The City We Became by N.K. Jemisin

by GGGinny

What I drank: Wine. While watching Hallmark with Sam. Its been a busy couple of weeks but Ive managed to squeeze reading between classes, meetings, and school projects.

Goodreads Overview:

Five New Yorkers must come together in order to defend their city in the first book of a stunning new series by Hugo award-winning and NYT bestselling author N. K. Jemisin.

Every city has a soul. Some are as ancient as myths, and others are as new and destructive as children. New York City? She’s got five.

But every city also has a dark side. A roiling, ancient evil stirs beneath the earth, threatening to destroy the city and her five protectors unless they can come together and stop it once and for all.

Drunk Overview: New York city is being born and its “midwives” are born with it. Except their is an interdimensional being that is fighting it the entire time. New York itself is down, but the Bronx, Brooklyn, Manhattan, staten island, and Queens are trying to figure out whats happening while protecting the city.

Drunk Thoughts: I read the short story of this in a book of short stories N.K. Jemisin wrote and I was so excited for this book.

Also, it’s so clear how much N.K. Jemisin loves New York. This entire thing (mostly) feels like a love story. I dont think this book could hace been written by someone who didnt see the good and the bad of their city while loving all its faults.

• The different Burroughs were so interesting. Their different poweres were great, and the surprise adjustment late in the booj made me so happy
• But legit, the music, math, dancing, etc was so beautiful.
• For a second I got up in arms about the lack of white people, and then Staten Island was introduced and my literal thoughts were “yeah that tracks.”
• Because I completely get it. It seems like the vast majority os culture in NYC comes from POC and that white people are typically there to gentrify. And this book goes deep into the history of New York which was fascinsting to read about around Thanksgiving.
• It does seem hard to write about the human incarnations of city neighborhoods which is why Im not super goijg into it. For whatever reason, the people were indicative of the burrough without being a stereotype (which is so fucking cool). And really the reason is that N.K. Jemisin is a master writer.
• But the plot, there were a lot of perspectives, all of whom needed to be there, but still made it hard to track sometimes.
• But I loved how the battles were described. This goes back to the power of the individual areas but, ugh, so cool how persobalized they were.
• The book did a great job of setting up the series for reasons Im hesitant to get into.
• And I loved the countries whonshowed up. The things that helped Sao Paulo and the general air of Sao Paolo was so interesting.
• Theres clearly so much lore prepared for this world and I so want to get more of it. I want to meet the other cities, I want to know more about the enemy.
• and let me talk about her. The insidious tactics she uses! The dufferent skins and faces. Just holy shit how creepy.

What I’d Pair it With: whiskey, straight. Something serious thats a kick in the ass.

Rating: 4.5 out of 5