Reviews with content warning for Colonisation - The City We Became

Reviews tagging 'Colonisation'

The City We Became by N.K. Jemisin

55 reviews

judicatorypedant's review against another edition

adventurous funny 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

I enjoyed the cast of characters, and wish more time was spent having them interact with each other. The novel started slow, and had a really amazing build up to what turned out to be a disappointing climax. Some characters (Queens/Padmini in particular) feel they could have recieved more focus and development. While Jemisin's prose was high quality as usual, there were points where the modern references made the work feel dated and too on the nose, politically. That said, I enjoyed the overarching allegory and some of the attempts at incorporating contemporary politics. The book also felt somewhat confusing in the beginning, as someone who lives outside of New York.

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grimmarray's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional mysterious 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? Yes

4.5

Possibly one of the most interesting mixes of Lovecraftian horror and, to put it in simplest terms, identity.

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immovabletype's review against another edition

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adventurous emotional hopeful mysterious reflective tense fast-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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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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fox_at_the_circus's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging emotional tense medium-paced

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

4.25

I love the concept of this book, that cities have souls, avatars that protect them, that are them. It's something I've never read before.
I loved the avatars of New York. They were all well-written and brought their own issues and world views to the table. It was interesting to read all their different ideas and approaches to finding themselves as the chosen ones. They needed a while to figure things out and work together, but in the end they did it because New York is their home and they will fight for it. I also enjoyed the other city avatars and I'm excited to see, who else we'll get to know in the next book in this series.
The Woman in White was a great villain. The way she used the hate people already have in them and oppressing structures that are in our world, to manipulate people and get what she wants, makes her really effective and realistic. It really drove home the points of the book.

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literarycavy's review against another edition

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adventurous dark tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
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

5.0

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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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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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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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