Book Review: The City We Became
At this point, I’m heartily convinced that NK Jemisin can do little wrong. I’ve read almost all of her previous work and simply loved it, and The City We Became demonstrates not only the strength of her writing but also the flexibility of her style as she branches away from epic / secondary world fantasy toward cosmic horror.
Based on her short story, “The City Born Great,” The City We Became takes place after the “birth” of New York City into a semi-sentient entity. Yet there is something horribly wrong — an Enemy has attacked and will stop at nothing to snuff out the newly-born city. So NYC wakes five new avatars, one for each borough, and brings them together to battle the Enemy and save the city’s primary avatar.
First off, I LOVE LOVE LOVE the characters. There is so much diversity and difference of opinion in their portrayals, and Jemisin has managed to encapsulate something of the quirks and attitudes of each borough in its personification. Manny is a cold-blooded killer, representative of Wall Street and capitalism, and Bronca is a tough-as-nails old Lenape art director, while Brooklyn is an MC-turned-politician and Queens is an immigrant math student and intern. I especially adored Bronca and Brooklyn for their general badassery, as well as their ages — it’s so rare to see older women featured in genre fiction, and I can’t get enough of it here. Plus there’s Bronca’s protege Veneza, who helps out as much as she can, brave despite her lack of power, and gets a stellar moment at the end of the book.
And then there’s Staten island, a young white woman named Aislyn, and WOOF, she is a trip. She reflects Staten Island’s insular and racist tendencies, and it’s not a pretty picture. I have met so many people who react the same way she does to meeting new people or encountering new cultures. I wanted to smack her so HARD at various points in the book, and it makes her especially vulnerable to the machinations of the Enemy.
Speaking of which, THE SYMBOLISM. The Enemy frequently appears as a Woman in White, and she has all the powers of ironic Nazis, gentrification, and big Karen energy at her disposal. She’s bloody terrifying, all the more so for being representative of real things happening in the real world.
Conceptually, The City We Became is cool AF. Cities as eldritch beings of power? That punch through multiverses and destroy worlds when they’re born? Strange plane of existence sideways to reality where people can exist as cities? An enemy specifically created to combat the birth of these new beings? Jemisin is throwing a party on HP Lovecraft’s grave, and I AM HERE FOR IT.
There are plenty of hints toward a larger scale, with both Sao Paulo and Hong Kong making an appearance in the form of their avatars, and a reference to Paris at the end. But this first chapter in Jemisin’s new trilogy is deeply defined by NYC, and all of the action takes place there. Jemisin’s passion for the city shows in every exquisitely crafted line, in every meticulous description of a place or a person within its bounds. As she says in the afterword, she both loves and hates NYC, and she has funneled all of that into this book. (It makes me wonder what she will do in the sequel, when the story begins to focus more on other cities beyond NYC).
In addition to being very deeply “New York,” The City We Became is also a deeply morally gray story. The good guys are fighting for their survival and the survival of NYC, but they acknowledge the point of the Woman in White — that if a city truly destroys other realities when it’s born, then maybe it’s not a good thing. I’m interested to see where that goes, but it does make the Woman in White more interesting as a villain. The best villains believe they’re in the right and doing a good thing, and the Woman in White definitely believes she is saving future lives and/or getting revenge for lost ones.
As far as pacing and plot go, I was hooked from the first chapter, so I never felt that the plot dragged. Especially at the beginning, each chapter feels like its own miniature short story. They’re long, yes, but I found myself constantly wanting to start the next one. The book starts off with an action bang right at the beginning, as Manny tackles one of the Woman in White’s “toeholds,” and from there branches out with the various boroughs waking up and encountering the Woman in White (or her cronies). As soon as the stage is set, we see the various boroughs begin to meet up and we’re even more off to the races.
And they are some good races. There are so many breathtaking little setpieces interspersed throughout the novel, ranging from hungry swimming pools to really terrible art. It all leads up to the epic conclusion, which includes an extremely intense car trip to Staten Island that’s probably the book’s single most memorable action sequence. Saying all that to say, you’re not going to be bored.
I read this in mid-March, during the onset of NYC’s struggle with the coronavirus epidemic, and I can honestly say that was best choice I could have made. When everything in the world is going wrong, it’s heartwarming to read a story about how diverse and different people can unite in the face of a greater threat. You should read it too.
Grade: 5/5 stars
Memorable Quote:
“Manny keeps his gaze on the woman, so he sees it when she inhales—and all at once her face distorts. For an instant she is very not human, her eyes flashing from yellowy brown into glaring white and her cheekbones seeming to shift and multiply under the skin of her face—and then her expression settles into a bright, manic-eyed grin.
”Manhattan,” she breathes. He shivers with the pull of it. There is power in the way she speaks his name, power that she seems to know how to use in ways that he does not yet, and this frightens him. So does the avid, greedy malice in her unstable eyes. “You are Manhattan, where money talks and bullshit walks! Do you never sleep, young man? I see you aren’t wearing silk and satin.””
