Damaya thinks she is about to be sold as a slave because she revealed her orogene power. In another era, Damaya is a child locked in her parents’ barn so that she can’t escape. Essun feels the cataclysmic earthquake coming her way and, as she grieves, she redirects the earthquake around her community (known as a comm). Since Uche was too young to control himself, Essun suspects that he carelessly displayed some orogeny, which prompted his father to beat him to death. Essun has hidden her orogene powers from her husband, but both of her children had the power as well. In a little village called Tirimo, an orogene woman named Essun is left devastated when her husband, Jija, murders their 3-year-old son Uche and kidnaps their daughter, Nassun. Near the planet’s capital city of Yumenes, an orogene man lifts a large piece of the earth’s crust and breaks it, causing a devastating earthquake that will eventually cause a Fifth Season and likely end all human life on the planet.

This story follows the narratives of three orogene women a child, a young woman, and a middle-aged woman, observing the hardships they endure and the racism they face because of their abilities. If two normal parents discover their child has orogenic power, they will either kill the child for being a monster, allow the mob in their village to kill the child or call the Fulcrum to take the child away. Well-trained orogenes are enslaved by an organization called the Fulcrum, where they serve the Sanzed Empire with their talents. People who are not orogenes treat orogenes like animals. Orogenic power is the ability to control geological features, and it has positive uses, such as stilling earthquakes, and negative uses, such as killing people by freezing the air around them.

One unique feature of this troubled planet is the presence of super-powered humans called orogenes. This time, a very powerful magic user causes it on purpose. Every fifth Season is especially terrible, lasting decades, and the Stillness is just about to start a Fifth Season. Cataclysms called Seasons occur every 100 years or so, each one effectively wiping out human life on the Stillness.

In a world called the Stillness, planet-wide apocalyptic events are routine.

The broken earth