The City We Became

4,5 ⭐

N. K. Jemisin já consegue nos deixar com uma pulga atrás da orelha de curiosidade pelo que está sendo contado, mesmo sem muitas informações - que vão aparecendo aos poucos ao longo da história. Mais uma fantasia da autora que captou minha atenção e não consegui largar até terminar a leitura.

O sistema de personificação das cidades é muito bem elaborado, apesar de às vezes não conseguir visualizar tudo que provavelmente a autora quis passar para o leitor. Em muitos momentos esses elementos fantásticos ficam de lado para dar foco à vida dos personagens, ao seu dia a dia e, mais importante, às críticas feitas a uma sociedade que não perde a primeira oportunidade de poder destilar seu preconceito.

Achei fantástica a caracterização da vilã da história, que vai de encontro a muito do que se lê em outras histórias, que mostram pessoas negras, que às vezes podem não estar impecavelmente vestidas e normalmente representadas com expressões de raiva ou “de poucos amigos” - como personagens a serem evitados e, mais além, como pessoas que devem ser evitadas na vida real.

Além da aparência de história fantástica, Nós Somos a Cidade traz muitas reflexões que vão deixar o leitor reflexivo por algum tempo além do final da história. Muito bom!

Unusual story, interesting universe. If I had spent more time in New York at some point in my life, I probably would have gotten more out of it, so I'm hoping that maybe one of the sequels takes place somewhere I've actually lived.

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.

Idei bune (nu neapărat originale), dar execuție foarte slabă. Scriitura simultan grăbită si infinit lungită. Personaje nenumărate, obositor de multe, dar vagi, neconturate, indistincte și fără profunzime - se simt ca doar niște nume cu câte o caracteristică. Și aceea doar ca să bifeze categorii: negru gay? Checked. Negresă “cu atitudine” (mai bine zis agresivă)? Checked. Travestit asiatic? Checked. Și tot așa. Știți că susțin fățiș diversitatea, dar când e sinceră, nu doar sjw. Poveste? Unde? Doar o palidă copie de IT al lui SK, dar mult mai diluat. În plus, cartea este efectiv rasistă: albul este culoarea răului, albii-s sclifositi, albele niște Karen, bărbatul alb este un persecutor sadic, poliția strict si automat malefică etc. Din păcate, această leșinată carte pare scrisă de altă autoare decât Jemisina mediocră din Blood Moon și senzațională din Pământul Sfărâmat. O autoare foarte slabă. Ce s-o fi întâmplat? Nu știu, dar rezultatul este un mare eșec.

3.8 :) audio book is very enjoyable !

Conceptually this book is brilliant and a unique fantasy experience in my reading history. I suspect for those who need 50-50 character development to plot, or more heavy character development, might not be 100% in love with this book. I'm a very feely person, and there were no feels for the first 3/4 of the book. Action happens, there's flat dialogue, there's external conflict, there's background on characters, but there's reference to anger and love that only feels like words, not an emotional experience (which is what the strongest books convey in my opinion). Even the stakes never felt very high for most of the book, which they are in the book's reality.

By page 300 when what I've been waiting for finally [begins] to happen, I was getting the feels a bit more but still waiting for the emotional connection for the characters to each other, themselves and to their city. The main characters are avatars for their boroughs, but I never felt the power in what that means, I felt that power the strongest in relation to geography but not its people - though we're told about each borough's people a few times. I wish the events and conversations between page 300 and 400 had been moved up earlier, and then expanded much more. The last 50 pages were amazing, interesting and surprising.

The book is 3.5 stars for me. I hope down the road I'll reread this to see if I missed what I believe is missing and go to the rest of the trilogy.

My heart Jemisin, my heart! Anyway - I'm getting a copy of Support Your Local Wizard because all the feels now.

I love N.K. Jemisin and I love the idea of this book, but the execution fell flat for me. I think the characters being stereotypes of their neighborhoods, although it makes perfect sense for the concept, didn't help me connect with the characters and I found each one pretty obnoxious. I think that if the book had been longer, I would have been able to see more redeemable qualities in the characters and been more invested in the outcome of each of them.

I also might not like urban fantasy, which I never knew before. Combining such fantastical elements with a real world setting was difficult for me to get into. Also, all the New York insider knowledge required to understand the references was annoying to me.

Overall, the concept will stick with me and the story moved at a quick enough pace for a three star rating for me.

Wow. I don't have much to say in terms of an actual review other than I absolutely loved this book. It instantly grabbed my attention and never let go. I'm so glad it's just the first in a planned trilogy, but also so bummed that means I'll have to wait for more.

4.25 stars

Jemisin, you definitely got it, right! Accurate depiction of the various cities, personalities. I really enjoyed this story, which caused this Brooklyn girl, serious nostalgia.

Loved the concepts and ideas.

