Sometimes multiple words refer to the same thing, as how you eventually come to realize that “ragga” is a slur for “orogene.” Sometimes it’s plain that new terms are stand-ins for words in our own argot. Because the version of “Earth” in this “Broken Earth” series has fundamental differences from our own world, there’s a lot of new vocabulary to master. It is worth reading for the ratio of strange and familiar it conjures. The Fifth Season is a fully realized imagined world, and its description and details are rich. But presumably their existence and purpose will be made clear in the latter two books of the trilogy.
There are some odd extras that I don’t really understand: “stone eaters” which appear to be living rock sort-of-people, and strange obelisks which move through the Earth’s interior. The training of the orogenes, their professional work, their coping with the social stigma of their talents – those are all part of the tapestry of the book. Much of the novel’s dramatic arc is driven by the relationship between the orogenes and their “still” controllers. Because of their power, they are feared by other humans, who seek to control them. These “orogenes” can also break the Earth – triggering earthquakes or volcanic eruptions. This takes a lot of effort, and as they draw energy from their surroundings for the task, a frozen zone manifests itself around them as they work. When an earthquake is about to strike, for instance, these gifted people can use their powers to sense it coming, and stop it.
The people that inhabit the “Earth” of the novel are both quite familiar as humans, yet some have the ability to manifest tectonic changes in their planet. The story is set in a world called “Earth,” but it’s not clear if it’s the same world as our own, in the distant past or the distant future. It is a fantasy novel with a healthy seasoning ( ha! no pun intended) of science fiction. Jemisin’s first book in her “Broken Earth” trilogy, The Fifth Season. After reading Mika McKinnon‘s endorsement of this series on Twitter ( example), I downloaded an audiobook copy of N.K.
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