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The City We Became by N.K. Jemisin

28 reviews

caseybones's review against another edition

adventurous challenging emotional hopeful inspiring mysterious tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

Hopefully this is the first in a new trilogy or duology and not a one-off – there’s so much about this universe I want to know. And from the perspective of a fourth-generation Brooklyn native, this book was PERFECT. No notes.

I’m not even mad that

Jersey City ends up being an honorary borough,

and of course

the Staten Island avatar is the betrayer;

how could the product of that environment be anything else?

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dawntin's review against another edition

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adventurous medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.0

This book was not for me. There were a ton of pop culture references and the overall message of the book, while meaningful, was too heavy-handed in my opinion. Each character was introduced with the traits that made them special (race, ethnicity, sexuality, occupation, etc.) and they all had superpowers, due to being the avatars of major cities. This was cool and all, but I felt like the author tried way too hard to be quirky and inadvertently ended up playing into some stereotypes in the process of making her characters super-quirky and diverse. Like, did the main Indian character really need to have

math-related

superpowers? Also, the avatar of Hong Kong literally being named Hong Kong and his accent being described as “Chinese-inflected British English” was straight up weird. The Black characters were fine though, maybe because the author is Black herself. Besides the characters, the pacing was weird and the book wrapped everything up in the last 20 or so pages. It felt like there was so much build-up before they saved the day, and when they did, I wasn’t even sure what was happening.

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jakepasseri's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional funny mysterious sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.25

A really good read that flips (and critiques) the Lovecraftian ideas over the fear of the unknown to critique and comment on modern political issues (though it can be ham-fisted at times)

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rnbhargava's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark emotional funny hopeful informative inspiring lighthearted mysterious reflective relaxing sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.25

This book is near perfect for me. Some dings for variable pacing and maybe wrapping up a bit too cleanly and vaguely abruptly. Overall, I loved this adventure steeped in what makes NYC the city it is.

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torturedreadersdept's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark emotional funny tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

5.0

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harpoonholly's review against another edition

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adventurous emotional hopeful informative reflective tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

Audiobook review. First thing, Robin Miles is an amazing actor who puts so much passion in the words written, even the post-credits and IP legalese. She is a full cast in a single person, her characterizations are so good. I'll be getting the sequel to this book, "The World We Make" to hear her act again.

I'll also get the sequel because NK Jemisin is an amazing writer. I'm fascinated in the personification of concepts and to personify cities is to maximize adds greater complexity because of course it has to. I also like how she goes about acknowledging Lovecraft's literary contributions (northeastern U.S. sublime, dread, and monsters) and shining a scalding light over his overt bigotry that was startling even for his time.

10/10, would recommend, especially the audiobook.

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stormeno's review against another edition

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adventurous funny mysterious medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

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aamna_theinkslinger's review against another edition

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adventurous emotional funny hopeful tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

5.0

The N.K. Jemisisn hype is so real.

I never expected to feel such a range of emotions from such a seemingly small book. The City We Became's paperback edition looks a very tame, innocent size, but the gut punch that it packs in those 448 pages is mind-blowing.

It is a book that will make you laugh and chuckle with its humor and widen your eyes with its bizarre and unique magic and make you bristle at the uncomfortable yet realistic depiction of xenophobia in our world.

New York City and its boroughs feel like characters in themselves (and not just because they are actual characters), but because the author talks about them with intimacy and fondness, with the awareness of their flaws and history and streets and alleys and its people.

I won't reveal anything about the characters, since I think that would spoil the fun of discovering them as you go. We have 5 main characters, and sometimes we get to be in the head of the villain too. We get chapters from all of their third-person perspectives. You can trust me when I say that all 5 of them were incredibly unique and diverse and lovable.

“This is the lesson: Great cities are like any other living things, being born and maturing and wearying and dying in their turn.”

It covers a wide array of them themes- from racism to homophobia to microaggressions and capitalism. It is bold and to the point when it tackles those issues. It doesn't hold back- yet somehow manages to make its delivery very digestible. Some of the scenes there were genuinely uncomfortable to read because of racism. But that's only proving how well done it was.

We have five main characters, and one of them in particular is very obviously xenophobic. She grew up in a very controlled and manipulative environment- and even though that doesn't necessarily excuse everything she says or what she does- her perspective is so well-done that you always carry this nickel of sympathy for her. She's supposed to be a little unlikeable and make you confront those ideas, but you somehow still find yourself rooting for her. That, I think, was a real feat.

Then there was the magic system, which was so unique and bizarre, and interesting. You have to suspend your disbelief a little bit because it's not a typical one with spells or runes or natural elements. It's based on the multidimensional theory, where when a city is "born", a person living in that city suddenly becomes their avatar, or basically the city in human form. And since the boroughs of New Yor city have such distinct identities, there are five avatars for each borough plus one person which is all of New York as a whole. And that's not even the beginning of the unique and bizarreness.

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dannythestreet's review against another edition

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adventurous emotional mysterious reflective tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.75

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martinatan's review against another edition

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adventurous lighthearted tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

I was intrigued by the premise but the execution was not entirely satisfying. I was mainly surprised by the conclusion of this book (the first of an upcoming trilogy), but it didn’t really delight me—I thought it was mildly clever.

I could sense a lot of research and creative license went into writing this, and the concept must make it hard to really flesh out the characters, but ultimately the writing voice rubbed me the wrong way with almost all of the characterizations. Especially when

trying to speak to some very particular identities, I felt the author was not handling every characters’ background to the degree of sensitivity that I hoped for. There were many times that the description of East Asian characters, especially, fell short of what I feel is a culturally nuanced understanding of being from East Asian. That’s all I really can articulate about it for now, but ultimately there was a buildup of instances throughout the novel that gave me an overarching feeling of distrust in the author’s ability to inhabit characters of other cultures.

Also, I felt really unbalanced by the amount of “screen time” given to each character, as some did not get many POV chapters and it left me hyperfocused on why. Even if they get more focus in future installments, I wish they had all been developed to the same degrees in the first. Additionally, the ordering and pacing of how information is revealed felt really off to me, there were times where even how a scene was established rattled my immersion in the characters’ point of view.

Slight ramble ahead. On the premise itself, what I started labeling it in my head early on was

weird fanfic about New York City. I’ve lived near and visited New York my whole life, and only after reading this did I realize I don’t really need “New York fanfic” in my life. Sure it’s an homage and all, but I don’t know that I can get behind the metaphor for white supremacy and colonization being a literal extraterrestrial entity. Maybe it’s because I feel sensitive to this subject, and I had hoped it might be somewhat cathartic to see it play out in a fantasy setting, but after reading this I want to say say that it actually feels kind of disrespectful to people facing actual prejudice, displacement, and hate crimes. Like when the Enemy is vanquished, the implication of how this book ends is that this alien source of white supremacy and therefore the magnitude of injustice in the world is significantly diminished. I just can’t vibe with that after all. Or maybe this is the point, for me to get uncomfortable about how racism and gentrification are still out there. Idk, it just ended up too far removed from a productive or interesting take on society that I would have appreciated.

Anyway. Being someone from New Jersey who has lived close to New York City all my life, perhaps a contemporary fantasy story with this setting wasn’t the right book for me to pick up. Even though I’ve enjoyed the Broken earth trilogy in the past. Hard for me to say!

I can say overall this is somewhat worth reading if you want to explore the base concept of living cities a little, but because of the reasons above, I ultimately didn’t get too much pleasure or satisfaction out of the story.

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