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jennyyates 's review for:
The City We Became
by N.K. Jemisin
Wow, what a great book - exciting, ingenious, intelligent. The central idea of this novel is that great cities wake up at a certain point in their history, become fully alive, and choose an avatar. During the birth process, they’re vulnerable, and can be hurt by inimical forces from other dimensions.
Okay, there’s definitely a good-and-evil backdrop to this novel. But the writing is so quick and clever, and it’s such an intricate love song to the city of New York, that it doesn’t matter so much that the evil alien interdimensional being is just a little too much like a bleached blonde shape-shifting version of Dr. Octopus.
In this novel, there are five avatars for New York City, representing the five boroughs. All five are great characters: a former DJ turned politician, the 70-year old dykey director of an arts center, a young man of indeterminate racial and sexual identities with amnesia, a math nerd from an Indian immigrant family, and a racist cop’s over-protected daughter.
They wake up to their new roles without realizing what happened, and they’re shocked to find themselves attuned to the energy of the whole borough, but they’re all tough cookies. So they jump into battles with the multi-tendrilled evil forces, fighting them on a number of stages, some virtual and some physical. They find each other and become even more powerful, with the help of the avatars from Sao Paolo and Hong Kong.
As the book came to an end, I started to worry that there weren’t enough pages left to resolve this. And it was true. It was mainly resolved, so it’s a fairly satisfying ending. But there’s a loose end, ready for the next installment. Yes, it is planned as a trilogy, something I didn’t know before I started reading it!
Some quotes:
Bronca is the avatar for the Bronx. Here she is in action:
< So Bronca touches a steel-clad toe to the ground, lightly as any dancer. It lands with the pounding force of ten thousand block parties, boom cars, and drum circles – and sends forth a wave of energy that obliterates everything in its path. Everything that’s not of New York, that is. >
These paragraphs explain the premise:
< “Sssso,” she says, sitting forward. “This process? It happens all the time. All over the world, wherever there’s a city. Enough human beings occupy one space, tell enough stories about it, develop a unique enough culture, and all those layers of reality start to compact and metamorphose. Eventually when it’s close to that, uh, moment – “she nods to Manhattan for the word – “the city picks someone to be its…midwife. Champion. A person who represents the city and protects it, as we do – but that person gets the job even before the city becomes something new. That person helps it happen.”
Okay, there’s definitely a good-and-evil backdrop to this novel. But the writing is so quick and clever, and it’s such an intricate love song to the city of New York, that it doesn’t matter so much that the evil alien interdimensional being is just a little too much like a bleached blonde shape-shifting version of Dr. Octopus.
In this novel, there are five avatars for New York City, representing the five boroughs. All five are great characters: a former DJ turned politician, the 70-year old dykey director of an arts center, a young man of indeterminate racial and sexual identities with amnesia, a math nerd from an Indian immigrant family, and a racist cop’s over-protected daughter.
They wake up to their new roles without realizing what happened, and they’re shocked to find themselves attuned to the energy of the whole borough, but they’re all tough cookies. So they jump into battles with the multi-tendrilled evil forces, fighting them on a number of stages, some virtual and some physical. They find each other and become even more powerful, with the help of the avatars from Sao Paolo and Hong Kong.
As the book came to an end, I started to worry that there weren’t enough pages left to resolve this. And it was true. It was mainly resolved, so it’s a fairly satisfying ending. But there’s a loose end, ready for the next installment. Yes, it is planned as a trilogy, something I didn’t know before I started reading it!
Some quotes:
Bronca is the avatar for the Bronx. Here she is in action:
< So Bronca touches a steel-clad toe to the ground, lightly as any dancer. It lands with the pounding force of ten thousand block parties, boom cars, and drum circles – and sends forth a wave of energy that obliterates everything in its path. Everything that’s not of New York, that is. >
These paragraphs explain the premise:
< “Sssso,” she says, sitting forward. “This process? It happens all the time. All over the world, wherever there’s a city. Enough human beings occupy one space, tell enough stories about it, develop a unique enough culture, and all those layers of reality start to compact and metamorphose. Eventually when it’s close to that, uh, moment – “she nods to Manhattan for the word – “the city picks someone to be its…midwife. Champion. A person who represents the city and protects it, as we do – but that person gets the job even before the city becomes something new. That person helps it happen.”