paperback, 512 pages
English language
Published Sept. 7, 2016 by Orbit.
This is the way the world ends. Again.
Three terrible things happen in a single day. Essun, a woman living an ordinary life in a small town, comes home to find that her husband has brutally murdered their son and kidnapped their daughter. Meanwhile, mighty Sanze — the world-spanning empire whose innovations have been civilization’s bedrock for a thousand years — collapses as most of its citizens are murdered to serve a madman’s vengeance. And worst of all, across the heart of the vast continent known as the Stillness, a great red rift has been torn into the heart of the earth, spewing ash enough to darken the sky for years. Or centuries.
Now Essun must pursue the wreckage of her family through a deadly, dying land. Without sunlight, clean water, or arable land, and with limited stockpiles of supplies, there will be war all across the Stillness: a battle …
This is the way the world ends. Again.
Three terrible things happen in a single day. Essun, a woman living an ordinary life in a small town, comes home to find that her husband has brutally murdered their son and kidnapped their daughter. Meanwhile, mighty Sanze — the world-spanning empire whose innovations have been civilization’s bedrock for a thousand years — collapses as most of its citizens are murdered to serve a madman’s vengeance. And worst of all, across the heart of the vast continent known as the Stillness, a great red rift has been torn into the heart of the earth, spewing ash enough to darken the sky for years. Or centuries.
Now Essun must pursue the wreckage of her family through a deadly, dying land. Without sunlight, clean water, or arable land, and with limited stockpiles of supplies, there will be war all across the Stillness: a battle royale of nations not for power or territory, but simply for the basic resources necessary to get through the long dark night. Essun does not care if the world falls apart around her. She’ll break it herself, if she must, to save her daughter.
Wow, a fantastically-informed world and engrossing story of strong women. Update 2024: still outstanding, complex and revealing narrative on oppression and community and power.
Not my favorite book but well crafted and continuing on with the series. A big part is I didn't really love the viewpoint characters, the side characters tend to be more interesting to me.
Die Welt ist zu einem einzigen Superkontinent - die Stille - zusammengefallen. Tektonische Spannungen sorgen kontinuierlich für Erdbeben oder Vulkanausbrüche. Besonders heftige Ausbrüche können eine Fünftzeit auslösen - eine mehrjährige Periode aus Asche- und Schwefelregen mit wenig Sonnenlicht und geringen Überlebenschancen für die Bewohner:innen des Kontinents. In dieser Zeit zerfallen Reiche, Gemeinschaften ("Gems)" kämpfen um ihr Überleben und ganze Zivilisationen gehen unter. Allerdings ist die Menschheit der Wut von "Vater Erde" nicht völlig machtlos ausgliefert. Einige Menschen können mittels der Gabe der Orogenie durch Beeinflussung von Wärme und Bewegungsenergie sogar Erdbeben aufhalten und Vulkane abkühlen. Aufgrund Ihrer potentiellen Macht werden die Orogenen gejagt und ermordert. Im günstigsten Fall entdeckt ein:e Wächter:in ein orogen begabtes Kind und nimmt es zur Ausbildung mit ins Fulcrum - dort werden die Orogenen zur bedingungslosen Unterwerfung unter die Wächter erzogen.
Auf verschiedenen Zeitebenen wird die Geschichte der Orogenen Essun erzählt, die als Kind von einem …
Die Welt ist zu einem einzigen Superkontinent - die Stille - zusammengefallen. Tektonische Spannungen sorgen kontinuierlich für Erdbeben oder Vulkanausbrüche. Besonders heftige Ausbrüche können eine Fünftzeit auslösen - eine mehrjährige Periode aus Asche- und Schwefelregen mit wenig Sonnenlicht und geringen Überlebenschancen für die Bewohner:innen des Kontinents. In dieser Zeit zerfallen Reiche, Gemeinschaften ("Gems)" kämpfen um ihr Überleben und ganze Zivilisationen gehen unter. Allerdings ist die Menschheit der Wut von "Vater Erde" nicht völlig machtlos ausgliefert. Einige Menschen können mittels der Gabe der Orogenie durch Beeinflussung von Wärme und Bewegungsenergie sogar Erdbeben aufhalten und Vulkane abkühlen. Aufgrund Ihrer potentiellen Macht werden die Orogenen gejagt und ermordert. Im günstigsten Fall entdeckt ein:e Wächter:in ein orogen begabtes Kind und nimmt es zur Ausbildung mit ins Fulcrum - dort werden die Orogenen zur bedingungslosen Unterwerfung unter die Wächter erzogen.
