
Is The Fifth Season Worth Reading?
The Broken Earth, Book 1
by N.K. Jemisin
Ada’s Score
N.K. Jemisin's groundbreaking novel takes place on a supercontinent wracked by catastrophic seismic events called Fifth Seasons, where people who can control these forces — orogenes — are enslaved and feared. Told in an audacious second-person present tense, the novel follows three women whose stories converge in devastating ways. Jemisin builds a fully realized world of geological terror and systematic oppression, using speculative fiction to illuminate questions of race, power, and survival. It won the Hugo Award for Best Novel in 2016, the first book in a trilogy that swept all three consecutive Hugo Awards.
“The second-person voice sounds like a gimmick — until suddenly it isn't. Jemisin makes you feel the apocalypse in your bones. Astonishing.”
Ada Brief
AI reading intelligence“The second-person voice sounds like a gimmick — until suddenly it isn't. Jemisin makes you feel the apocalypse in your bones. Astonishing.”
Book Details
- Publisher
- Turtleback
- Published
- January 1, 2015
- Pages
- 512
- Language
- English
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Affiliate linksISBN: 9780316229296
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Ada’s Score Breakdown
4.7
This breakdown reflects how Ada weighs the book’s strengths and flaws, not aggregated reader data.
Common Questions About The Fifth Season
- Is The Fifth Season worth reading?
- The second-person voice sounds like a gimmick — until suddenly it isn't. Jemisin makes you feel the apocalypse in your bones. Astonishing. Ada rates it 4.7 out of 5.
- How many pages is The Fifth Season?
- The Fifth Season is 512 pages long — around 9–10 hours at an average reading pace.




