The City We Became
The Great Cities trilogy, Book 1
N. K. Jemisin
Orbit
Fiction, Fantasy
***** (Great)
DESCRIPTION: It was an ordinary day when New York City awoke. As the newborn city's living avatar, a homeless graffiti artist barely has a chance to come to grips with what's happening before the Enemy - a malevolent entity from beyond our own universe - attacks. He fends it off, but it is not a clean victory. The entity that calls itself the Woman in White gains a foothold, an infection point that could kill not only New York City but the whole world. If the city is going to survive, he's going to need help. Fortunately, he's not alone.
"Manny" was stepping off a subway on his way to a new apartment and a new life when he realizes he has no memory of his name, or anything before coming to New York City. What he feels is an inexplicable bond with Manhattan's skyscrapers and streets... and what he sees is an impossible enemy spreading pale tendrils everywhere it goes.
Brooklyn Thomason used to be the rap queen MC Free, but she gave that life up to raise a daughter and run for office. Now the rhythms of the street are calling her again, only this time she's not squaring off against rivals on stage or throngs of fans, but something much more dangerous.
Bronca's Native American Lenape ancestors have been here since long before there was a city, yet there are still those who insist she's the one who doesn't belong here: she's not white enough, not straight enough, not this or that or the other enough. When the aging artist feels the call of the Bronx borough, she wants to refuse - she has more than enough on her plate, trying to keep a struggling artist co-op from insolvency and fending off strangely coordinated internet attacks - but some destinies cannot be ignored.
A young immigrant and math genius, Padmini feels the weight of her family's expectations as she pushes herself through college and a degree she doesn't want, but which is more likely to land her a permanent residence in America than what she prefers. When a strange attack nearly kills the neighbor children, she learns that New York City has claimed her as its own, as the avatar of Queens. But she's not even a citizen, and the only thing she's good at fighting is a stubborn equation.
And on Staten Island, sheltered Aislyn has hardly ever left her home. Her cop father assures her there's nothing but crime and filthy dark people and perverts running rampant through the rest of the city; best to stay where things are nice and safe (and white), even if it means giving up whatever nebulous dreams she may have had. When New York City calls her - calls her to protect a city she both longs for and fears - how will she answer?
REVIEW: As concepts go, this is a surreal one, but brilliantly executed. Cities are, by their very nature, forces of destruction with a heavy footprint, but they are also living things (literally, here), an ecosystem unto themselves. They can also, figuratively and literally, be killed. Other cities have faced the threats New York City is and survived - they have their own living avatars, a few of whom step in to help (or attempt to help) - but others have failed... and attacks seem to be ramping up, though none of the other cities seem to know why.
As avatars, each character embodies both the good and the bad of their respective boroughs, a microcosm not only of the city but the country itself - and, like city and country, they face a grave and insidious threat to their very existence, one that works from within to corrupt, to amplify hatreds and crack open divisions, to squelch that which is dynamically alive and replace it with something cold and twisted and utterly dead. They aren't always likeable, and don't necessarily like each other; friction of race and class and gender and more threatens to destroy the fragile peace they establish, doing the Enemy's work for it, a hard look at the inherent prejudices and hatreds and just plain grudge matches that threaten so much of our world today. New York City is a complex place, neither wholly good nor wholly bad, and the avatars embody that as well as individuals can. All of them have been thrown into something way over their heads and somewhat beyond the human ability to grasp. They reach for metaphors as they shape impossible forces to their defense, using the very essence of their boroughs and the city itself... but the Woman in White and the entity "she" represents has its own essence and its own weapons, its own logic and goals, and is not to be underestimated.
It's a bold, strange story, sometimes violent and sometimes painful and often bizarre, but always compelling. This being the first in a trilogy, the ending is not conclusive, but does include a few twists and brings the story to a resting point between battles. I'm trying to think of a downside, but even the point of view I least enjoyed was harrowing in the right way (if that makes sense), forcing the reader into a perspective that's easy to dismiss yet needs to be understood if there's to be any hope for the future (in fiction or otherwise), so I went with a top-notch rating.
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