“Don’t sleep on the city that never sleeps, son, and don’t fucking bring your squamous eldritch bullshit here.”

N.K. Jemisin

I’ve lived within train distance of Chicago my whole life.

None of the towns qualified as suburbs (the people who live in the suburbs would have my head if I’d claimed that). Most don’t even qualify as “Chicagoland area”. Yet, even if I lived at the last Metra stop, I still considered the city a part of the local identity. As a high schooler, I could be in downtown Chicago within two hours for as little as eight dollars. Trips to the museum district, concerts in Logan Square, day trips to Wrigley Field– while not everyday occurrences, these trips were familiar enough to become a piece of me. Even now, when I step off the train and onto the platform with the throngs of other commuters, tourists, and suburbanites, there’s a current of energy in the damp air that lets me know I’ve arrived.

There hasn’t been a large city I’ve visited that has that same vibrancy. Seattle was a little closed off. Portland, a little too small. Boston was cacophonous noise. D.C. is too low to the earth. Not a single city I’ve spent time in has given me the same sense of scale and humanity that Chicago has. But, there was a city I drove past that did: New York City.

A plan to visit NYC had fallen through so, instead, I was driving past it on my way towards Baltimore. As I navigated the bumper-to-bumper traffic, I noticed that beyond the stress, beyond the frustration I felt while trying to maneuver across unfamiliar streets, the city’s frequency beat in a familiar way. High energy. Quick. A mass of humanity with feelings, emotions, and entire lives vibrating between the skyscrapers and brownstones. It was a relatively quick drive-by (as in, it took me an hour to get from the north end of New York City to passing under the George Washington Bridge), but that small glimpse into NYC was enough for me to recognize a bit of Chicago within.

N.K. Jemisin’s book, “The City We Became” is a love letter to that feeling of dense energy and community that resonates within New York. It’s recognizable from the first chapter to the last, the magical realism and sci-fi elements at home among the potentiality of the city. Anything can happen in New York and, in this book, it does.

“The City We Became” is a non-stop romp through the City That Never Sleeps, following an ensemble of characters embodying five New York boroughs. An Enemy has come, tentacles and all, to kill the city’s primary avatar before the boroughs wake them up, promising ruin and destruction should they fail. With Jemisin’s trademark voice and talent for worldbuilding, the creative cast of characters takes on the Enemy in a heroic showdown for the soul of New York. “The City We Became” pulls no punches, barreling through the city streets like a freight train, bringing the plot and themes along with it.

One of the reasons “The Fifth Season” was such a triumph in my eyes was Jemisin’s incredible knack for voice, and I was happy to see that trademark skill back again, albeit translated for a different vibe and tenor. Voice isn’t Jemisin’s only standout skill, though, “The City We Became” is a brilliant example of expert pacing. Carefully placed clues, signaled foreshadowing, jumping points of view, and cliffhanger chapter breaks all added up to a fast-paced, high-energy feel. She nails down the Just One More Chapter feeling without resorting to tricks or shortcuts and, for all the heavy expositing some characters have to do, the book never quite slows down. Monologuing was intermixed with action or character moments. Slow, quiet scenes built dread or apprehension. It’s a remarkable feat, to keep someone intrigued and attentive for 400 pages, and Jemisin doesn’t just do it– she did it well.

One of the reasons it works is because, even as the plot races forward, Jemisin still makes time for the characters. Managing an ensemble cast of more than five is tough, especially with the amount of side characters that dip in and out of the pages. Still, most of the characters manage to have enough time, enough space, to breathe and come alive (in no small part to her skill for voice). There were a few that were shortchanged, in my opinion– Padmini, for one– but that was bound to happen in a book of this length. While I would have loved to have seen more character depth and interaction, expanding the book further may have disrupted the flow. As it stands, I think Jemisin did a wonderful job juggling the cast in a way that provided stakes and allowed for character development without sacrificing the break-neck speed of the story.

This leads me to my one disappointment with “The City We Became”. Reading Jemisin is always an exciting experience. It’s a little like a rollercoaster ride: You strap in, do some buildup, and then it’s off to the races. Loop-de-loops, twists, steep drops, sudden curves that leave your head spinning; it’s one of reading’s greatest pleasures to be so sucked into a story that you get whiplash when the ride takes a turn. But every story comes to an end. And, much like a rollercoaster, the end often brings a quick stop and a slow roll to the finish. After such an exhilarating ride, coasting with the cars to a neat stop and being asked to undo your seat restraints leaves you a bit sad. Disappointed, even. It’s not the ending’s fault, per se. You’re just hopped up on adrenaline from the rest of the ride. You didn’t think it would end so soon.

