The City We Became

I was really excited to read this book after reading The Broken Earth trilogy. That series felt super involved and immersive and I loved it. I didn't feel as good about this one.

The City We Became felt a bit too gimmicky for my taste. The initial idea of cities being ‘alive' was pretty cool at first. Having avatars that embody their spirit seemed like a good take on the idea and it introduced a set of unique rules and characteristics to the book. But the characters in the book felt pretty static apart from that issue. Most of their personality was determined by the part of New York they embodied and they just felt way less deep than some of the characters in The Broken Earth.

In addition, a lot of the plot felt repetitive and the cast felt too big. Each character basically had to learn about the central conflict of the book in the same way and fight small battles against the BBEG in order to learn how ‘powerful' it was. At first these encounters were really cool: the first chapter was my favorite part of the book. But after a couple chapters I couldn't help but skim since it was really hard to feel anticipation during the scene.

I'm not sure whether this book would've been better had I known more about New York but it felt like a drag and I wish that the characters did more than find each other in the book.