Scan barcode
harpoonholly's review
adventurous
emotional
hopeful
informative
reflective
tense
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
Audiobook review. First thing, Robin Miles is an amazing actor who puts so much passion in the words written, even the post-credits and IP legalese. She is a full cast in a single person, her characterizations are so good. I'll be getting the sequel to this book, "The World We Make" to hear her act again.
I'll also get the sequel because NK Jemisin is an amazing writer. I'm fascinated in the personification of concepts and to personify cities is to maximize adds greater complexity because of course it has to. I also like how she goes about acknowledging Lovecraft's literary contributions (northeastern U.S. sublime, dread, and monsters) and shining a scalding light over his overt bigotry that was startling even for his time.
10/10, would recommend, especially the audiobook.
I'll also get the sequel because NK Jemisin is an amazing writer. I'm fascinated in the personification of concepts and to personify cities is to maximize adds greater complexity because of course it has to. I also like how she goes about acknowledging Lovecraft's literary contributions (northeastern U.S. sublime, dread, and monsters) and shining a scalding light over his overt bigotry that was startling even for his time.
10/10, would recommend, especially the audiobook.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Xenophobia, Racial slurs, Classism, Colonisation, Confinement, Homophobia, Racism, and Body horror
Moderate: Misogyny, Police brutality, and Panic attacks/disorders
Minor: Gaslighting, Domestic abuse, Ableism, Addiction, and Alcoholism
mosshaunt's review against another edition
adventurous
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.25
4/16/2023: i'm not involved with most book-related circles on social media and was not aware of the isabel fall incident. i will leave my original rating up for this book but after hearing the author was involved in harassing a trans woman, i have no intent to read any more of n.k. jemisen's works.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Racism and Xenophobia
Moderate: Misogyny, Homophobia, and Sexual assault
Minor: Ableism, Gun violence, and Transphobia
jjstallone's review
4.0
Content Warnings
Moderate: Colonisation, Cursing, Sexual harassment, and Police brutality
Minor: Gun violence, Lesbophobia, Violence, Xenophobia, Ableism, Cannibalism, Homophobia, Hate crime, Islamophobia, Miscarriage, Racism, Sexism, Transphobia, Cancer, Deportation, Genocide, Misogyny, Abortion, Antisemitism, and Blood
martinatan's review
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 wasweird 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.
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
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
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.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Body horror, Emotional abuse, Racism, and Sexual harassment
Moderate: Toxic relationship, Ableism, Death, Injury/Injury detail, Colonisation, Kidnapping, Misogyny, Racial slurs, and Xenophobia
Minor: Alcoholism, Cancer, Child abuse, Confinement, Addiction, Miscarriage, Police brutality, Transphobia, War, Cursing, Cultural appropriation, Drug abuse, Abortion, Alcohol, and Cannibalism
kirstenf's review against another edition
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
Content Warnings
Graphic: Hate crime, Emotional abuse, Death, Police brutality, Genocide, and Racism
Moderate: Colonisation, Ableism, and Lesbophobia
Minor: Xenophobia, Sexism, Alcohol, Cursing, and Domestic abuse
toyin_'s review
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
Content Warnings
Graphic: Xenophobia, Body horror, Sexual harassment, Classism, Racism, Homophobia, Racial slurs, Eating disorder, Cultural appropriation, Colonisation, Antisemitism, Police brutality, Misogyny, and Injury/Injury detail
Moderate: Ableism
boneloose's review
adventurous
mysterious
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
2.0
The City We Became is a book that explores the idea of cities growing to have such cultural significance and value that they become alive-- but the birthing process into a human avatar(s) is laborous and painful, and it takes a careful process to prevent an Enemy from turning it into a stillbirth. It truly was a love letter to New York that I don't think I was able to appreciate as much as a person who has never lived there, but that I can see being so lovely to read as someone from there. This is my first N.K. Jemisin and while I can see the acclaim in the ways she wrote the action scenes, the other parts of the book were honestly pretty disappointing and didn't hold up to what I expected from all the incredible things I've heard about her work. I'll still probably give The Broken Earth trilogy a go, but I was expecting a lot more than I got from this book in terms of the non-action scenes and the pacing.
