The Fifth Season (novel)

The Fifth Season

Softcover edition
Author	N. K. Jemisin
Language	English
Series	The Broken Earth (Book 1)
Genre	Fantasy
Publisher	Orbit
Publication date	August 4, 2015
Media type	Print, e-book
Pages	512 pp.
ISBN	978-0316229296

The Fifth Season is a science fiction fantasy novel by N. K. Jemisin. The book was released on August 4, 2015 by Orbit Books. It was awarded the Hugo Award for Best Novel at the 74th World Science Fiction Convention on August 20, 2016. It was also nominated for the Nebula Award and World Fantasy Award for Best Novel.

Plot

The Fifth Season takes place on a planet with a single supercontinent called the Stillness. Every few centuries, its inhabitants endure what they call a "fifth season" of catastrophic climate change.

Characters

Names in the Stillness are denoted by given name followed by use-caste (rank of profession) followed by comm (community, town, or city). For instance Schaffa Guardian Warrant is a Guardian named Schaffa from the comm Warrant. Orogenes go by a single, geological-themed name, with no use-caste or comm.

• Damaya: a child who is given to a Guardian after she is discovered to be an orogene. She is from a comm called Pelela in the Nomidlats.
• Schaffa Guardian Warrant: a man responsible for Damaya's training. His skin is "almost white, he's so paper-pale; he must smoke and curl up in strong sunlight." His has "long flat hair" in "a deep heavy black." He has "silvery-gray" or "icewhite" eyes.
• Syenite: also known as Syen, an ambitious, four-ring level orogene of the Fulcrum, who is instructed to go on a mission with a higher level orogene named Alabaster.
• Alabaster: a ten-ring (highest) level orogene, capable of quelling super-volcanoes and of using other orogenes' power to supplement his own. He has "skin so black it's almost blue," his hair is "dense, tight-curled stuff, the kind of hair that needs to be shaped if it's to look stylish," and he is "whipcord thin."
• Essun: an orogene mother of two, who leaves her small town of Tirimo to chase her husband. Unlike the others, Essun's chapters are written in second-person point of view, present-tense.
• Jija: Essun's husband, who kills her son Uche and kidnaps her daughter Nassun.
• Hoa: a mysterious boy who finds Essun in the woods and accompanies her on her journey. His coloring is completely white, including his icewhite eyes.
• Feldspar: Syenite's instructor at the Fulcrum, who orders her to go on a mission with Alabaster to clear a coral blockage in the Allia harbor.
• Tonkee: a university-trained but commless geomest who now lives in a cave. She is transgender.

Minor characters:

• Lerna: a young doctor in Tirimo who takes care of Essun briefly after her son's death.
• Rask Innovator Tirimo: the town's elected headsman.
• Muh Dear: Damaya's grandmother.
• Mother: Damaya's mother, a Strongback.
• Father: Damaya's father, a Resistant.
• Asael Leadership Allia: one of six deputy governors of Allia.
• Heresmith Leadership Allia: the lieutenant governor of Allia.

Castes & culture

The society of the Stillness is broken up into many "comms," "use-castes," races and species.

• Orogenes: people with the ability to control energy, particularly that of the earth (directly) and temperature (indirectly). They can cause and prevent earthquakes, and when angered can unintentionally kill living things in their "torus," or area of influence, by stealing the heat from their bodies to use as energy to manipulate the ground. When this occurs, a visible circle of frost appears around them and living things can be flash-frozen solid. They are widely hated and feared, and many are murdered by small-town mobs when their powers are discovered in childhood. If they are not killed by their family or comm, they are given to a Guardian, to be trained at a location called the Fulcrum inside the city of Yumenes. Fulcrum-trained orogenes are marked by their black uniforms, and are tolerated slightly better than untrained orogenes, in that they are not murdered quite as often. They wear rings on their fingers to denote rank, ten-ring being the highest. The slur "rogga" is used against orogenes, who likewise call non-orogenes "the stills".
• Guardians: great warriors, hunters, and assassins tasked with controlling orogenes through pain and training or, alternatively, execution. They are the order that watches the Fulcrum.
• Geomests: academic geologists.
• Commless: people without the protection of a settlement or "comm."
• Stone eaters: moving sculpture-like beings.
• Sanzed Equitorial Affiliation: the ruling Empire. The nation is informally known as Sanze.
• Equitorials: people who live in the more stable and wealthy equitorial comms such as Yumenes and Dibars.
• Midlatters: people of either the north (Nomidlats) or south (Somidlats) areas adjacent to the equator zone. Considered backwater.

Use-castes:

• Strongbacks: lucky enough to join a comm but too undistinguished to earn a more secure place within it.
• Resistants: resistant to sickness or famine.
• Breeders
• Innovators: builders.
• Leadership: the most-esteemed use-caste.

Reception

The New York Times review stated "'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. The end of the world becomes a triumph when the world is monstrous, even if what lies beyond is difficult to conceive for those who are trapped inside it." This is the first part of The Broken Earth Trilogy. The second novel in the trilogy, The Obelisk Gate, was published on August 16, 2016.