The City We Became (Great Cities, #1) in Cannonball Readers

Apr 20, 2020 Ashley rated it really liked it

Shelves: urban-fantasy, horror, addictive, speculative, class-gender-race, lgbtqia, hugo-awards-2021, americana, fantasy

I feel like I do this every time I read an N.K. Jemisin book. Part of me wants to give it five stars, but I'm going to hold off until I see where it's going to end up. I did that with The Fifth Season, too. (And I know when I go to do my re-read this summer, I'm going to up that book to five stars.)

I feel like every time I read one of her books, she does something that I've never seen before. It's so rare when you read as many books as I do to find anything that feels new at all, but for an aut I feel like I do this every time I read an N.K. Jemisin book. Part of me wants to give it five stars, but I'm going to hold off until I see where it's going to end up. I did that with The Fifth Season, too. (And I know when I go to do my re-read this summer, I'm going to up that book to five stars.)

I feel like every time I read one of her books, she does something that I've never seen before. It's so rare when you read as many books as I do to find anything that feels new at all, but for an author to so consistently do it is kind of mind boggling. Because of that, all of her books feel a little weird, but this is definitely the weirdest one so far. It's a little difficult to wrap your mind around the central conceit, which is designed to be a little nebulous anyway.

The main idea here is that this book takes place in a world where when a city matures (gets big enough and full of enough cultural diversity and ideas and types of people) it chooses an avatar to help it through its birth. That avatar is a person who embodies the city and works to keep it safe. The book opens just as NYC is being born, but the birth is troubled, and an Enemy is at the gates.

The actual story here and the characters were entirely captivating. I read this book so fast, much faster than I've read any of her others. It was so fascinating to see New York, a city I've never been to, embodied here in such a visceral way. The bad guys were also deeply horrifying on a gut level (and Jemisin takes a well-deserved run at Lovecraft, who was famously a bigot), and yet also when you understand what's going on, you also get why they're doing what they're doing. The one thing I will say that I'm unsure about at the moment is that this is also the least subtle thing I've read from her so far. I trust her enough as an author to believe that was a deliberate choice, and I kind of think that it might have been impossible to be subtle in playing out this concept. The realities of race in America right now are inescapable if you are a POC (and if you aren't!), and in such a diverse place as NYC, would be impossible to ignore. I am eager to see where she goes with all of it.

Highly recommend all of Jemisin's stuff, but definitely worth a read for the originality alone, and if you want a smart, propulsive read. ...more

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Dec 26, 2021 Teresa rated it really liked it

Shelves: books-i-own

While reading, I kept thinking of Alicia Keys’ song, “Empire State of Mind”. I lived in NYC for a short two years, so appreciated the details of the city’s descriptions. Through lyrical and humorous prose, Jemisin explores the soul of cities along with tidbits on the history of NYC. The novel is a clever musing on gentrification. It took me a while to find my groove with the book, but once we meet the Bronx, I really started to love it. The Bronx had such bravado and wasn’t afraid to speak her m ...more

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Aug 26, 2021 Ashlie aka The Cheerbrarian rated it liked it

Shelves: cbr-13

I want to try something new with my reviews. Yeah, I could start again with OH WOW. HOW DID I GET SO BEHIND. AGAIN. But snooze, amiright? Instead, I want to use the system that my local library book club does. We always go around the room and give a rating (check, already part of Cannonball and Goodreads) and then sum up our feelings on the book in one word. I'm going to let you know now, I'm a bit of a cheat and I will do a compound word or really a sentence or whatever moves me. Much like PeeW I want to try something new with my reviews. Yeah, I could start again with OH WOW. HOW DID I GET SO BEHIND. AGAIN. But snooze, amiright? Instead, I want to use the system that my local library book club does. We always go around the room and give a rating (check, already part of Cannonball and Goodreads) and then sum up our feelings on the book in one word. I'm going to let you know now, I'm a bit of a cheat and I will do a compound word or really a sentence or whatever moves me. Much like PeeWee Herman, I'm a rebel.

In One Word: Mesmerizing
Cannonball Read Bingo Square: Cityscape

I had a complicated relationship with this book. First and foremost, I am an N.K. Jemisin fan for life. The Broken Earth trilogy was spellbinding and her short stories are beyond reproach, and I mean, You don't get a third Hugo award for messing around. But she is so smart and clever with her writing that it can be intimidating as a reader. I have to reread phrases and passages because I feel like I'm missing something and whelp, typically I am!

