The Fifth Season

Book 1 of the Broken Earth trilogy

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This story is exceptional in every way.

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It begins with the opening of a few story lines set in different times, but the reader never gets lost because the lines are so well defined. When the story lines finally meet, quite late in the book, it’s not predictable and is very satisfying.

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The story deals with the oppression of special people, called orogenes, who are able to command elemental energy, especially Earth energy.

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They are the ones who are literally holding the continent together but they are very poorly treated. If they aren’t killed by their parents or community, they are removed from their family when they are young by a Guardian and taken to the big city to be trained.

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The kirkhusa has stopped moving. It’s still where it was, teeth locked on Hoa’s arm, its eyes wild with… something that is more fear than fury. It’s even shaking, faintly. You hear it make the most fleeting of aborted sounds, just a hollow squeal. Then the kirkhusa’s fur starts to move. (What?) You frown, squint, but it’s easy to see, close as the beast is. Each individual hair of its fur waggles, seemingly in a different direction all at the same time. Then it shimmers. (What?) Stiffens. All at once you realize that not only are its muscles stiff, but the flesh that covers them is stiff, too. Not just stiff but… solid. And then you notice: The whole kirkhusa is solid. What. You don’t understand what you’re seeing, so you keep staring, comprehending in pieces. Its eyes have become glass, its claws crystal, its teeth some sort of ocher filament. Where there was movement, now there is stillness; its muscles are rock-hard, and that is not a metaphor. Its fur was just the last part of its body to change, twisting about as the follicles underneath transformed into something else.

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The author creates a world that feels remarkably solid and unique, yet we perceive that we don’t understand it completely by the end of the book.

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The pacing of the story is excellent. I especially liked that the story explodes with the final sentence. It doesn’t end, exactly, it simply prepares us for the second book.

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Then people began to do horrible things to Father Earth. They poisoned waters beyond even his ability to cleanse, and killed much of the other life that lived on his surface. They drilled through the crust of his skin, past the blood of his mantle, to get at the sweet marrow of his bones. And at the height of human hubris and might, it was the orogenes who did something that even Earth could not forgive: They destroyed his only child.

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This book won a Hugo Award in 2016 and in 2017, TNT announced that the story was being adapted for television. But In 2021, Ms. Jemisin announced a new deal with Sony’s TriStar Pictures in which she will be the one adapting the story for the screen.

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This story will make an amazing television show!

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