The City We Became

The City We Became
N. K. Jemisin, 2020

Premise: A city is more than a collection of buildings and streets. It's more than its people and cars. When a city grows large enough, sometimes it... wakes up.

Would this book make sense to someone who never lived in NYC? 

I'm glad that I'll never know. Reading this book reminded me of everything I loved about my time in the city that never sleeps. 

That is, when it wasn't giving me almost-literal nightmares about everything I hate about modern-day America.

The City We Became takes place in an explicitly Lovecraft-adjacent world where when a city is large enough it incarnates into a person who is literally the spirit of the city. But this is a process, and there are beings from outside this dimension who want to destroy and consume the cities before they fully wake. 

Because New York is New York, it isn't one person, but multiple - one for each borough. They are all fascinating complex characters who exemplify aspects of the city (good and bad and in-between). In order to survive the incursion from outside this dimension (who can take over/influence humans and appear as gentrifiers, violent bigots, white supremacists, etc.), the spirits of the boroughs must figure out what's going on and work together long enough to survive.

Is some of this kind of obvious, in terms of good guys and bad guys? In terms of people who literally must embody and gain power from certain stereotypes? Yes. Did I care? Not one bit. I loved reading this, found it incredibly compelling and emotionally impactful. 

5 Stars - An Awesome Book