The Fifth Season
The Broken Earth, Book 1
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4.4 • 166 Ratings
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
A New York Times Notable Book of 2015
Shortlisted for the Hugo, Nebula, Kitschies, Audie and Locus Awards
The inaugural Wired.com book club pick
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.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Humans struggle to survive on a ruined world in this elegiac, complex, and intriguing story, the first in the Broken Earth series from acclaimed author Jemisin (the Inheritance Trilogy). The Stillness is a quiet and bitter land, sparsely populated by subsistence communities called comms. Essun lived quietly in a comm with her husband and children until her secret got out: she and her children are orogenes, those who have the ability to control Earth forces. They can quell or start earthquakes, open veins of magma, and generally cause or rein in geological chaos. Authorities keep a brutal hold on orogenes, controlling everything about their lives, including whom they breed with. Those who escape servitude and seek safety in the comms face expulsion and execution at the hands of the fearful. Soon after Essun's secret is revealed, her husband kills their son, and her daughter goes missing. Essun sets off to find the girl, undertaking a journey that will force her to face unfinished business from her own secret past. Jemisin's graceful prose and gritty setting provide the perfect backdrop for this fascinating tale of determined characters fighting to save a doomed world. Readers hungry for the next installment will also find ample satisfaction in rereading this one.
Customer Reviews
Transformative
Fascinating. Masterful. Modern. Timely. First in series, it’s worth immersing oneself in Jemison’s deceptively simple yet masterful creation. The initial slow burn gives way to the ultimate realisation mid-way that your mind’s been blown apart, then re-shaped. Complex concepts, ethical dilemmas, and motives are woven together with stunning results. Recommended!
Fantastic trilogy
What an incredible time I have had reading this trilogy! These books took me to another world which was entirely original and unlike anywhere literature had taken me before. Highly recommend!
In two minds
Some parts of this story were amazing and riveting and then there was the other extreme where it seemed to lose direction and pace. The second half seemed so different to the first that it was almost like a different writer but the same characters, and it lost the emotional intensity the first half had and the character connection. It ended rather abruptly and left me a bit cranky.