Sagas & Sass covered The Broken Earth Trilogy by N.K. Jemisin in 2021; this is our summary of book 1 – The Fifth Season – as it was written to introduce Episode 21, covering the entirety of that novel.
The Fifth Season by NK Jemisin, the first book in the Broken Earth Trilogy, is definitely a different feel from anything else we’ve read and it’s pretty fucking intense! Let’s get into it….and please stick with us here, because there’s seriously A LOT to summarize!
In a world called the Stillness, planet-wide apocalyptic events are totally normal. Cataclysms called Seasons occur every few centuries, each one effectively changing – or at times even wiping out large portions of – human life in the Stillness. NBD. Every fifth Season is especially terrible, lasting decades, and a new one is starting.
The difference is that this time an orogene caused it on purpose.
Orogenes are humans with a special ability to control geological features, which sounds pretty badass. And it is, but regular humans, AKA “stills”, are terrified of them, so they have basically enslaved the orogenes. An organization called the Fulcrum trains them and keeps them in check using “Guardians” – humans trained and even modified specifically to take down orogenes who might go rogue.
The story follows three orogene women: a child named Damaya, a young woman named Syenite, and an older woman named Essun, who each face racism and hardships because of their abilities.
We meet Essun first, when she discovers that her husband has murdered her son and kidnapped their daughter. Her husband didn’t know that Essun was an orogene as she had been hiding her powers, and had taught both her children to hide theirs as well. But apparently her son Uche let his slip, and his father killed him in return. Thanks, we hate it.
When Essun feels the cataclysmic earthquake approaching her village, Tirimo, she reflexively redirects it around her community, revealing to everyone in the village that someone is an orogene.
Next up is Damaya, who is locked in her parents’ barn so she can’t escape. She thinks she is going to be sold as a slave because she revealed her powers accidentally when a boy who supposedly liked her pushed her to the ground and started threatening her. But we know that even in fiction, boys need to be held accountable for their actions, and she was able to control herself enough so that she just gave him a good scare. Anyway, it turns out that the man who comes to collect her isn’t technically a slaver – he’s a “Guardian” named Shaffa. He says he will take her to the Stillness capital, Yumenes, to serve the government as a member of the fulcrum. She doesn’t know this yet, but it’s definitely just a different form of slavery.
Meanwhile, Essun has been mourning her son for days. She hasn’t moved and has just disassociated a bunch, not allowing herself to think about anything. Meanwhile, Tirimo has been in lock down because despite her quelling the earthquake, there’s a cloud of sulpher in the air and everyone knows a new Season is coming. A friend, Lerna – who is the local doctor – comes to her house and tells her that her husband has left town with their daughter Nassun. It’s not clear where he’s gone, but this gives Essun a reason to live – to save her daughter and kill her husband. Lerna also reveals that he knew Essun was secretly an orogene but didn’t say anything.
Essun heads out of town, and with the help of the village leader, she almost makes it out of the gate before someone tries to shoot her. By now the entire village knows, or at least suspects, that she’s an orogene. She reacts reflexively and with rage, her power breaking the underground aquifer, destroying buildings, and killing anyone in close proximity to her. Even those she didn’t kill will die soon enough, though, because with the aquifer broken, they will lose their water supply.
At another unspecified time in history, Syenite is a highly skilled Fulcrum orogene who is expected to conceive an orogene child with Alabaster, who is one of, if not the, most powerful orogene in the world. Because of her role in the Fulcrum, she has no choice in the matter. She’s just supposed to fuck this rando and hopefully have a powerful baby with him.
Alabaster is rude and also clearly doesn’t want to have sex with her either. Technically he’s allowed to refuse because he is a 10 ringer (the highest rank attainable by an orogene) but they both realize that doing so would just put Syenite in a worse spot, so they grin and bear it. Or grin and bone it? Either way they have a lot of deeply unsexy sex.
They are sent on a mission to a coastal town called Allia to clear some coral from the harbor there. The mission is really just an excuse for them to procreate, but as we learn later, it will turn out to be much more important than that.
Essun journeys south and encounters a boy named Hoa. His skin is albino-white, his face and body are strangely proportioned, and he doesn’t seem to understand anything about society. It becomes clear that Hoa is not an orogene, but that he isn’t a normal human either. For instance, he can somehow sense Nassun’s movement as she is traveling. Because of this ability, and because she does feel somewhat motherly towards him, Essun allows Hoa to journey with her despite her initial misgivings.
Back with Damaya on the road to Yumenes, we get more trauma and insight into how poorly the orogene are treated. Schaffa breaks her hand in order to teach her control. He tells her that she must learn to restrain her impulses and not use her power when she experiences pain, pressure, or hatred. He says that he loves her, but that she has no human rights and must never say no to him because orogenes cannot resist their Guardians in any way. Damaya is conflicted because she loves her new Guardian, but is traumatized by him intentionally causing her excruciating pain. TL;DR: The gaslighting is next level and super fucked.
Syenite and Alabaster continue their journey to Allia until they encounter a sudden massive erupting volcano. They are able to stop it because Alabaster somehow takes control of Syenite’s power. He shouldn’t be able to do that, but he does. It understandably feels like a violation to her and her resentment of him grows. Alabaster insists that they visit the nearest node outpost because the node-maintaining orogene responsible for calming shakes must have gone wild and intentionally tried to murder the entire region. When they arrive, Syenite is shocked to find that the deceased node-maintainer at the outpost was not a lazy, bored adult worker, but a victimized orogene child in a coma, his shriveled body kept alive by machines.
