The City We Became

I keep trying to describe this book to friends and I keep failing. It is like no fantasy novel I’ve ever read before– in the best way possible.

Here’s how I tried in Alma’s spring books preview: The premise of The City We Became gives us a world in which every city has a soul, a human avatar. A person who not only embodies the city, but is a city. When a city is born, these avatars (which is the wrong word but the only word I can think of) come to life. Most cities just have one; but New York, since it has five boroughs, has five — plus one “primary” who represents all of New York. Jemisin does a masterful job of introducing us to this premise, and then diving into the personas of Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, the Bronx, and Staten Island, as they battle for the existence of New York against an evil enemy. There were a few times I had to re-read the passage when I was like okay what just happened, but Jemisin is so good at evoking New York — warts and all — that it feels like these people really do exist. It’s the first in a planned trilogy, and I simply cannot wait for what’s next.

I read The City We Became back in January (I am so behind on book blogs, lol), but as we live through a pandemic where New York City is dealing with the worst of it, the novel is a reminder of the strength of NYC. As Elizabeth Hand writes in The Washington Post, “Considering the turmoil of the present moment, there could be no better time to read best-selling, Hugo Award-winning writer N.K. Jemisin’s sprawling and provocative new novel, The City We Became, in which New York City and its denizens battle an alien force intent upon eradicating them.” The evil, the enemy, in the book sometimes takes the form of the eldritch, H.P. Lovecraft’s tentacled monster. Yet as Steve Mullis points out in NPR, “ But it is more than that; it's Lovecraft himself, and the xenophobia and racism that exists in much of his oft-celebrated work. To be blunt: Jemisin is no fan, she makes that clear, and she makes no apologies for it.”

For fantasy fans, or even if you haven’t picked up a fantasy book in years, this is the book you need right now.

Rating: ★★★★★

Get it here: https://amzn.to/2WUaGoX or your local indie: https://www.indiebound.org/book/9780316509848