The City We Became

 

Image credit: Hachette Australia

The upshot of having a randomised ‘To be Read’ pile, is that you get to constantly experience the delicious surprise of reading a book that you don’t know a lot about and thus are able to get entirely enveloped in it. While my last book off that pile was a bit of a dud, the next one I read was much more my speed, an engaging genre and a fascinating idea, and apparently it’s the first instalment in a trilogy. I have just closed the cover on N. K. Jemisin’s The City We Became.

New York is a young city, but one with a lot of vim and vigour. That is until an interdimensional invader turns up and tries to plant their own city on top of it. When NY’s chosen champion takes on this threat, he is not ready and ends up in a comatose sleep somewhere underground. When this happens five strangers suddenly become the living embodiments of their boroughs: Manhattan, Brooklyn, the Bronx, Queens, and Staten Island. With no idea what’s going on other than there is a strange, fungal monster sprouting from places it wasn’t before, the five boroughs clumsily piece enough information together to find each other, start tracking down the primary avatar, and save their city.

A Lovecraftian love letter to New York, The City We Became is a fascinating idea. It’s a rather ingenious character study in the way that one’s environment can shape the personalities of its inhabitants. Each character is the physical manifestation of their borough’s history as well as current civilian trends and together they make this compelling mismatch of desperate characters.

On top of being a very clever character study, this book is also a delightfully modern science fiction fantasy horror. Simultaneously it’s very close to being a piggyback novel in that the identity of the invading monster – when its name is finally dropped- is deliciously recognisable for anyone who has read any Lovecraft. While the villain is not necessarily a character that we’ve see in Lovecraft’s stories before, it’s definitely one of the biggest names to haunt those pages and Jemisin very smartly gives it the same treatment as her other protagonists. While there are a few well-placed hints as to this twist in the story, I was blissfully unaware until the villain said their name and then I had a glorious experience of having the exact same response as the heroes (“oh shit”).

Jemisin writes with love, passion, and a keen eye. This book is very much written from the eye of the observer: someone who loves their environment and sees every part of it, not just the parts that are obvious or most attractive. While interdimensional invader definitely carries the label of ‘villain’, it’s New York so there are several other evils working to wear the heroes down. Classically and expectedly, they are Racism, Sexism, Homophobia, Xenophobia, and Ageism. The social politics of the city are just as much a threat as the actual tentacled monster taking out the Williamsburg Bridge and it’s very inspiring and endearing to see the heroes overcome each one in their own unique way.

Image credit: The New York Times

The City That We Became is a bit of a slow burn and the deliverance of an epic battle that is promised throughout the trudging quest of finding one another and learning what the hell is going on, leaves a bit to be desired, I’m not going to lie, but ultimately this book is something else. Something unique, recognisable but different, and intensely fascinating. I recommend perseverance, and to expect the not-quite-expected and you’ll get a very good reading experience from every page.

Author: N. K. Jemisin, 2020

Published: Orbit, Great Britain, 2020