Alabaster tells her that orogene children who don’t learn control are confined in this way, kept suspended in a room, lobotomized and fed by tubes, kept just alive enough to instinctively calm the earthquakes of the region. Syenite also notices the dead child’s shocking physical resemblance to Alabaster and recalls that he has already produced 12 children with other women. Alabaster won’t say if the child is his, but from his distress Syenite guesses the truth.
In case it’s not already obvious, this society is seriously fucked up.
Damaya becomes a star pupil at the Fulcrum, but she and the other orogene trainees are not treated like children or even like soldiers, but like weapons being polished for battle. She manages to overcome systemic bullying from other children and the system she has been forced into and should be able to test for her first ring soon…until one day she meets a non-orogene girl named Binof, who asks for her help in finding a secret underground chamber beneath the Fulcrum’s main building. The two girls eventually find the underground chamber, which contains a massive six-sided hole that is unfathomably deep and covered in sharp shards.
The girls are discovered, but the Guardian who finds them seems to be taken over by…something powerful, we don’t know what, and is brutally killed by Shaffa. Damaya has no idea what happens to Binof, but apparently their trespass was so severe that Damaya is told she must face her first orogene “ring test” immediately, or Shaffa will have to kill her. She passes the test and chooses her orogene name: Syenite.
WHHHHHHAAAAAT?!? Damaya and Syenite have been the same person all along! What about Essun?!?
Well, Essun and Hoa meet Tonkee, a commless geomest (or scientist) full of boundless curiosity. Eventually the three travelers arrive at Castrima, a place where Hoa loses Nassun’s trail because he says there are too many orogenes in this place, and their signals muddy each other.
Castrima is an underground comm carved out of a geode, and their leader Ykka is a charismatic orogene woman living openly despite not being a Fulcrum orogene. There are air-purifying mechanisms in the cave that are run by orogeny, proving that a previous civilization highly valued their orogenes. Essun is in awe of all the technology, but now fears she will never find her daughter.
Syenite and Alabaster arrive in Allia and Syenite resurrects a giant six-sided crystal obelisk out of the ocean when she attempts to clear the coral from the harbor. This action attracts a Guardian, who attacks and tries to kill them both, and Syenite accidentally sets off the dormant volcano in Allia. But even though Allia is destroyed in the process, she and Alabaster are saved by Alabaster’s friend Antimony, who is a nonhuman creature called a stone-eater. As a note, the stone-eater’s origins and powers are unknown, and it seems they’ll remain that way at least for now, because Antimony leaves the two of them on an island run by friendly pirates who actually like orogenes.
There, Syenite and Alabaster form a polyamorous relationship with Innon, the pirate leader and a feral orogene himself. Syenite has Alabaster’s baby, and they have two peaceful years on the island. She loves her son, Coru, but she is bored of quiet island life and begs Innon to let her join a pirate voyage with him. Innon reluctantly agrees to let her come along, but Alabaster is angry and afraid that she’ll leave him permanently if she ever ventures away.
Syenite promises to come back and goes on the voyage. Thanks to her, they stage a successful raid of some merchant ships, and afterward she asks to go back to Allia, where she seals shut the open magma chamber that destroyed the comm and has continued to erupt since. As the pirate ship leaves, Syenite thinks she sees a lone Guardian on land, watching her.
And then, the final reveal: Essun is Syenite/Dayama! She also discovers that Tonkee is Binof, the girl she met as a child. She’s been following Essun for almost 30 years. We also find out that Tonkee discovered that the six-sided hole in the ground under the Fulcrum is where the obelisks that float in the sky all over the place come from, and that she hopes Essun can command the obelisks. Their apparently nonsensical movements are actually the obelisks slowly moving in the direction of powerful orogenes who can command them, and they have been following Essun.
Meanwhile, Hoa is revealed to be a stone-eater, and he eats crystals, which also seem to be his own essence or spirit, enabling his current body to function. Hoa says he likes Essun, but doesn’t explain why he’s accompanying her. There are other stone-eaters in Castrima, but Hoa distrusts them.
But how did Syenite become Essun in the first place? It turns out that four ships full of Guardians, orogene, and humans showed up at the island to retrieve Syenite and Alabaster. She and Alabaster took out two of them, but Antimony shows up and drags Alabaster to safety IN THE GROUND, apparently against his will. The last thing he does is ask Syenite to promise that she won’t let the Guardians take Coru.
Syenite makes it to the pirate ship where Innon and Coru are to help fight the remaining ships. Unfortunately, they are overtaken, and a Guardian kills Innon. Then HER guardian, Schaffa, arrives and threatens her, and she’s finally had enough. Syenite picks up Coru and connects her mental energy to a nearby amethyst obelisk, which she knows will amplify her fighting power and, she hopes, kill her in the process. She smothers her son so he can’t be captured or suffer, and unleashes a massive flood of power to try to kill the Guardians. We learn that Hoa finds her floating in the ocean after the explosion, and rescues her, although she is not conscious of it.
In Castrima, Essun is told that an old friend wants to see her. The old friend is Alabaster, the same man who a few weeks prior caused the earthquake that will likely end all life on the earth. He has somehow become – or is becoming? – a stone eater, and between that and the energy it took to cause the earthquake, he is dying. He asks Essun to break the world further and asks her if she’s ever heard of a moon. What the fuck?!? Before he can clarify his meaning, the novel ends.
No, seriously, what the fuck?!?
QUOTES WE LOVED
For all those that have to fight for the respect that everyone else is given without question.
Home is what you take with you, not what you leave behind.
Who misses what they have never, ever even imagined?
When the reasoning mind is forced to confront the impossible again and again, it has no choice but to adapt.
This is what you must remember: the ending of one story is just the beginning of another.
