Recommendations
Books Like The Fifth Season by N.K. Jemisin
For readers of Jemisin's Hugo-winning Broken Earth opener
If you loved The Fifth Season's second-person narration, the orogene allegory for racial oppression, and the three-strand structure converging on Essun, these books continue that world or explore its closest companions in speculative fiction by women of color.
- 1Buy on Amazon
The Obelisk Gate
by N.K. Jemisin
The immediate sequel — Essun in Castrima learning obelisk use, Nassun's parallel journey with Schaffa, the deepening mythology and complicating moral picture of the Broken Earth trilogy.
- 2Buy on Amazon
The Stone Sky
by N.K. Jemisin
The trilogy's Hugo-winning conclusion — the Syl Anagist deep history, Essun and Nassun's convergence, and the choice about the world's future.
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Buy on AmazonParable of the Sower
by Octavia E. Butler
The predecessor in speculative fiction by a Black woman about a Black woman navigating catastrophe — Lauren Olamina's California dystopia is the formal ancestor of Essun's Stillness.
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Buy on AmazonA Memory Called Empire
by Arkady Martine
Hugo Award-winning debut by a woman of color that uses speculative elements to examine imperialism and identity — the most important recent companion in the Jemisin tradition.
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Buy on AmazonThe Left Hand of Darkness
by Ursula K. Le Guin
Le Guin's Hugo-winning predecessor in humanist SF — Genly Ai on the ambisexual planet Gethen is the formal ancestor of Essun's navigation of the Stillness.
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Buy on AmazonKindred
by Octavia E. Butler
Butler's most accessible novel — Dana's time-travel to an antebellum plantation uses speculative elements to make the reader inhabit oppression, the same formal move Jemisin makes with the second-person narration.
- 7Buy on Amazon
The Poppy War
by R.F. Kuang
Debut speculative fiction that uses a fantasy setting to examine historical oppression — Rin's ethnic persecution by the Nikan Empire is the East Asian parallel to the Stillness's treatment of orogenes.
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Buy on AmazonAncillary Justice
by Ann Leckie
Hugo-winning SF debut — Breq's gender-neutral narration is the 21st-century version of Le Guin's gender-speculation project, and the Radch Empire's imperialism is the companion to the Sanze empire's orogene oppression.
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