This book is no different. Jemisin keeps you on your toes. If you are looking for a relaxing book, this isn't it. But if you want something imaginative and how-does-someone-even-think-of-this creative, look no further: but know that she is going to make you work for it. The city of New York has to defend itself from an ancient evil, and five citizens are tapped as living avatars and have to fight for themselves, the city, and if it really goes awry, the fate of the world. This book covers a lot of ground, both the little ground of New York and as usual she is saying a lot about the current political comment: immigration, race, art, identity, pre-destination, it's all fair game. (See what I mean about how does anyone think of this?!)

I think if I had a pre-existing history with New York I would have given this a 4, maybe a 5 even. So much of this book is a commentary on the city, but I've only visited once and don't really have any connection to it. For that reason, I plodded along a bit because the details of the boroughs and locations meant nothing to me. If she'd set this in New Orleans which is in my home state, the connection would have been different. Will I read the next in the series? You bet, but it's not going to be a book that I have on pre-order, but I will recommend it to others. ...more

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Aug 09, 2020 Sara Habein rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

This book was so interesting and inventive, with so many great details. I love how we're plonked right down into the bewilderment of the characters, figuring it out while they do. (This is the sort of book Neil Gaiman wishes he could write, but would be unlikely to do a good job.) ...more

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Nov 19, 2020 Amanda rated it really liked it

Shelves: fantasy, urban-fantasy

4 stars because I'm biased and I love N.K. Jemisin, but this had a few issues for me.

I'm of the opinion that Jemisin has the most incredible mind - I read a lot of SF/F and frequently compliment authors on their world-building, but she is in a class of her own when it comes to this. Many of her ideas seem completely 100% original, which is rare. Typically when I'm considering the uniqueness of a property, I'm evaluating it in a very meta fashion, which is to say: how well does the author/creator 4 stars because I'm biased and I love N.K. Jemisin, but this had a few issues for me.

I'm of the opinion that Jemisin has the most incredible mind - I read a lot of SF/F and frequently compliment authors on their world-building, but she is in a class of her own when it comes to this. Many of her ideas seem completely 100% original, which is rare. Typically when I'm considering the uniqueness of a property, I'm evaluating it in a very meta fashion, which is to say: how well does the author/creator play off of these tropes to create something new? Jemisin, on the other hand, leans so rarely on established tropes that I'm hard-pressed to find them among the crowd all of her own brain-children. It makes reading her books both a particularly challenging and rewarding experience, because as I'm sketching out what she describes in my mind, I'm picturing something that is not remotely close to anything I've ever imagined before and hardly have the contextual creativity to visually summon.

In that whole sense, this book is classic Jemisin. The world, the characters, and the story concept all speak to an author at the top of her game, and at the top of THE game. What's different about this book is that it's based in the real world rather than an imaginary one, and as such it's grounded in real-world issues. That turns out to be both a strength and a weakness, for me. As much as Jemisin is a well-researched, resident authority in the New York experience, racial and cultural tension being the main source of growing pains for a maturing city became an occasionally repetitive conceit when each of the antagonists were bad because they were extremely racist and almost nothing else, characteristically speaking. The concept is just begging for a speculative fiction deep-dive and Jemisin is beautifully suited to it, as critical commentary on racism and prejudice is woven into all of her books. That commentary felt more heavy-handed here, to the extent that it occasionally took me out of the story. If this were a standalone book, I'd go so far as to say that the overall good/evil dichotomy and much of the characters' personalities revolving on capability for racism as a 0/1 binary was surprisingly reductive. Because this is the first of a trilogy, and because I trust Jemisin so much as a writer, I will not say that, but I'm more than a little curious what the plan is for some of these characters that don't inspire much hope for redemption based on how they are in this book.

The principal antagonist, for example, becomes more layered toward the end as you learn more of her motivation, and frankly, it's pretty compelling. Jemisin has a lot of these difficult moral conundrums in her books and that's another thing that makes them wonderful. The problem is, by the time you even get to the point where her complexity creeps in, you almost don't care because she has spent the whole rest of the book being a violent racist and encouraging the worst of those tendencies in her one meta-human ally. She's past the point of being remotely sympathetic.

Maybe Jemisin is just fed up with white people right now, so maybe it was just cathartic to write a book where she could pour out all of her frustrations with racist law enforcement, gentrification, colonialism, the alt-right, and garden-variety bigotry. I can't say I blame her. But while the passion behind it is powerful, it makes for a lack of nuance in some of the characters, and for a work of fiction that toes the line of being an ideological delivery vehicle with a story wrapped around it. I love social commentary in my books, but it's jarring when the story is complex and sophisticated and the commentary is so bluntly obvious that it's like it's at a lower reading level than the rest of the book. ...more

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Aug 18, 2020 Carra rated it liked it

Ehhhh. I really wanted to like this one but it just fell a bit short for me. It felt like the story started at least 100 pages before the book started and there were a bunch of characters that were just irredeemably obnoxious - which, I guess is apt since it’s a book about New York.

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