Reviews tagging 'Transphobia'

The City We Became by N.K. Jemisin

32 reviews

shoshin's review against another edition

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The ableism got to be too much for me.

The treatment of
the Staten Island avatar's panic attacks and abuse history
were bad, but I was willing to give Jemisin more of a chance because sometimes it takes more than one time showing a character to work through complicated issues. Then the fact that making buildings accessible makes them "not New York enough" 
so that the enemy can attack them
made me pause reading. I usually read a few reviews when I'm considering quitting a book. What I found out is that
the treatment of the Staten Island character gets even worse
. I'm not willing to invest more time in this series based on that, and I'm reconsidering whether I ever read other Jemisin books.
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sofia_santana's review against another edition

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adventurous dark funny 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

4.5

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squidgygator's review against another edition

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challenging mysterious slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? No

2.0

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repunzee's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging mysterious 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? Yes

3.25

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onegalonelife27's review against another edition

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adventurous emotional mysterious medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Plot
  • Strong character development? N/A
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.25

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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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ethen_rey's review against another edition

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adventurous funny tense fast-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? It's complicated

4.0

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jjstallone's review against another edition

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4.0

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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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breadwitchery's review against another edition

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adventurous 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? It's complicated

4.0

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