I think this has to be one of the best world-building books I have ever read. This is a strange land, wracked with unusually strong and violent earthquakes, which happen cyclically.
The land and quakes can be controlled by people born with specific powers called “Orogenes”. These people are identified by roving scouts who pick them up at a very young age from their families and bring them to the great schools where their skills are honed and sharpened. At the same time, these people are both revered and reviled, and derogatorily called “Rogga” by common folk.
The story centres around one such lady, born Damaya, with the Orogene name of Syenite, and living anonymously under the name of Essun. A massive earthquake literally rips the planet apart right at the equator, and while she protects her village from the effects of the quake, she reveals her identity as a Rogga. Her husband, in a fit of rage, kills his infant son and kidnaps her daughter to ostensibly cure her of her orogenic powers.
The rest of the story centers on Essun/Syenite/Damaya on her untiring quest for her daughter, and her thoughts into the very nature of humanity and her powers, until eventually she understands the root cause between the cyclic doom her planet faces and how she works to fix it.
A fantastic trilogy; beautifully written characters, with depth and pathos, and a genuinely original take on “magic” and social/cultural reactions to difference. The fear, and loss, and rage, in the story are palpable, with characters rendered in a perfect moral palette of shades of grey (even if some are unforgivable, they are at least understandable in the context of narrative). The story starts small, and personal, and painful, and even though the plot reaches a world changing scope, it never loses that personal human scale.