The Fifth Season (The Broken Earth #1) (Paperback)
Staff Reviews
An astonishingly rich example of world building, N.K. Jemisin has created an experience replete with a history, an aesthetic, and a cast of characters both tortured and noble and sympathetic. It is easy to believe this is about some ancient Earth. it is just as easy to believe this is the Earth of some far future, where the history that concerns us has been long forgotten. And yet the familiarity of concern, of tragedy, of aspiration crosses all gulfs and draws the reader in with its inexorable truths.
— From Mark
Fantasy isn't always a genre known for innovative or startling narratives. NK Jemisin has changed all of that. Her world-building is complex and intriguing. Her storytelling is gifted, elegant and her books only benefit from re-reading. She is, in fact, re-inventing the wheel, and I am here for it. The Fifth Season chronicles the beginning of the end, of an end, on a world that is in constant physical motion. Orogenes, people who can control the earth's shakes, are hunted, kept and used to keep the land as settled as possible. Essun, an orogene, has been living in hiding for ten years with her husband and two children. Her husband has no idea what she is. And then everything changes. Do not sleep on this trilogy. Do not sleep on NK Jemisin. She is changing everything. -Jonesey's August Staff Pick, 2016
— From Jonesey's Reading ListThis 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.
"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)