Book Review: The City We Became - N. K. Jemisin

Five New Yorkers must band together to defend their city in the first book of a stunning new series by Hugo award-winning and New York Times 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.

This is a tricky book to review. I intensely disliked the first half of the story; it was all build-up with no action. I found the sycophantic attitude to New York alienating and pretentious. I only stuck with it because I enjoyed the author's previous book "How Long 'til Black Future Month?" I'm glad I did - because it has an immensely satisfying pay-off.

At the start, it's confusing whirligig of a book. I don't get the fetishisation that some city dwellers have for people from their sub-regions. Like, are Brooklynites really so different from Manhattanites? The sole British character is... Well, let's say Jemisin writes the English accent about as well as I do the New York accent and leave it at that, eh? Luckily they don't appear again after the first few chapters. The "only-with-our-powers-combined" story felt a little like a Captain Planet episode.

The constant thinly veiled attacks on white-flight and white-gentrification felt heavy-handed and clumsy.

And then...

The last few chapters really showed the author's teeth. Lots of little seeds planted early began to sprout and bear fruit. It completely flipped my experience of the first half of the book. Transforming it into something much more intense and exciting than I'd initially given it credit for.

The slow build up and recycled tropes absolutely works in its favour. It's hard to say much more without giving the game away - so open the spoiler box at your peril.

Open For Spoilers

H.P. Lovecraft was a racist monster who wrote some terrifyingly good fiction. His pathological horror of anyone non-white infects his work making it deeply uncomfortable to read these days. I imagine it's even worse if you're from one of the races he sees as inferior and infectious. What Jemisin has done so masterfully here is flip the script. She recasts herself as a modern-day Lovecraft and turns the creeping whiteness into indigenous and minority spaces into body horror. If you're not welcome in those spaces, I think you're *supposed* to find the book a slightly uncomfortable read. What's it like to being on the receiving end of Lovecraftian distaste? The insidious nature of prejudice and power are perfectly woven into the story.

It's sort of a superhero novel - ordinary people getting super powers and saving their city. But I think it's also a book about lost people trying to save themselves, and each other, from a desperate psychological state. It rewrites the history of some classic stories in a surprising way. Highly recommended.

Thanks to NetGalley for the review copy. The book can be ordered from the following links: