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The City We Became: A Novel (The Great Cities Book 1)
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Product Description:
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Original price was: $19.99.$9.99Current price is: $9.99.
Detailed description:
Three-time Hugo Award-winning and New York Times bestselling author N.K. Jemisin crafts her most incredible novel yet, a “glorious” story of culture, identity, magic, and myths in contemporary New York City.
In Manhattan, a young grad student gets off the train and realizes he doesn’t remember who he is, where he’s from, or even his own name. But he can sense the beating heart of the city, see its history, and feel its power.
In the Bronx, a Lenape gallery director discovers strange graffiti scattered throughout the city, so beautiful and powerful it’s as if the paint is literally calling to her.
In Brooklyn, a politician and mother finds she can hear the songs of her city, pulsing to the beat of her Louboutin heels.
And they’re not the only ones.
Every great city has a soul. Some are ancient as myths, and others are as new and destructive as children. New York? She’s got six.
For more from N. K. Jemisin, check out:
The Inheritance Trilogy
The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms
The Broken Kingdoms
The Kingdom of Gods
The Inheritance Trilogy (omnibus edition)
Shades in Shadow: An Inheritance Triptych (e-only short fiction)
The Awakened Kingdom (e-only novella)
Dreamblood Duology
The Killing Moon
The Shadowed Sun
The Dreamblood Duology (omnibus)
The Broken Earth
The Fifth Season
The Obelisk Gate
The Stone Sky
How Long ’til Black Future Month? (short story collection)
“A glorious fantasy.” —Neil Gaiman
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Product group:
Categories: Best Books of 2024 So Far
Product name:
The City We Became: A Novel (The Great Cities Book 1)
Price:
Original price was: $19.99.$9.99Current price is: $9.99.
mrls –
Took me 1 full month to reach the end of that one.. no story, no character, nothing. Jemslin at her worse.
Amazon Customer –
This is such a beautiful and powerful story. I can’t wait to read the next installment in the book series!
Julia –
This is THE SINGLE BEST first chapter of a book I’ve ever read. What an earth-shatteringly great, poetic first chapter. The rest of the book’s writing is very good, too, but, man, that first chapter’s writing style makes me want to read everything this author ever writes. The parts of this book — the characters’ distinct personalities, the overall plot and the way the bad guys are fought with, are all excellent. This is a very creative idea. The plot isn’t exactly fast-paced but I don’t mind that since we get space to explore each “borough’s” personality and difficulties — each character gets time and space to be developed and I LOVE that. I truly could feel and hear the funky art and music and accents of New York City.
The reason why this book is a 4 out of 5 for me personally: In my opinion, the whole is not greater than the sum of its parts.
There’s a weird American Exceptionalism here that really sort of took me out of the experience as a bigger-picture thing. The entire premise is that New York’s “birth” situation is unique. But… the thing is, even though this is fantasy, when you bother to bring in other world cities as comparison — NYC is awesome and I love it too, but MOST big world population centers have ‘different neighborhoods with different art and different vibes’ and, honestly, NYC isn’t THAT special! Especially when in this book we bother to meet other cities like Hong Kong and Sao Paulo — why doesn’t Hong Kong get to explore its VERY-different neighborhoods with multiple avatars/etc? The answer to that question isn’t really explored, so it feels like “NYC is generically special” and that’s annoying.
In a weird way, I think the “message about New York City’s very unique state of being” would be a lot more impactful if NYC’s “helpers” were… say, smaller cities in the USA that really do have “fewer boroughs” than NYC, instead of cities like Hong Kong or Sao Paulo (or the referenced Lagos or London who we don’t meet) that have long histories and diverse interactions between their individual neighborhoods that aren’t at all explored in this book. The message I took away from this book is: no other city in the world other than NYC has “different relationships between its different boroughs” and I just…disagree with that! I think I wish the “scope” of this story was smaller and didn’t include other highly-populated, complex international cities, in order for a message like “NYC is extremely special” to work.
Based on this author’s gorgeous writing style, I’ll definitely check out the next books in this series — especially if future steps in the series focus more on other cities and maybe have more notes about the lore of what makes a city have different avatars/”be born” etc. There’s something really creative and unique here — this would be a 5 out of 5 series for me if there’s room to explore it all!
Kath –
All’inizio trovare un ritmo di lettura è stato difficile. Troppi dettagli e troppe scene dinamiche ( per non spoilerare ) subito poi più andavo avanti a leggere e piu la storia mi ha coinvolto e devo dire che non vedo l’ora di leggere il secondo libro! E pensare che lo stavo per abbandonare su uno scaffale. 4 stelle.
