The Stillness is a fantasy world marked by its seismic activity and everything that entails. Communities—comms—focus on efficiency and survival. Big cities only exist around the equator, where orogenes—very simply put: Earthbenders—protect the inhabitants and their beautiful architecture. The people of the Stillness bear names that indicate their role or purpose in this world, as well as their privilege, their social standing. The world of The Fifth Season is complex, gritty, and intriguing.

The Fifth Season explores the fates of individuals, power dynamics, and oppression in a dystopian-sci-fi-fantasy setting. It does not come pre-chewed. It demands your attention and patience, because there are many threads and breadcrumbs, but trust that it will all come together in the end. It’s the kind of book you immediately want to reread upon finishing it, to catch all the hints and clues.

If your copy has one and you find yourself a bit confused by the worldbuilding, you might want to take a look at the appendix early on. It would have been a great help to me had I read it sooner. There are no spoilers in the glossary, reading it is more like peeling the worldbuilding onion a little quicker.

Unfortunately, The Fifth Season features a pet peeve of mine: fantasy swear words. “Rust” instead of “f***”, so there are phrases like “rust this” or “rusting Earth”. I really don’t care for it. I’d rather they just use “f***”—and they do, rarely, so it can’t have been a publication issue. However, that doesn’t ruin the book, all things considered. It just annoyed me a little. That, and the pacing felt a little off to me at times, hence my rating. I still really really enojyed it though!

I definitely want to move on to the next book in the trilogy because I need to find out what happens next! To me, this book is a great setup for what I expect to be a fantastic series.