The Good:
The action scenes as I said were so incredibly well-written! I've never had an easier time playing a movie in my head of what's going on while I read. A lot of the action-based scenes also read almost like fleshed out stage directions at times (in a good way). I think a screen adaptation of this would be incredibly fun to watch and not too difficult to accurately make.
The Bad:
The prose in non-action scenes was written in a way that was so personally grating I almost DNF-ed the book. Rather than letting atmosphere and tension build by trusting the reader to understand the shown character reactions and through writing choices, a lot of it was extremely dampened by a very heavy-handed "pointing out" of what the reader was supposed to glean.
A non-spoiler-y excerpt to illustrate what I mean:
The Good:
The action scenes as I said were so incredibly well-written! I've never had an easier time playing a movie in my head of what's going on while I read. A lot of the action-based scenes also read almost like fleshed out stage directions at times (in a good way). I think a screen adaptation of this would be incredibly fun to watch and not too difficult to accurately make.
The Bad:
The prose in non-action scenes was written in a way that was so personally grating I almost DNF-ed the book. Rather than letting atmosphere and tension build by trusting the reader to understand the shown character reactions and through writing choices, a lot of it was extremely dampened by a very heavy-handed "pointing out" of what the reader was supposed to glean.
A non-spoiler-y excerpt to illustrate what I mean:
"The white things came off of that woman when I got rid of the others," Brooklyn says. She's hiding it well, but her confident facade has slipped a little at the sight of the dog. The dog makes this something insidious, and ominous.
The paragraphs leading up to this excerpt showing the characters' reactions to the dog, and the way the sighting of the dog was framed in the prose made it incredibly clear that the dog marked the situation as particularly insiduous and ominous. This kind of thing was spelled out like this several different times in non-action scenes. Even just removing that sentence overtly explaining it would have made the tone a lot more tense. It was frustrating reading a book aimed at adults that didn't trust its audience to piece together the tone we were supposed to gather. Other ways the book was particularly heavy-handed included characters pointing out in dialogue several different times that what was happening "sure seemed Lovecraftian!". Like, maybe have someone point it out once, but I think it happened at minimum 6 or 7 times.
Also, while I loved most of the action scenes, the climax disappointed me a lot. It was ramping up so much and so intensely over 100 pages or so only for the actual climactic battle to wrap up in about a page and a half. Also, the particular thing that the characters are figuring out how to do for pretty much the entire novel literally happens off screen! We flash forward in the last chapter and it's happened, but I don't understand why there would be so much intense focus on making it happen to not even depict it directly. Also, the ending was less concrete than I expected it to me, but that's on me for not realizing this was the first book in a series rather than a standalone. Even so, this type of ending felt almost worst than a cliffhanger. The tension was ramping up so much that I read the most tense 80 or so pages in that frantically page-turning way only for it to just... fizzle out with no real gratifying Final Battle. The complete 180 from "incredibly high stakes rising action" to "flash forward 3 weeks where everything was fine" with only a page or two in between of the characters Fully Fighting was really jarring and made the ending pretty unsatisfying in a way that I don't think reading the sequel would resolve.
Also, I really wasn't a fan of the at times almost out of nowhere graphic descriptions of genitalia that happened two or three different times throughout the book. I also don't think the attempted rape needed to be nearly as graphic as it was (chapter where the staten island avatar goes out to her pool/backyard and interacts with the person sleeping on the lounge chair; around page 270 in the US hardback edition). I can see how having it as an event informed the actions of the character later in the book, but definitely feel that how overtly it was described didn't lend much more than shock value to the plot.
