And to be a rogue orogene with no training? Dangerous and unheard of! Who would allow such a creature to live in their village? Because of course it is the Orogenes who cause all these horrible events to happen. Noncompliance is met with violence, or worse. Trained and educated in the capital, they are manipulated towards working against their own self interests. Known as Orogenes, they are seen as dangerous but tameable savages and are taken from their families as children.

Some people are born with the ability to control stone and earth.

It’s a miracle anyone survived these events. To paraphrase the press release, The Fifth Season takes place in a land known as The Stillness, a place in which extinction level events such as earthquakes, plagues,volcanoes, and floods occur every few generations. If you aren’t reading Jemisin, I have to ask you: why not? And why not start here? For those of you who have read quite a bit of Jemisin, I bet you’ll pick up on what’s going on, or at least have some educated guesses. Like the other Jemisin novels I’ve read, I loved every word, every page, every chapter. I loved the world, the characters, most of all I loved how the story unfolded. So I better say early on in this review how much I loved The Fifth Season. I tried my best to avoid any spoilers in this review, but I know some of you won’t read much further so that the entire book be a surprise for you. I like the idea that maybe, just maybe after you’ve read The Fifth Season you’ll come back to this review and chuckle at what I was vaguely pointing at. This book is too ambitious for me to risk spoiling anything, and I like playing games with my blog readers. I’m going to be purposely, cruelly vague in this review for a few reasons. Where I got it: received review copy from the publisher (thanks Orbit!)

The fifth season novel