The City We Became

NK Jemisin
Completed 5/20/2021, Reviewed 5/21/2021
4 stars

Every series I’ve read so far by Jemisin is very different, that is, they have very different types of fantasy.  This book is urban-weird, Lovecraftian, while turning the tables on HPL’s racist writing.  It takes place in our present, in New York City and there is a creature from another dimension that is trying to destroy the city before it can be born into a life of its own.  Yes, very strange.  It confronts racism, homophobia, and xenophobia in general in most interesting ways.  I really liked this book, and believe it deserves its nominations for the Hugo, the Nebula, and assorted others for this year.  It’s the first of a trilogy called the Great Cities trilogy and I really look forward to seeing where she takes it.

The story begins with a young grad student coming into NYC for school.  He barely has gotten off the train when he realizes he can’t remember who he is or where he is going.  But he comes to the awareness that he embodies the borough of Manhattan.  At the same time, individuals in the other boroughs also come to understand that they are also avatars.  Brooklyn is a black former rapper, now city councilperson.  Bronx is a Lenape art curator for the Borough’s arts complex.  Queens is an Indian immigrant mathematician.  Staten Island is a xenophobic daughter of an Irish cop who still lives with her parents.  Their task is to come together to find the avatar for the whole city to help him complete the city’s birthing into a living thing before the creature from another dimension destroys the city and everyone in it.

The plot is actually much more complex than this summary, but it gives the general sense of what’s going on.  Much of the book is given over to character discovery and development.  The chapters cover each avatar’s coming to understand what has happened to the city, their own transformation into an avatar, and their fight against the temptations of the interdimensional creature.  I was very impressed at how Jemisin created such distinct characters:  the five borough avatars, the avatars from Sao Paulo and Hong Kong, and the creature, known as the Woman in White.  None of the characters ran together, which is impressive for me as I usually have a tough time keeping them separate when there are a lot of major ones.  Manny and Bronca are the most interesting.  Both are queer.  Manny is multi-racial and Bronca is American Indian.  They are on the good side but have dark undertones.  The Woman in White is wonderfully slick and evil as she tempts each of the avatars to come over to her side.

The fantasy part is more like horror in the HP Lovecraft sense.  But Jemisin turns it on its head by having the Woman in White bring the energy of white supremist groups and xenophobes to the evil side, rather than the good side.  Granted, the whole reverse-HPL theme is becoming a common trope, but Jemisin does it really well.  I found the whole world building to be tremendous, even if it is the existing world of NYC.  Having been a frequenter of the city, it seems that much more prescient.  In her afterword, Jemisin says that this is her homage to the city.  She has lived there since 2007, and her sense of the different aspects of it is right on target.  Even if you don’t know anything about NYC except what you know from movies, you will get a deep sense of it and its five boroughs.  

The only problem I had with the book was that there were long monologues and dialogues about the essence of the city, its politics, culture, and history.  I thought they slowed down the story and got a little too heady.  The book isn’t fast paced, but there is a tempo the Jemisin creates that drops from quick to sluggish.  It does pick up towards the end, which is quite exciting.  I know I complain about this in a lot of books.  I think it is a trap that many authors fall into trying to get messages across and characters well-developed.  I think Jemisin falls into that here.

Overall, the book is pretty exciting.  It is so different from anything else I’ve read that I was able to plod through the slow parts just because I couldn’t see how Jemisin was going to bring this to a conclusion.  But she does, and it’s pretty satisfying, even though it leaves a lot open for the next two books.  I give this book four stars out of five.  I very nearly gave it five stars because it came pretty close to knocking my socks off.