Reviews tagging 'Police brutality'

The City We Became by N.K. Jemisin

70 reviews

samthereader's review against another edition

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

4.5


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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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leannanecdote's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging emotional tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75


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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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kirstenf's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional hopeful reflective 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

4.5


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toyin_'s review against another edition

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adventurous challenging funny 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

4.25


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mossgoblins's review against another edition

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adventurous hopeful inspiring fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.5


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ava_can_read's review against another edition

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challenging hopeful tense slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.0

i really wanted to like this book. i enjoyed the short story that eventualy became the prologue. and i loved the 'broken earth', even with its flaws. and 'how long till black future month' is one of my favourite short story collections by a single author. 'the city we became' is actually one of the only books –that isnt part of an established series– which i was anticipating for months and got right on release. and then i read it in under a week. you would think that means i liked it, but i know i'm not gonna be re-reading it (normally i always read books i like atleast three times). and i probably wont be reading the next books in the series. 
 
it has some pacing issues, it's both to slow and too fast. 'the city unborn' felt like a wholly self-contained story and was a satisfying read. and it had all the exposition needed to carry this premise for a whole series. this book says no actually it's just a prologue. and then the whole book feels like a prologue and exposition dump.  it would have left me waiting for more, if the book was better.
 
however my main gripe is, that for a story that is so heavily about who makes up nyc (and its culture) and, very obviously cares about representation, it is missing jews and trans women. having only one minor jewish character - who is only there to be antisemiticly harrassed and threatened -and no trans femmes is just really fucking disappointing. and inaccurate. Jemisin's New York doesn't need an alien enemy (more on that in a minute), to be a distopia. It already is. A city that is so heavily influenced by jewish people and jewish culture can't be so devoid of jews in it's representatives, without some sort of antisemitic catastrophe happening before the events of the book. similiarly for trans women: all my friends who have lived in, or visited nyc, tell me how different it is compared to the other places they have been. we actually have community there. so much important trans history has happened there. but nyc in this book doesn't have any trans character, besides one british guy who just moved there. to me that kinda implies some really, really bad shit must have happened to make one of the most hypervisible groups of people – who shape so much of what new york is and means to people – completly absent from this narrative.
 
the next main problem i have is: i don't like the whole white tendrils/the enemy makes you more violent and racist thing. it just doesn't work as an explanation for how people will act as agents of white surpremacy, seemingly on command. taking away their agency by making them influenced by a lovecraftian evil makes it appear as if they wouldn't act exactly the same without it. which, you know, is bad.
 
i am disappointed because i love genius loci. the world jemisin is building is really awesome. the concepts and ideas are so strong (and cool), but the execution is lacking. one of the reasons i am writing this review, is because over 2 years after reading this book once, i still think about it. i wonder what berlin looks like in it's universe and I have almost written an unhinged fanfic about it before. but everytime i think about this i also remember how disappointing the actual novel was. and until writing this, i forgot it was supposed to be a series, even though it only exists to set up the "great citys series", or whatever.

I'll give it 3 Stars, one for the worldbuilding, one for Bronca and Veneza – who might make me pick up the next books after all – and one for the handful of memorable scenes.
 
ps: jemisin is still bad at writing trans people. and it's so weird. cos her trans characters feel like real people – and i actually really love Tonkee from broken earth, one of the girls of all time – but then immediatly jemisin uses some tired old trope. it's disappointing.
 
pps: also i really dislike the thing the primary and manny have? are gonna have? yeah. it feels forced and the power dynamics and selfcesty vibe are a big yikes. 

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nenatie's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging mysterious

5.0


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