Started out promising, but unfortunately I just wasn't into it. The characters and story were eh. The politics in it were also very heavy-handed and so extreme it just bordered on ridiculous. It felt very much meant for an American demographic.
I imagine this is fun if you are from (or very familiar with) New York though. Unless you're from Staten Island

I really wanted to like this book, but all I could think of while I was reading it was how much I wanted it to end already. The chapters are unnecessarily long and the author tried to shove too many scenes into each one. It felt like rambling. And while the writing wasn't bad, I had some problems with the over usage of specific words (like eldritch) and the inconsistency in context. The point of the book was, well pointy. The themes were dumbed down to the point where I felt like the author thought that her readers were too stupid to understand that every situation was an allusion to the evils of large corporations, gentrification, and racism. Subtlety was not invited to the party.
I liked that the descriptions of evil were purposely made to go against the institutionalized and prejudiced belief that bad things are dark and good things are light, except when we were in the thoughts of the racist character. I also liked how New York was described through the different avatars chosen to represent each borough.
On the other hand, there were times where there seemed to be awkward moments of inside jokes placed in the story, whether having to do with New Yorkisms or Lovecraftisms. It just felt forced in places. Also, the timelines didn't make a whole lot of sense as the perspectives shifted in the earlier chapters. The final fight scene left a lot to be desired. It was a whole page and a half long. Bronca was in a bathroom for like 20 pages...
I didn't hate this book, I just wish it could have been edited better and that it's description wasn't more interesting than the book itself.

Awful book. One of the worst I've ever read. Painful to read at times.

Pros:
Unique concept (Got a star for that).
Action

Cons:
Terrible dialogue and characters that border on SJW parody.
Bronx character is nonstop cringe.

And so NK Jemisin becomes the third woman, after Ann Leckie and Martha Wells, whose books I will just read no questions asked, because they are a-mazing.

This was an absolutely brilliant novel about New York, about the joys and struggles of city living, and about how our environment can shape our identities. It was a little difficult reading this in a year when so much of what makes cities amazing has been robbed of us due to COVID, but it's a good reminder of the energy that they can give us.

Started with the audiobook. While my interest was piqued it wasn't a great listening experience because of the multiple POVs so picked up the ebook instead. Would have finished it in one sitting if I could.

What a fantastic plot. I'm enthralled. Also made me feel homesick for my own city, Bombay. Because I am Bombay in so many ways & Bombay is me.

So weird. So wonderful. If Murakami was American, he'd write something like this. And in my world, there is no higher compliment.

Here's the basic premise: An epic battle is forming between a newly “born” New York City and an entity from another dimension in this novel. As a part of the birth process, the city of New York is suddenly personified by five people who represent, or embody, each of its five boroughs, and a mysterious sixth who is supposed to bring them all together. The city of Sao Paulo (the city's avatar, or personification, that is) is on the scene to manage the struggle and help New York come through its birth unscathed.

In this first volume of a planned trilogy, the people who personify the five boroughs of New York have the fact thrust upon them. It just happens while they're going about their business doing other things, so they have to adjust and figure out what it means and how they should proceed. Much of this book is about the process of discovery and banding together of these New York super-heroes. The characters are distinct from each other and meant to be representative of the boroughs they personify: Manhattan, a young, charming guy of uncertain heritage who comes to the city to start grad school. Brooklyn, a black city councilwoman with a past as a rapper, now a single mother to a 14 year old daughter. Bronx, a Native woman in her 60's who runs an arts foundation in her neighborhood, is a Lesbian, and deeply connected to the Native past of the land New York occupies. Queens is an immigrant from India, living with relatives, working a job while she also goes to grad school. Staten Island is the Irish American daughter of a domineering cop and a homemaker, brought up to be suspicious of the city and of foreigners. Some of these characters are more fully developed than others. I found Queens to be pretty thin, for example.

The enemy in this book is pretty creepy, and there are plenty of enemy encounters, even though the team of superheroes isn't fully assembled yet. There is a nod to (and critique of) H.P. Lovecraft, and the evil that the enemy brings is entangled with white supremacy, misogyny, and anti-semitism.

Overall, this was an enjoyable book that was especially timely to read during a global pandemic and in the midst of a struggle for justice for people of color in my home city and my country. I've never read anything by N. K. Jemisin before, but I will be putting her other books on my reading list post haste, and watching for the second volume of this series.

Ok I LOVE N.K. Jemisin. Her Broken Earth series is literally one of my favorite sci-fi/fantasy series! Jemisin does SUCH an incredible job weaving real, political and social issues, into a fantastical world with magic and monsters. She expertly uses her mastery of language and world-building to create really strong character-driven stories that send out a message very applicable to real life.

That being said, Jemisin brings her quirky and unique writing-style into her new series, the City We Became. Each character is expertly nuanced and very, very politically inspired (if queerness and POC protagonists isn't your thing, maybe skip this one — and skip my page while you're at it ).

