Reviews with content warning for Sexual harassment - The City We Became

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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ireadinbed's review against another edition

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challenging dark funny mysterious slow-paced

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

4.5

Beautiful book!

Should have known I would love another N. K. Jemisin book. She is genuinely so talented. The definition of a wordsmith.

Reading this book is a very descriptive, aesthtic experience.

I'm not a New Yorker so a lot of this was both very foreign and also familiar to me because of how mythologized NYC is. But it was all held together do well by the bourrough avatars that let me get a grip on the idea of the city as a creature.

This book feels very new weird? Lots of like weird warping of the familiar. I'm surprised I don't see more people talking about how much they loved it.

I feel like it might be because the metaphors about racism are kind of on the nose but I don't think that's fair as it's a more real world analogous fantasy? Like it's set not just in our world but like deeply in our world.

Thoroughly enjoyed myself.

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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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madelinedalton's review against another edition

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adventurous dark mysterious slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

2.75

I am not a huge fan of fantasy—my favorite genres are contemporary fiction, literary fiction, and romance—but I decided to challenge myself and try something new. This book appealed to me because the fantasy is rooted in the real world. I live in NYC and love it here, so I figured this would pull me in. I was right—the concept did pull me in and I didn’t hate the fantasy elements! This book also has excellent representation on every single front. I am very glad this book exists and think it sets a really high standard that other authors need to strive to meet.

HOWEVER, I was not a fan of the pacing and structure of this book. Maybe this is because fantasy novels need more exposition and tend to be long; I’m not sure. The first 200 pages felt like almost entirely exposition to me and I was really wondering where the story was headed. By the time the action started to rise, I didn’t care enough about what was happening and felt like I had to slog through the book.

I was on board with most of the suspension of disbelief and convenience that some of the fantastical elements required, but sometimes it seemed like a bit of a cop-out to make the story move along. There were also loose threads that didn’t get tied up (I’m assuming they’ll be addressed in book #2).

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