Book Club Guide

The Fifth Season

by N.K. Jemisin · 2015 · Science Fiction

Key themes

Systemic oppression and the bodies it marks and controls
The mother who is trying to find her daughter across an ending world
How civilisations use apocalypse to maintain power

About this book

On a planet racked by catastrophic geological events — the Fifth Seasons that periodically end civilisations — a woman searches for her daughter across a world that fears and enslaves people with the power to control the earth itself. Jemisin's first Broken Earth novel won the Hugo Award and announced the arrival of one of the most important voices in speculative fiction.

Published in 2015, The Fifth Season won the Hugo Award for Best Novel, making Jemisin the first author to win the Hugo three consecutive years with three books in a series. She has described it as drawing directly on her experience of racism in America.

Discussion questions

The novel uses a second-person narrator for one of its threads — 'you do this, you go there.' What does this unusual choice achieve — and when does the reason for it become clear?
The orogenes — people with geological power — are enslaved and controlled by the Fulcrum. How does Jemisin develop this system of oppression — and what contemporary systems does it resonate with?
The three narrative threads gradually reveal their relationship to each other. How does Jemisin manage this without the reader feeling manipulated?
The world of the Stillness is built on a fundamental injustice. How does Jemisin show the cost of this injustice — not just to the orogenes but to the whole civilisation?
The Fifth Season won the Hugo Award three years running (with its sequels). What makes the Broken Earth trilogy so significant — what does it do that previous SF did not?