The Fifth Season cover art

The Fifth Season

The Broken Earth, Book 1

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The Fifth Season

By: N. K. Jemisin
Narrated by: Robin Miles
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About this listen

 Winner of the Hugo Award for Best Novel
Book 1 in the record-breaking triple Hugo-Award-winning trilogy

***One of Time Magazine's top 100 fantasy books of all time***
***Shortlisted for the World Fantasy, Nebula, Kitschies, Audie and Locus Awards***
***A New York Times Notable Book and the inaugural Wired.com book club pick ***

THIS IS THE WAY THE WORLD ENDS . . . FOR THE LAST TIME.
IT STARTS WITH THE GREAT RED RIFT across the heart of the world's sole continent, spewing ash that blots out the sun.
IT STARTS WITH DEATH, with a murdered son and a missing daughter.
IT STARTS WITH BETRAYAL, and long dormant wounds rising up to fester.
This is the Stillness, a land long familiar with catastrophe, where the power of the earth is wielded as a weapon. And where there is no mercy.

'Astounding' NPR
'Amazing' Ann Leckie
'Breaks uncharted ground' Library Journal
'Powerful' io9
'Elegiac, complex, and intriguing' Publishers Weekly
'Intricate and extraordinary' New York Times
'Brilliant' Washington Post

The Broken Earth trilogy is complete - beginning with The Fifth Season, continuing in The Obelisk Gate (Winner of the Hugo Award for Best Novel) and concluding with The Stone Sky (Winner of the Hugo Award for Best Novel and Nebula Award).

Also by N. K. Jemisin:
The Inheritance trilogy
The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms
The Broken Kingdoms
The Kingdom of Gods

The Dreamblood Duology
The Killing Moon
The Shadowed Sun©2015 N. K. Jemisin Fantasy Fiction

Continue the series
The Obelisk Gate cover art
The Obelisk Gate By: N. K. Jemisin

Critic Reviews

Jemisin brilliantly illustrates the belief that, yes, imaginative world-building is a vital element of fantasy - but also that every character is a world unto herself
Fantasy novels often provide a degree of escapism: a good thing, for any reader who has something worth escaping. Too often, though, that escape comes through a fictional world that erases rather than solves the more complex problems of our own... In Jemisin's work, nature is not unchangeable or inevitable. The Fifth Season invites us to imagine a dismantling of the earth in both the literal and the metaphorical sense, and suggests the possibility of a richer and more fundamental escape
Heartbreaking, wholly unexpected, and technically virtuosic, THE FIFTH SEASON is a tour-de-force. I felt every shock--and the book is packed with them--in my marrow. It's no exaggeration to say that Jemisin expands the range of what great fantasy can be (Brian Staveley)
All stars
Most relevant
Absurdly incredible. I'm speechless. And the narrator was a dream. Best book. All the reviews are true and it's so worth it.

Incredible

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I chose this because it had excellent reviews but I just could not get into this book. I really tried my hardest and it does have potential, but I feel that this is best actually read rather than listened to as it is a whole new world with all these different names for different species which are hard to keep track of when listening to. I felt like I needed to keep flicking back a page so I could understand what was going on. Perhaps good for binge listening, but I found it too hard to follow.

Not for me sadly!

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The Fifth Season was everything. As beautiful as it is sorrowful.
Thanks N. K. Jemisin.

Wonderful. Alien but just within grasp.

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The narration by Robin Miles is fantastic and is probably the reason I got through this novel.

Overall, I found this book to be incredibly frustrating. There was so much potential in this story with these characters but for me it just seems to somehow miss the mark.

While there is definitely some pacing issues, you can make a journey feel long and tiring without resorting to pages of pointless story, I don't think it was this that stopped me becoming immersed. I think what put me off the most is the lack of chemistry between the characters.

To me this seemed to be technically a good book but one that lacked heart. It maybe that this is a novel that needs to be read instead of listened to.

Frustrated by what this novel could have been

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Thoroughly enjoyed this story with its twists and turns. Well read with a pleasant voice

Engaging book

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