The City We Became by N.K. Jemisin

Read: August 2024
Format: Audiobook (Spotify)

I really tried to give this one a shot! I wanted to like it! Instead it’s been killing my reading habit and walking habits because I’ve just not been wanting to listen. I’ve also stopped listening on my commute, instead I’ve been reading comics on Marvel Unlimited (granted this is also because it’s school holidays so the bus is also nice and quiet!).

And yet I’d still been trying to power on in the hope it’d get better… But yesterday when at 75% of the way through I upped the audiobook speed up to 2x that it still,  somehow, felt too slow it was time to call it.

I wanted this to be good so badly! The premise is really weird and interesting, and not something I had come across before. When a city reaches a certain maturity it becomes alive and takes the form of a human avatar (or several for larger cities). This is how happening to New York but at the same time there is a mysterious enemy attacking reality trying to prevent it. The six new avatars of New York need to find each other and find a way to protect their city

To me it felt like a cool blend of science-fiction and fantasy as the Enemy felt somewhere between alien and demonic. I haven’t read any Lovecraft but from what I understand, that’s the vibe. The strongest part of this book were the parts where reality is being disturbed, I found that very atmospheric and creepy. The audiobook I listened to also had a great production which I included sound effects and distortions that really upped the immersion.

It’s the entire rest of the book that fails for me. First of all it smacks you around the face with it’s message – which I think was intended to be that New York is and always had been a multicultural hub with a diverse population including many transplants and immigrants, and that is what makes it a great city. I can get behind that.. except the way Jemesin chooses to get this across is so insanely heavy handed that it ends up coming off as “all white people are bad and racist.” In the 75% I read I can’t recall a single white character that wasn’t a racist bigot.

This is because all her characters are stereotypes. Not an ounce of nuance is to be found and that makes the story really boring and predictable. This is compounded further by the fact she follows a clear formula when introducing each new avatar that gets old very quickly, complete with pages and pages of the same repetitive political and cultural diatribe that lack any subtly.

And it’s so slow. Nothing happens for so long! There are chapters of just characters hanging about talking or just thinking about doing something but not actually doing anything!

This book is meant to be a love letter to New York, and I was pretty neutral on it before, but it’s actually made me kind of hate New York! It’s not that fucking special!

Maybe if you’re a city person you’ll like this more, especially if you’re a New Yorker and can get off on all the in jokes. I grew up in a country village, I like living in a city suburb now but I’m not a city person.

I am a person that’s like cool weird shit though, which is why I’m annoyed at the wasted potential with this book! I’m sure there was a way to write this with more interesting characters and more subtly.

I don’t know if I’ll try any N.K. Jemisin again. I did read the Broken Earth Trilogy but only found it OK… The third one was a struggle to finish. And I do remember some of the same issues with heavy handed writing and terrible, negative characters being a drag in that series too (especially at the end). A shame because I’m always trying to find female authors in the science-fiction/fantasy genre.