The Stillness is a world - maybe ours in the future, maybe an alternate Earth - where catastrophic earthquakes can swallow civilisations and bring humans to the brink of extinction. Orogenes, those with the ability to control the shaking, are feared and reviled - but tolerated as long as they protect society. Essun is one of these orogenes. Until now, she's kept her head down but now her son is dead, her daughter has gone missing, and she will rip the Earth apart to get her back.
The Fifth Season is an adult fantasy that gripped me from the first page and didn't let me go until I finished it, heartbroken, three days later. It was everything I didn't know I wanted from a fantasy book. The world-building was truly original, the plot twisted and turned, and the characters were incredibly diverse, representing a spectrum of ethnicities, age, and sexuality. A word of warning though, this is a book that requires patience at the beginning as the first chapters are written in the second person and in present tense - an unsettling and unusual combination that took some getting used to.
I cannot put into words how much I loved this book. It's beautifully written and seamless and clever and heartbreaking. It's a story about the end of the world, about a mother's guilt and sacrifice, about revenge and prejudice, and the tiny sparks of hope that keep people going. It's dark, it's original, and it holds a mirror to reflect the uncomfortable realities of our society. N.K. Jemisin has won the Hugo Award two years running for a reason.
Recommended For: Fans of dark, original and diverse fantasy.
Rating: Five stars on Goodreads. Obviously.
Read On: The next book in the Broken Earth series is The Obelisk Gate. Another highly rated book by the same author is A Hundred Thousand Kingdoms.
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