The City We Became is an excellent escapist fantasy - I had no idea where the story was going to take me, and heroes and villains alike felt entirely fresh. Almost too fresh - I didn’t click with the primary character in chapter 1 that I nearly put the book right back down. So glad I stuck through! We follow the plot through 6 different character viewpoints - the first person (New York overall), and then a person who embodies each borough. They have been conscripted to fight... something. Like one of Lovecraft's eldritch horrors, the 'big bad' is vast beyond understanding, and we only ever see a piece of it at a time. I’ve been meaning to read some of his work for a while now, and will dig further into his (wildly racist) themes when I do. In the meantime, better writers than I have written a lot about his stories and their underlying themes.

N.K. Jemisin starts with the same premise of the cosmic horror, but flips Lovecraft’s tropes on their head - instead of dark, monstrous outside influences corrupting a small, idyllic town, a being obsessed with order and purity is trying to root out all of the flavor and variety that makes a city worth its salt. This isn’t a particularly subtle book. If you want to read it as pure escapism you absolutely can, but the lines in the sand are clearly drawn if you care to look.

Most of the little showdowns are ‘garden variety’ racism you might see any day if you’re paying attention. The enemy latches onto the worst inclinations of people with power and amplifies them. They’re the people in society who believe life is a zero-sum game, and if people who don’t look like them are getting more, that must mean they’re going to get less. The people who “are always gonna tell themselves that a little fascism is okay as long as they can still get unlimited drinks with brunch!” While in the book the showdowns are kept private through the enemy’s ability to blind bystanders to what’s really going on, it made me think about the real world. Systematic rasicm chugs along quite neatly when only the people directly affected are speaking out. We see bigger moments of change when bystanders take off the blinders and add their voices - from people videotaping unjust arrests to whistleblowers calling out organizations.

The cognitive dissonance between our internal lists of what makes a ‘good person’ and reality was one of my favorite pieces of the book. I struggled with it in the first chapter - the viewpoint was of a homeless young queer black man who was planning to sleep with someone primarily to make sure he had a place to sleep that night. Was he making the best possible choice for himself in that moment? Absolutely. Was I incredibly uncomfortable reading it? You betcha. I couldn’t identify with any aspect of his character and struggled to click into the narrative. I was fully aware even at the time that all of my complaints in chapter 1 were based out of my own biases and prejudice, but still had a hard time seeing him as the protagonist despite the clear narrative. Later we see Aislyn struggling with the inverse - she’s met a very nice woman who is polite, neatly groomed, and (most importantly) looks like every ‘safe’ white suburban PTA mom. This woman is predatory. She consistently triggers Aislyn’s stranger danger, and pushes back on any boundary Aislyn tries to set. But because she checks so many of the “good person” boxes, Aislyn fails to see the woman for what she is, and ignores her own intuition in favor of being polite/bowing to her socialization. I loved how this was written. From the outside it’s so obvious. It feels like the moment in a horror movie when you’re shouting at the screen for them not to split up and investigate the weird noise. It also felt like the moment you watch a friend explain that their significant other is actually great, they just have a bit of a temper/a specific sense of humor/no filter. It doesn’t matter how good someone looks on paper. If they don’t treat you well, they aren’t your friend.

I went with a classic cocktail to pair with The City We Became and made a Manhattan in honor of the first borough we meet. I then discovered I still hate Manhattans and gave it to my husband. Still a win/win, I got the cherry. (If you haven’t tried Luxardo cherries yet, you’re missing out. They’re pricier than the standard maraschino cherries but they are also the peak of luxury.) Much like Manhattans, The City We Became isn’t for everyone. It’s firmly in the urban fantasy genre, which is never going to be everybody’s cup of tea. It should be for everyone however. I found myself rooting even for the characters I disliked, and its a beautiful example of books that are both great entertainment and great discussion starters. I wish I’d suggested it for my book club as I’ve been pestering everyone I know to read it so I could dissect it with someone.

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