I did feel like Jemisin worked so hard to create really amazing and nuanced characters that the plot was kind of....meh. To be honest, in all 400+ pages of this, it didn't feel like a whole lot HAPPENED, you know? Like yes, obviously stuff was happening but it didn't feel like there was that much of a plot, just a lot of character and tension-building— which isn't a bad thing at all! It might just mean that she's building up the plot for the next book in the series! Still highly highly recommend this read.

Unsurprisingly, there was lots that was interesting about this book but it read like the first third of a novel. She does a decent job of wrapping some things up, but I was impatient with the exercise.

It may seem like it took me forever to read this, but it's because I bought it and my library books were due back quickly, so I put it on hold until now.
It's excellent. Is there anyone else in this world with an imagination as big as N.K. Jemisin's? I think not. I broke my own rule about not reading the first in a series because I love her work so very much. This one is outstandingly fun. The battles are amazing The characters are kick-ass. It will be a looooong wait for the next installment, I'm sure. I'm a little bummed that I didn't get to meet her at an event in March, but I probably just would have squeed in total fangirl mode about how much I love her work at her anyway.
I loved every minute of The City and can't wait for more.
Love from Jersey.

So I had this carefully calibrated to-read list, and then the world ended, and I didn't feel like reading anymore. But in my head, I just kept repeating: “everything changes in a season”, so I figured if I could read anyone, I could read Jemisin.

I had thought that Jemisin was the epic fantasy writer of my generation. I was wrong: I'm pretty sure N.K. Jemisin is THE speculative fiction writer, in general, of my generation. This is an urban fantasy that redefines what it means to be urban fantasy. This is a book about the fantasy of cities. It's a love poem to cities. (a much needed ode, when currently living in a city seems like a death sentence, weaving around masked figures on the sidewalk.). I've never been a fan of New York, but through Jemisin's eyes, I found myself loving it. (Jemisin notes herself: there are NYC people and there are London people; I'm a London person). Even before the fantastic elements, Jemisin's NYC is alive.

And Jemisin's NYC is alive, in one of the most inventive modern fantasies I've read. Full of relatable, human characters, who also manage to slip to just the other side of inhuman. There is a villain who is relatable, understandable and also completely evil. It's the best modern take on Lovecraft: acknowledging and incorporating his racism

In lesser hands, I don't think I would have liked this book. I love Jemisin, but I primarily love her for the intricate worlds and cultures that she builds in her high-fantasy. She always has something to say about our world in them, but they are such intense, fully-realized places that I love exploring. So when I heard she was doing an urban fantasy about cities who become realized through people avatars, I wasn't instantly hooked. I don't really like cities, and the concept seemed a little goofy. But hey, it's quarantine and my FLB needs me to buy books, so I picked this one up. Damn, I'm glad I did.

First of all, Jemisin is just as talented at realizing our world and subspace alternate realities of our world as she is fictional ones. Her characters are sharply-realized, more real than some actual people I know, I swear. What might feel like ham-fisted attempts at representation by someone else is nuanced, complicated, well-researched and just a beautiful example of how to write characters that are not from your own culture. Staten Island (who literally has my paternal grandmother's last name) definitely made me shudder. She's deeply frustrating, and still so real and understandable. I hope more white feminists read this and see how frustrating a person like this can be.

Also, is there a word for fan-fiction when the writer is definitely not a fan? Subersive-Fic maybe? Jemisin's distaste for H.P. Lovecraft is well-known, and the idea that she would do a lovecraftian spin on anything seemed strange until I realized she is part of that movement that rather than removing the racist and xenophobic bits and keeping the cool stuff, actively tears down those ideas. I didn't expect the reveal of the Woman in White, but it makes so much sense. Lovecraft's fearmongering and white supremacy are the villains in this book, and our heroes are each a testament to how beautiful the world can be when we reject it.

The Lovecraft takedown is part of the text, but I think I caught some Tolkien criticism too. So much of fantasy draws from Tolkien in that nature = good, industrialism = bad. It's an easy argument to make. So it's definitely weird to read truly urban fantasy that is glorifying cities. But Jemisin makes the point that cities are where we learn to share. Foods, fashions, stories, attitudes, religions... cities make us have to live and learn together. If the hobbits never leave the shire, they never grow out of their own community. I don't think I've read another fantasy that depicts modern urban life as an ideal. I love Tolkien, but the time has come to think outside the shire.

I think this is the longest review I've written in a long time. I just want to talk about this book so much. Even if like me you've never been to New York and generally dislike big cities, I'd still recommend this book. It's a fascinating perspective shift. And if you do love New York? This is a love letter like no other.

Hard to read right now (Covid-19), but still a great start to a series.

I feel like I should've liked this more, I mean it's an homage to NYC with a side of Lovecraft thrown in, but it just kinda... felt like the gimmick didn't carry it for the length of a novel. And most of it was petty infighting between allies which is just kind of annoying, and like “lol fuck Staten Island” like okay as someone who has lived in NYC I get it, but also I don't really need it explained to me that it's the cultural differences that make it work, like... I dunnnnno