alexawkelly 's review for:

The City We Became by N.K. Jemisin

4.0

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Utterly weird and yet it utterly works. I was skeptical of this book at first just because it got off to what felt, to me, like a slow start—Jemisin is a wordsmith, and reading her beautiful sentences is a delight, but I definitely would not classify this as a fast-paced story. But the absolute scope and wonder of this version of our world, with its cosmic horror, its living cities, and its conversation-critique of Lovecraftian cosmic horror specifically just sucked me in but good. A Starbucks in a gentrified neighborhood literally turning into a hideous bird-monster-thing absolutely should NOT, let me say it again, work. But Jemisin—whom I've never read before, but whom I also recognize as being a powerhouse in science fiction—is kind of a genius. Her characters are all super interesting, the ones who are likable as much as the ones who aren't: while I loved Bronca, the cranky old Lenape art gallerist who becomes the living embodiment of the Bronx, the best, I appreciated the deft hand with which Jemisin writes Aislyn, the horrible character who embodies Staten Island. I thought the way Aislyn's hideous racism was shown as both something she learned from her father (a racist police officer strongly hinted at being both a neo-Nazi and an abusive husband to her mother) and something she's not really interested in examining or critiquing, despite being given opportunities to do so/being aware of some of her father's less savory qualities. I appreciated the fact that her behavior was given a root cause that did not, for one second, let her off the hook, and I'm especially interested to see where the sequel takes her.