The mythic original sin of N.K. Jemisin’s science fantasy novel The Fifth Season is pervasive pollution. At first “pleased and fascinated” by life and “proud to nurture” humanity, Father Earth watches humans poison the water, extinguish other species, and drill through their planet’s crust and mantle; it’s humans destroying “his only child” that both sets loose retributive volcanic activity and definitively reminds the reader that this is an origin myth (481). Jemisin’s myth of humans sowing the volcano and reaping the eruption mirrors her broader focus in exploring hierarchical human society amid environmental crisis.

The Fifth Season occurs in the fictional world of the Stillness, a planet wracked by cycles of “Fifth Seasons,” or calamitous periods of toxic ash, caustic rain, and crop failure brought on by seismic events. Orogene (geomancer) protagonist Essun, grieving her murdered son and kidnapped daughter, pursues her filicidal and kidnapping ex-husband at the start of a cataclysmic Fifth Season. Flashback chapters tell the story of Damaya, a child orogene joining the ranks of the Fulcrum, the paramilitary order that is the only legitimate career for orogenes. Other flashback chapters tell of Syenite, an accomplished Fulcrum agent sent to breed more fodder for the Fulcrum with its greatest prodigy under the pretext of clearing coral from a harbor.

As a Jemisin fan who loved both her Inheritance and Dreamblood series, the world of The Fifth Season is not only her most exquisitely crafted but a standout in speculative fiction. Whether describing wood frames built to withstand earthquakes, respirators to protect from ash particulates, or ubiquitous communal green space to provide for urban agriculture during volcanic winter, this story is filled with elaborate, thoughtful adaptations to natural disaster. Orogeny dovetails with this realism in its grounding in seismology: orogenes are distinguished from other humans by more sensitive tremor-sensing organs, which all humans evolved on the planet, and their powers follow the law of conservation of energy with ruinous results. Even the most powerful in the Stillness aim to redirect magma channels and tectonic shifts rather than terminating them. Jemisin’s writing brings together the hard facts of geology with imagination to illustrate how society might develop and fall apart when sensitivity to the earth is a limiting factor for humanity.

While humans forcing other humans to serve as seismographs and volcano-suppression systems presents a thorny, intriguing read, Jemisin’s character development is not quite as multifaceted. The characters often pivot between curiosity and cynicism, but with the exception of the disillusioned, philosophical prodigy Alabaster, I felt the cast lacked depth; I also found the story’s central twist flatly predictable. But as this is the first book in a series, I anticipate more character work to come. Further, Jemisin’s unsparing glimpse at a people ruled by their planet, and her incisive exploration of the many faces of oppression under the pretext of survival, rings true even ten years after publication. In real life, while the steepening climate crisis is most attributable to wealthy nations like the United States, people from poorer countries like Pakistan and Belize suffer right next to the US on the list of the most threatened nations (see the Climate Risk Index 2025 from Germanwatch). The Fifth Season shows the urgency of preventing deadly environmental disasters and the wonderful power of the earth in the same frame, and if the landscape’s a little gritty, it’s a good reminder to mask up.