The Broken Earth: A story for the oppressed

N.K. Jemisin’s fantasy novel, The Fifth Season, which is the first installment in her trilogy, The Broken Earth, was published in 2015. It’s the first fantasy I’d read for adults and I was a little intimidated to start it, thinking it would be difficult to understand and follow. I’d heard so much about this series though, which won a Hugo Award for each volume, the first black writer to do so, that I had to get it. I’ve only read the first one; however, I plan to finish the series. In The Fifth Season, there is a race of people called the Orogenes, people who possess orogeny, which is the ability to manipulate thermal, kinetic, and related forms of energy to address seismic events. Orogenes are hated and feared for their extraordinary power and treated like second class. The story takes place on a single continent ironically called the Stillness although it is anything but still as it prepares for the Fifth Season, an extended winter brought upon by seismic activity. The continent’s people are categorized by what they can do for a community, or by species. We follow the separate stories of three female orogenes: Damaya, a child who is handed over to a Guardian (a group of people charged with training orogenes) when her orogeny is discovered by her family; Syenite a four-ring level orogene who is sent to travel with a ten-ring level orogene Alabaster (the highest level orogene) to create more powerful orogenes; and Essun a middle-aged mother in search of her daughter taken away by an enraged father. I was astounded by Jemisin’s world building as she created an entire new continent with inventive vernacular. From the very first page you’re drawn inside this new world, which at first I did find a little difficult to read. I had to reread the first pages a couple times, but there’s a helpful glossary at the end of the novel that I kept referring to. I thought it was clever for the author to create characters and the world they inhabit as a metaphor for how black people are historically treated. I loved the dedication she wrote for the book: “For all those who have to fight for the respect that everyone else is given without question.” That’s exactly what this book is about and who it’s for.

As orogenes are so feared on the continent there is of course a slur that is attributed to them: rogga. It’s a derogatory term orogenes use themselves, because society has taught them to hate themselves. Those who aren’t killed by their families or others for their abilities are taken to the Fulcrum, an institution where you are trained and used by the Continent to quell earthquakes and other disasters; some are born there raised in captivity. Orogenes wear black clothing that instantly set them apart and rings that denote their level of power. The Guardians who train them can physically hurt them with the purpose of bending them to their will because the orogenes have to obey them, like slave masters. As Syenite, an Orogene herself, states, “We are the gods in chains.” Orogenes are treated like slaves, working for the Fulcrum, completely under their authority even though they hold all the power. Like slaves they are physically and emotionally broken down to fulfill the Fulcrum’s agenda. There is even a legend that the first season occurred after orogenes destroyed Earth’s only child (a cryptic phrase no one can figure out as it is unclear what Earth’s only child is), thereby committing a great sin. For this reason, orogenes are blamed for Earth’s rage, but this is most likely a lie, in the way all lies are created: to oppress a group of people. As Alabaster tells Syenite, “That we’re not human is just the lie they tell themselves so they don’t have to feel bad about how they treat us.” They don’t even have control over their own bodies as Syenite was ordered by the Fulcrum to join Alabaster on his trip with her sole purpose to procreate with him.

The most sickening scene in the novel which displays how the Stillness treat roggas occurs in a node, a network of stations placed throughout the Stillness to reduce seismic events. In one node station that Alabaster and Syenite travel to we learn, painfully, just how little autonomy orogenes have. Inside the node chamber is the node maintainer, an orogene whose job is to quell small earthquakes, but it’s the way this task is successfully carried out that is so heart-wrenching. Unbelievably, a child, with skin as dark as Alabaster’s and tubes and pipes inserted all over him for bowel movements, food, and medicines, had been kept alive immobile in a sort of chair made up of wires and straps crafted to preserve and maintain the body while sedating it so that the child is reduced only to his orogeny. Not all children survive this lobotomization. As they are cut off from self-control they feel great pain when they use their orogeny, which is instinctual—the child will react to any shakes nearby, any perceived threat and in this way the station is supplied with a source of orogeny without having to deal with the fears and dangers of a rogga. For the first time Syenite truly understands the word rogga as she sees in front of her how dehumanized orogenes are. They are merely a thing to be used. She never could’ve imagined that the orogene children, children she had seen herself taken to the nodes, were so horribly handled. She discovers that the dead child in the node is in fact Alabaster’s son, that all the children he has fathered (he believes he has twelve children) are also in nodes to be abused and tortured just like the boy they found in the chair atrophied, wasting away long before his death. It’s a sad truth underlying the many lies recounted on the Stillness through lore.

The Stillness, essentially Earth, is a central character in The Fifth Season, a story written by a black writer who gives power back to her people, reminding them they are the gods by creating characters with enough power and strength to literally move mountains. Earth is described as Father Earth and is attributed evil qualities because of its unpredictable climate and, while we follow three women throughout the novel, it begins and ends with a mother’s love and the act of saving a child from the hatred of those who wish to dehumanize them. With the mental image of the dead child in the node— “Better that a child never have lived at all than live as a slave”—Syenite protects her and Alabaster’s child from the Guardians with the only option she’s given. The narrator explains Syenite’s devastating action: As the earth cracks and breaks, so do people. The connection between the three women who all live in separate timelines was well executed; the revelation is one of my most memorable memories of reading the book. I look forward to completing the trilogy and am glad I decided to read it. I had this idea of fantasy books for adults being complicated to read because there is so much invention and can be incredibly long; it seems easier to watch the film versions. Reading the book, however, made me really impressed by Jemisin’s creativity, writing, and storytelling. I encourage any reader to step outside their comfort zone and read a book you wouldn’t normally pick up.