Auf verschiedenen Zeitebenen wird die Geschichte der Orogenen Essun erzählt, die als Kind von einem Wächter entdeckt wird und so der Ermordung durch ihre Eltern entgeht, sich gegen das Fulcrum stellt und sich auf der dritten Erzhälebene auf die Suche nach ihrer Tochter begibt.
Neben einem spannenden world-building und interessant angelegten Charakteren werden unter anderem Themen wie Xenophobie, Sklaverei, Kastenwesen und das Verhalten von Menschen unter existentiellen Bedrohungen angesprochen.
Selten hat mich ein Fantasy-Roman so gefesselt. :-)
Took me a bit to get into it, and the changing of character names over time confused me a bit, but once I got past those two issues, it was a really fun read. Looking forward to the next two books to see what happens on Earth in a possible distant future where earth magic is common and nothing is stable.
Utterly amazing. This book makes up for all the mediocre stuff I have read this year. READ THIS BOOK!
Ahem. Now to a more detailed review. The Fifth Season is the first book in N.K. Jemisin's post-apocalyptic far future trilogy The Broken Earth. Due to natural disasters the world has changed, and there's only one super-continent now, called The Stillness. There is a lot of seismic activity on Earth, and there's always the looming danger of a Fifth Season, a post-apocalyptic winter when volcanic ash prevents sunlight, sometimes for months, sometimes many years. People gang together in towns that are called comms, storing up caches for a season, divided into a caste system of seven major castes. The safest area in the Stillness is the belt of cities at the equator, where Yumenes is the largest city in the world. In Yumenes there's the Fulcrum, a school of orogenes. Orogenes …
Utterly amazing. This book makes up for all the mediocre stuff I have read this year. READ THIS BOOK!
Ahem. Now to a more detailed review. The Fifth Season is the first book in N.K. Jemisin's post-apocalyptic far future trilogy The Broken Earth. Due to natural disasters the world has changed, and there's only one super-continent now, called The Stillness. There is a lot of seismic activity on Earth, and there's always the looming danger of a Fifth Season, a post-apocalyptic winter when volcanic ash prevents sunlight, sometimes for months, sometimes many years. People gang together in towns that are called comms, storing up caches for a season, divided into a caste system of seven major castes. The safest area in the Stillness is the belt of cities at the equator, where Yumenes is the largest city in the world. In Yumenes there's the Fulcrum, a school of orogenes. Orogenes have the natural ability to control seismic activity and kinetic energy, which makes their existence a blessing and a curse.
The story drops you in at the deep end straight away, with two individual events of importance. Someone sets off a Fifth Season at Yumenes on purpose, ringing in the end of the world. And our protagonist Essun comes home from work in her small comm, to find her husband has killed their 3-year old son and ran off with their daughter because they were orogenes, or roggas, as the common people call them. Essun, who is also an orogene and had been hiding this from everyone. She sets out to find her daughter and make her husband pay for the murder of their child.
In the course of the book, we learn how Essun, who is Fulcrum-trained, came to live in hiding, follow her and her companions along as the Fifth Season begins, and how the Fulcrum and the mysterious Guardians who control the orogenes work.
I cannot rave about this book enough, it's so goddamn good. I love Numenera, and The Fifth Season is so very very Numenera. It's science fantasy, as technology levels are low, but there are deadciv remnants everywhere, including mysterious obelisks that drift in the skies. It's a work of art how the story unfolds, from the eye-boggling beginning with zero exposition, and then everything comes together beautifully. Wonderfully complex characters, including a trans woman, bisexual relationships, seriously, everything that I hope for in a sci-fi novel in 2017.
READ THIS BOOK.
