Each book is therefore a trilogy unto itself, stories laid within stories like the concentric rings used to age trees or distinguish the power levels of different orogenes. The other novels are also each split into three characters, though now Essun must share the stage with her daughter, Nassun, their shared mentor/tormentor Schaffa, and her protector Hoa. The Fifth Season focuses entirely on one woman, though it refers to her by three different names (Essun, Syenite, and Damaya) as it tells the stories of three distinct periods in her life. Depending on your perspective, the orogenes are either the only force saving humankind from earthquake-induced extinction or the very reason for the Earth's angry instability - and there are a lot of different perspectives on display in Broken Earth. Another big difference between this land and ours is its population of 'orogenes,' humans born with the ability to generate shakes and control the movements of the earth. It's a hard land, buffeted by consistent shakes and recurring catastrophes. Unrelated to the novels, just in the same universe.Broken Earth's map is of an Earth with a single continent called the Stillness. “Stone Hunger,” a novelette set in the Stillness.

She’ll break it herself, if she must, to save her daughter. Essun does not care if the world falls apart around her. Without sunlight, clean water, or arable land, and with limited stockpiles of supplies, there will be war all across the Stillness: a battle royale of nations not for power or territory, but simply for the basic resources necessary to get through the long dark night. Now Essun must pursue the wreckage of her family through a deadly, dying land. And worst of all, across the heart of the vast continent known as the Stillness, a great red rift has been torn into the heart of the earth, spewing ash enough to darken the sky for years. Meanwhile, mighty Sanze - the world-spanning empire whose innovations have been civilization’s bedrock for a thousand years - collapses as most of its citizens are murdered to serve a madman’s vengeance. Essun, a woman living an ordinary life in a small town, comes home to find that her husband has brutally murdered their son and kidnapped their daughter. Three terrible things happen in a single day.

The broken earth