The Fifth Season

The novel's final revelation is that Damaya, Syenite, and Essun are the same woman at three different stages of her life. Essun, traveling south from the ruins of Tirimo with the stone-eater Hoa and the scholar Tonkee, arrives at the hidden underground comm of Castrima, built inside a massive geode. There she finds Alabaster waiting for her — the powerful orogene she once knew as her partner and lover during her years as Syenite. Along the way it also comes out that Tonkee is the same girl who, as a child, once snuck into the Fulcrum out of curiosity and stumbled onto its darkest secrets.

The backstory that closes the gap between Syenite and Essun is laid bare: after Syenite and Alabaster escaped a near-fatal encounter with an obelisk and an assassination attempt, they were rescued by the stone-eater Antimony and taken to an island community led by an untrained orogene named Innon. Syenite, Alabaster, and Innon formed a loving relationship, and Syenite bore a son with Alabaster, living in peace for several years. That peace ended when the Fulcrum tracked them down: Innon was killed in front of Syenite by a Guardian, and rather than let her child be taken to be lobotomized into a node-maintainer or otherwise used by the Fulcrum, Syenite smothered him herself. In her grief and rage she connected with a nearby obelisk and destroyed the Guardians' ship, killing most of the Guardians present along with many fleeing islanders. She then went into hiding, eventually settling in Tirimo and becoming the Essun the reader has followed all along.

At Castrima, Essun learns that it was Alabaster — the extraordinarily powerful orogene glimpsed in the book's prologue — who tore open the Great Rift across the continent, triggering the catastrophic Fifth Season now unfolding. He tells her this was a deliberate act, necessary to a larger plan to end the recurring Fifth Seasons for good. The book closes on his cryptic question to her: "Have you ever heard of something called a moon?" — leaving the nature of his plan, and the fate of Essun's missing daughter Nassun, unresolved as the story ends.

Going into the next book, remember that Essun, Damaya, and Syenite are all the same woman, Essun, seen at three points in her life — a child discovered as an orogene and taken to train at the Fulcrum (as Damaya), a rising Fulcrum orogene forced into a partnership with the incredibly powerful orogene Alabaster (as Syenite), and the older woman hiding her orogeny in the small comm of Tirimo (as Essun).

The book opens with an unnamed, extraordinarily powerful orogene tearing the continent open along a Great Rift, an act that plunges the world into what looks to be the worst Fifth Season ever recorded. In Tirimo, Essun's young son Uche is beaten to death by her husband Jija after his orogenic powers accidentally show; Jija flees with their daughter Nassun. Essun unconsciously redirects an incoming earthquake around Tirimo, exposing herself as an orogene, and when a mob turns on her she kills many townspeople and destroys the comm's water supply before fleeing to find her husband and daughter. On the road she's joined by Hoa, a mysterious boy who is actually a stone eater, and by Tonkee, a commless woman with unusual knowledge. The three journey through a devastated, ash-choked landscape to Castrima, a hidden comm built inside an underground geode.

Interwoven with Essun's journey are her earlier lives: as Damaya, trained brutally by the Guardian Schaffa at the Fulcrum, where orogenes are controlled and used as tools; and as Syenite, paired with Alabaster on a mission that reveals the Fulcrum's node stations are staffed by mutilated, lobotomized orogene children kept alive only to instinctively quell earthquakes. Syenite and Alabaster discover that the giant floating obelisks are not inert relics but responsive, powerful objects. After an obelisk destroys a coastal town, the pair are rescued by the stone eater Antimony and taken to an island run by Innon, an untrained orogene, where Syenite, Alabaster, and Innon form a relationship and Syenite has a son with Alabaster. When the Fulcrum's Guardians find them, Innon is killed and Syenite smothers her own child rather than let the Fulcrum take him; in her grief she destroys the Guardians' ship using an obelisk, then flees and eventually becomes Essun.

At Castrima, Essun reunites with Alabaster, who has been living among the stone eaters, and learns that he was the one who caused the Rift, driven by some larger, still-unexplained plan to end Fifth Seasons permanently. Tonkee is revealed to be the same curious girl who once trespassed in the Fulcrum as a child. The book ends with Alabaster asking Essun if she's heard of the moon, and the following threads remain open for the next book: Nassun's whereabouts and fate are unknown, Alabaster's true plan (and its connection to the obelisks and the moon) is unrevealed, the fledgling comm of Castrima's fate amid the growing Fifth Season is uncertain, and Essun's next steps — whether to search for her daughter or stay and help Alabaster — are undecided.