All in all, the concept was incredibly intriguing but the overall execution left a lot to be desired for me. I think it would work really well as a movie with how vivid the imagery in the action scenes were, but I don't think it worked as well as a novel. That type of tapering off at the end is something I'm more forgiving of when there's a roughly 2 hour screen time to keep to but is a lot more frustrating when the author could have easily added another 20 or 50 or even 100 pages to flesh it out more thoroughly. Definitely won't reread it and I don't think I'll continue with the series, but I might watch a screen adaptation depending on what scenes make the final cut.
Also, while I loved most of the action scenes, the climax disappointed me a lot. It was ramping up so much and so intensely over 100 pages or so only for the actual climactic battle to wrap up in about a page and a half. Also, the particular thing that the characters are figuring out how to do for pretty much the entire novel literally happens off screen! We flash forward in the last chapter and it's happened, but I don't understand why there would be so much intense focus on making it happen to not even depict it directly. Also, the ending was less concrete than I expected it to me, but that's on me for not realizing this was the first book in a series rather than a standalone. Even so, this type of ending felt almost worst than a cliffhanger. The tension was ramping up so much that I read the most tense 80 or so pages in that frantically page-turning way only for it to just... fizzle out with no real gratifying Final Battle. The complete 180 from "incredibly high stakes rising action" to "flash forward 3 weeks where everything was fine" with only a page or two in between of the characters Fully Fighting was really jarring and made the ending pretty unsatisfying in a way that I don't think reading the sequel would resolve.
Also, I really wasn't a fan of the at times almost out of nowhere graphic descriptions of genitalia that happened two or three different times throughout the book. I also don't think the attempted rape needed to be nearly as graphic as it was (chapter where the staten island avatar goes out to her pool/backyard and interacts with the person sleeping on the lounge chair; around page 270 in the US hardback edition). I can see how having it as an event informed the actions of the character later in the book, but definitely feel that how overtly it was described didn't lend much more than shock value to the plot.
All in all, the concept was incredibly intriguing but the overall execution left a lot to be desired for me. I think it would work really well as a movie with how vivid the imagery in the action scenes were, but I don't think it worked as well as a novel. That type of tapering off at the end is something I'm more forgiving of when there's a roughly 2 hour screen time to keep to but is a lot more frustrating when the author could have easily added another 20 or 50 or even 100 pages to flesh it out more thoroughly. Definitely won't reread it and I don't think I'll continue with the series, but I might watch a screen adaptation depending on what scenes make the final cut.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Racial slurs, Racism, Rape, Xenophobia, Sexual content, and Sexual harassment
Moderate: Homophobia, Antisemitism, and Sexism
Minor: Adult/minor relationship, Ableism, Addiction, and Transphobia
joisaddler's review
funny
reflective
sad
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
3.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Islamophobia, Racial slurs, Racism, Religious bigotry, Toxic friendship, Classism, Colonisation, and Xenophobia
Moderate: Ableism
skudiklier's review against another edition
adventurous
emotional
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? Yes
4.5
By the end of this book I really enjoyed it! For a while there it felt a little too slow and repetitive, and like I just didn't appreciate it enough because I don't know NYC at all. But it was definitely interesting and engaging overall and I'm glad I read it. I love the idea here.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Racism, Violence, Xenophobia, War, Cursing, and Death
Moderate: Abortion, Addiction, Sexual violence, Sexual harassment, Cannibalism, Hate crime, Religious bigotry, Racial slurs, Police brutality, Misogyny, Islamophobia, Homophobia, and Grief
Minor: Sexual content, Ableism, Cancer, Car accident, Colonisation, Kidnapping, Gun violence, and Genocide
troisha's review against another edition
adventurous
mysterious
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? It's complicated
4.5
Content Warnings
Graphic: Racism and Xenophobia
Moderate: Antisemitism, Islamophobia, Misogyny, Racial slurs, Sexual assault, and Body horror
Minor: Ableism, Abortion, Alcohol, Alcoholism, Blood, Cancer, Colonisation, Death, Domestic abuse, Genocide, Hate crime, Homophobia, Injury/Injury detail, Pedophilia, Police brutality, Rape, Sexual content, Transphobia, and Violence