Reviews

It's a cool idea, but you'd need to know NYC better to really get it, it feels. I enjoyed reading this but didn't feel the characters were particularly well-established. The ending set up the next book more than it wrapped up this one, which felt a bit unsatisfying.

vaenadal's review against another edition

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4.0

I liked this but didn't love it, certainly not as much as I hoped. I vacillated between 3 and 4 stars, but the writing was just too good to round down.

Let's start with what with worked, because the good parts were really good. As a start, the concept of great cities having incarnate souls is awesome. And as someone who grew up in NYC, I feel like Jemisin really nails the personalities of all the boroughs and NYC generally (even Staten Island, *mostly*, which is an achievement). On the one hand it was cool to see this concept applied to a city I know, but it would also be cool to read about other cities in this way. Also, I'm going to link Tochi Onyebuchi's review on Tor.com here, because his analysis felt spot on.

Then there were the other parts that annoyed me. The pace was slow for the first 1/2-2/3 of the book and I had some trouble getting into it. Some parts felt a little too episodic for the overarching plot. And some of the metaphors felt heavy-handed. As the book got closer to the climax, things picked up, but then the ending really pissed me off. Or more accurately, struck a raw nerve, because I don't think Jemisin was really wrong, per se.

Spoiler

I grew up on Staten Island and unlike Aislyn, I enjoyed traveling to and being part of the City and I acknowledge the Island has flaws. But I also love some parts of the borough and it's always going to be my hometown and have some good memories. So I really hate that she's probably right about how the avatar of SI would be more likely to break off from the rest of the city in those circumstances (though going so far as to betray the others to the bad guys is really hard to read). SI ends up hated and misunderstood by the rest of the city because they're not speaking the same emotional language, and ugh, true but painful. And then replaced by Jersey City as an honorary borough! Again it's probably emotionally true, but damn is that ending just rubbing salt in the wound.

Maybe there will be a redemption arc in the rest of the trilogy, but heavy sigh about the ending of this one.