all their power, they cannot control their own lives. They are either hunted down and destroyed or sent to the Fulcrum to be trained and used by the empire.

“The Fifth Season” brings us to the end of the world in three different times, with three orogene women at different stages of life and loss. Throughout the book we follow the journeys of three women who are in different stages of life and who reside in different parts of the Stillness. We follow: Essun ( a middle-aged woman with two young children living in a small southern comm named Tirimo. Secretly, she is an orogene, a human with the ability to manipulate earth and stone by absorbing or redirecting heat and energy from elsewhere); Damaya ( a young girl in a northern comm, recently discovered by her parents to be an orogene); and Syenite ( a rising orogene star in the Fulcrum who is forcibly partnered with Alabaster, the most powerful living orogene, in order to conceive a child with him). The way Jemisin switches back and forth between these three characters, simultaneously weaving a story about the ending of their worlds and the social and political oppression they face, is genius. This plays into the novel’s structure, which I can’t say too much about, because it would lessen its impact. Let’s just say this novel unfolds in a way you never saw coming and is the equivalent of a slow building doom metal riff. The manner in which the narrative is constructed is bewildering at first, but it definitely rewards continued reading. Give the book and the story time to grip you, and you’ll become immersed. It’s a challenging read, make no mistake. This is not your dad’s escapist fantasy paperbacks.

Jemisin is fantastic for mythology and mythology building, but what is best about this book is the sense of long history and cycles and the deep feeling like it is all headed somewhere huge. 

This is a story for our times. And yet, it is also timeless. It is about the brokenness of earth in the literal and metaphorical sense. Nature in the Stillness can kill. So can its political and societal systems of oppression. But in Jemisin’s world, the very fact that orogenes -- people born with an innate ability to control their environment - exist, is cause to be hopeful. They just need to find a way to overthrow the Sanze Empire.

Izza

Jemisin brilliantly illustrates the belief that, yes, imaginative world-building is a vital element of fantasy - but also that every character is a world unto herself Fantasy novels often provide a degree of escapism: a good thing, for any reader who has something worth escaping. Too often, though, that escape comes through a fictional world that erases rather than solves the more complex problems of our own... In Jemisin's work, nature is not unchangeable or inevitable. The Fifth Season invites us to imagine a dismantling of the earth in both the literal and the metaphorical sense, and suggests the possibility of a richer and more fundamental escape. 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 Book Description:- Winner of the Hugo Award for Best Novel, and shortlisted for the Nebula, Locus, World Fantasy, Kitschie and Audie awards, this is the stunning first instalment in a fantasy trilogy set in a world of volcanoes and earthquakes, where the power to control the earth is the most dangerous of all. The New York Times calls The Fifth Season 'intricate and extraordinary'

The Fifth Season The Broken Earth

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