Callum –
It’s 4 a.m. and I just finished The City We Became. I can’t remember the last time I stayed up in to the early hours of the morning to finish a book. I’ve never purposely drank an energy drink at 11 p.m. to make sure this happens, but The City We Became deserved it because it is simply one of my favorite books I’ve ever read.
Let me back up and give a quick synopsis for the book before we dive in to the review:
Five New Yorkers must come together in order to defend their city in the first book of a stunning new series by Hugo award-winning and NYT 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 book excels on every front: it has characters that are simultaneously totally real and complete stereotypes of the boroughs they represent. It has such solid world building in its use of NYC, you can see the sights, smell the streets, feel the living, breathing city ooze off the pages. The plot is such a great tale of unification, a celebration of a city but also just humans as a whole, of the strength of evil and what it takes to overcome it. The writing is, of course with N.K. Jemisin, of the highest caliber.
This book is a legitimate piece of art. It’s heart and soul are bared for the world to see and it absolutely shines. What has been crafted and so tightly, excellently written here is nothing short of brilliance. There have been so very few books that have left me with this feeling, I can’t even think of what the last one was.
There is so so much I want to say about this book. The use of diverse, real people in a city like NYC is entirely perfect and fitting but stands out for how well written and used they are, especially when their nemesis brings out the alt-right, shitty racist cops and gentrification as a form of its evil. The evils that really face NYC and, to an extent, all big cities in real life are superbly used and fit in to the narrative effectively. There’s a sequence towards the end of the book – around the 75% mark – that by total coincidence feels oddly prescient of current conditions with Covid19. You know no one could have seen this coming but, like, how is it so scarily accurate? And it just feels wonderful to say I finally feel like someone has given Lovecraft and all his horrible racist views the justice and send off he deserves.
Something small but also super awesome I wanted to point out that shows the level of care and craft Jemisin has put in to this novel – the one character from England, Bel, is so realistically written. Jemisin has him using language and slang I haven’t heard since I was a kid living in England, and it was surreal to see it so accurately used. I’ve read plenty of English authors who haven’t used slang so well.
I honestly don’t know where to go with this review from here other than to say to anyone at all that may read this: please please please go buy this book. It is absolutely astonishing and wonderful and you won’t regret a second of the time you spend with it. It is one of my personal favorite books I’ve ever had the pleasure of reading. I will be talking to anyone and everyone I can about this story for a long, long time to come.
Shay C –
What good does it do to be valuable, if nobody values you? – Chapter 1
Severe, brutal, blatant commentary on society, racism, prejudice, the default nature of humanity to form cliques and to hell with those unlike you. And at the same time, full of unfettered joy and unrestrained pride and the beauty of humanity in all their flaws and triumphs. Unique in story and also so familiar in other ways that I found myself laughing out loud even as I had tears on my cheeks from the truth of the words. If you’ve ever been to New York, you’ll feel the pulse of the city in every word of this book, and if you haven’t, you’ll still feel it because that pulse can be found in all cities, in all towns, in all groups of people. This book is every bit a glorious love letter to the city that never sleeps, and truly all cities and humanity itself. I’ve rarely read something this incredibly distinctive, with each character’s voice so special in its own way. Yes, it will force you to confront your internal prejudice (and we’ve all got it, even you) and yes, it does not hide the message in some soft, easy metaphor. This is a clear, vibrant, loud call to arms, merciless in many ways as it shows the vitriol that minorities face, as well as the environments that foster and fuel and create that narrow minded culture that The Woman in White personified so well throughout this book. Truly a masterpiece and I’m so eager to read more by N K Jemisin now. Read this.
Ana Carolina –
This book was amazing. I wanted to get in there and hug all the boroughs, and I got to understand New York better because of Jemesin’s work (stuff that I, as a Brazilian had seen in movies depicting NY, but hadn’t made sense until now) and the story was thrilling. One of the best openings that I’ve read, the development was great, and I was screaming at the end (my grandmother was in the room with me, she was very puzzled by this). Also, her depiction of São Paulo was great. Not perfect, but still fantastic and the best representation of anything Brazilian that I’ve seen in American media. (I’m from São Paulo)
timthefrog –
I’d never come across Jemisin before but took the risk. Well worth it. On the face of it, the story seems unlikely but you get drawn in so quickly that that the premise becomes totally believable. We all accept that nationalities are very different but to find the same could apply to the areas of just one city is a different level. Brilliant characterisation keeps your wanting more. One day in the not too distant future this will become a set book in schools.
Christina –
The author does a fantastic job of capturing the ‘personalities’ of NYC’s boroughs (not forgetting Jersey City! ) It was great to read a book that inspired my brain to work at picturing what was written. It is so darn interesting and creative I was happy to do the work.