My initial reaction to the ending may also be tainted by the fact that, at the time I finished, I didn’t realize there was a sequel. Unanswered questions and unfinished plot threads hung loose in the aftermath of the climax, and I couldn’t believe she’d end it there. Luckily, I was right. The conclusionary sequel, “The World We Make” arrived on shelves this past November.

Underwhelming ending aside, I think “The City We Became” is well worth a read if you’re up for a heart-pounding adventure filled with wit, whimsy, and a few too many tentacles. I look forward to finding “The World We Make” at my local library and buckling in for another ride. If you’d like to read some more of my specific thoughts on themes and plot points, scroll down to the spoiler section. If not, I’ll see you all soon for February’s Book of the Month, “Somebody’s Daughter” by Ashley C. Ford.

The reflection above is intended for people who have not read or completed the book. For that reason, it is spoiler-free. The following section will discuss plot points and themes in the book not otherwise described in the summary or book blurb. That means there are SPOILERS BELOW. This is your warning.

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Spoilers Ahead!

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The problem I’ve found with fast-paced, immersive books is that, no matter how many clues they drop, I end up missing things in my excitement to see what happens next. While I don’t go back and reread with a critical eye (as many book reviewers probably do), I do take the time to do some research afterward for any themes or obvious allusions that my eyes skipped over.

Please imagine how hard I smacked my forehead when every review I read mentioned the connections to H.P. Lovecraft.

It’s not that I didn’t notice it. I remember noticing it in the scene where Bronca is nearly sucked into the Alt Artist’s painting. I also remembered Veneza’s panic at how the angles and dimensions of the other world were “wrong”, a clear reference to Lovecraft. But, even with those two in my back pocket, I hadn’t connected the dots. Tentacles. Interdimensional horror. Fear of the Other.

Unlike many modern references to Lovecraft, which are often surface-level fear of the unknown and other-worldly entities with too many tentacles, Jemisin takes the reference a step further. Embedding the mythos and the man into the bones of the antagonist, the author turns Lovecraftian horror on its head, having a full cast of characters that Lovecraft himself would have considered “other” beating back the creeping tentacles of white supremacy and gentrification. Using Lovecraft’s white supremacist history to help buoy the fear and loathing of the Woman in White and her minions (cops, Proud Men, Alt Artists, etc.) was clever and helped carry themes of belonging and fighting for the right to exist (as a person or as a City) without having to slow down the plot.

I also appreciated the way the horror of the Woman in White affected Aislyn’s inclusion in the narrative. Even when Aislyn, whose entire existence is based around abuse and internalized prejudices, meets the Woman in White, she is unnerved. Uncomfortable. Her ability to tolerate that cognitive dissonance is essential to understanding her as a character, and subsequently understanding that she was never going to help the other boroughs. While cracks in her worldview are there, they aren’t enough to stop her from falling victim to the Enemy. She’s not a likable character, but she does elicit some sympathy, a testament to Jemisin’s ability to create nuanced characters that straddle the morality tightrope.

Aislyn’s fall and Veneza’s sudden rise was, however, a slight pain point for me. I knew by halfway through the book, Aislyn wouldn’t be helping the protagonists as it would both require a drastic change in behavior and fall into the “white savior” trope, which I knew Jemisin wouldn’t do. That said, for all the foreshadowing and clues sprinkled throughout the narrative, I never saw Veneza coming. Nor did I see Manny’s transformation into King Kong. While both of these, thematically, make sense once you step back and view the book objectively, the fact that I was blindsided by both didn’t elicit the same kind of joy that Jemisin’s other twists do. It felt like there’d been no leadup to make these revelations feel solid within the story. While not every surprise in a book needs some sort of foreshadowing to anchor it in place, these two felt like major points of interest within the book, with Manny’s past constantly being questioned and Veneza’s inclusion feeling no different than the other side character’s at any point. This contributed to my dissatisfaction with the “happy” ending, where I was left with more questions than answers about how everything had shaken out.

Still, even with those minor gripes, “The City We Became” was a fun read. Any N.K. Jemisin book is a good N.K. Jemisin book due to her artful crafting of voice, pacing, and character. I look forward to reading more of her work in the future, whether it’s magical realism or hardcore sci-fi/fantasy. Until then, happy reading and happy sipping!