The World We Make

Jemisin has a talent for characters you can care for and care about, and a smoothness to her writing that makes difficult ideas and abstract notions seem intuitive. All of that is on show here, and at a pace to get a story done before the world (our one) takes itself to pieces.

Its predecessor, The City We Became is a better book. It takes more time to develop the characters, their cares and arcs, though we barely get to see one of the most interesting ones (I won't go into too much detail in case you haven't read that one). We see them here, but mostly in small snatches of narrative and events rather than as a full point-of-view thread through the book. This is still a rollicking good read and a full, rich story, though. That the book isn't quite what it could have been is just made clear, partly by Jemisin's fluency and pace.

I get the feeling that's because Jemisin was in a rush - something she notes in the Acknowledgements at the end. What I had thought was a clear reaction to Trump and the white supremacy he allowed to push through from the depths all over the surface in The City We Became seems to have been more prescient, she was working out implications to come in the writing that were more clear everywhere by the time got through the publishing process. The real reaction was in this book, but the violence and crappiness of the world Trump unleashed seems to have been a bit much for both the story and the author (and who can blame her?).

While there are some superb stories and working out of key threads in this book, the disjoint between the humanity and the other-worldly machinations means that several key events gets a 'real-world shittiness' followed by a roll-for-random-Lovecraft-encounter feel it to. The weave isn't quite as tight was it was in the first, because there isn't time.

In the final third, there's a sprint finish which gets things done, and wraps things up, but the pace leaves some (by no means all!) of the humanity behind.

It's very cool, and very well worth it. And I really want to know what games Jemisin plays.

What was to be at trilogy is now a complete duology, and I cannot wait to see what she brings next.

This is the second and final volume in The Great Cities duology. I really enjoyed The City We Became (although I am not a New Yorker to know how any of that landed), but this book just doesn't feel as tightly written and as solid as the first.

Jemisin gets at this in the acknowledgements after the book. US politics and covid caused plot wranglings, and what was intended to be a trilogy got smushed into a duology to at least get it done. I feel like you can this compression in the book itself. The boroughs don't really get much character development. I wanted to see more of the other cities.

The ending itself was quite satisfying to wrap everything up, but the path to get there felt rushed.

In her acknowledgements, Jemisin says she finished this book out of "sheer bloody minded stubbornness", and it shows. The book feels more like a rant, with simplistic politics and a black and white view of the world, lacking any shred of nuance (all white straight people are racists, all cops are evil, all immigrants are kind hearted). It's tiring, and a couples of times I was ready to DNF this book. Sorry I didn't. This book was better left unwritten, even if it meant leaving the first book hanging off a cliffhanger.

Not quite as good as "The City We Became". The concept of city avatars can only be stretched so far, I guess. We get to meet a few more cities - which is cool but sometimes verges on stereotype. The political aspects aren't as poignant as in the first book and feel somewhat derivative and unsubtle. But it all comes together really well in the end.