Several months ago, N.K. Jemisin, much-loved (and totally awesome and smart) author of The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms (REVIEW) and The Killing Moon (REVIEW), announced that her next novel was going to be, “a postapocalyptic epic fantasy trilogy, set in a world of seismic magic users and enigmatic nonhumans called stone-eaters.”

That novel has been revealed, along with the gorgeous cover, by The Mary Sue, as The Fifth Season. Jemisin describes The Fifth Season:

The Fifth Season is set in a world which has suffered frequent, repeated Extinction Level Events for millions of years, and all life (and magic) in this world has adapted to it. Hundreds of years might pass between these events — easy, plentiful years in which great cities rise, and people have the leisure for art and science and rapid advancement — but then, again and again, the cities fall. The world is littered with the detritus of these times of plenty, and this cover hints at them: past ages of decadence, now decaying; stone that endures beneath flaking gilt.

The Fifth Season is set for release by Orbit Books in August 2014, which, right now, feels like an eternity to wait for what will, if her other books are any indication, be one of 2014’s best fantasies.