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The City We Became: A Novel (The Great Cities Book 1)

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The City We Became: A Novel (The Great Cities, 1) Hardcover – March 24, 2020

by N. K. Jemisin (Author)

4.3 7,215 ratings

Book 1 of 2: The Great Cities

Editors' pick Best Science Fiction & Fantasy

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An instant NYT Bestseller!

Four-time Hugo Award-winning author N.K. Jemisin crafts her most incredible novel yet, the first book in The Great Cities Duology, a crackling tale of culture, identity, magic, and myths in contemporary New York City. "A glorious fantasy." —Neil Gaiman

In Manhattan, a young grad student gets off the train and realizes he doesn't remember who he is, where he's from, or even his own name. But he can sense the beating heart of the city, see its history, and feel its power.

In the Bronx, a Lenape gallery director discovers strange graffiti scattered throughout the city, so beautiful and powerful it's as if the paint is literally calling to her.

In Brooklyn, a politician and mother finds she can hear the songs of her city, pulsing to the beat of her Louboutin heels.

And they're not the only ones.

Every great city has a soul. Some are ancient as myths, and others are as new and destructive as children. New York? She's got six.

One of TIME Magazine's 100 Best Fantasy Books of all time
One of TIME Magazine's 100 Must-Read Books of 2020
One of Vanity Fair's 15 Best Books of 2020
One of Amazon's Best Books of 2020

The Great Cities Duology
The City We Became
The World We Make

Book 1 of 2

The Great Cities
Print length

448 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Orbit
Publication date

March 24, 2020
Dimensions

6.4 x 1.85 x 9.9 inches
ISBN-10

0316509841
ISBN-13

978-0316509848
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The Broken Earth Trilogy: The Fifth Season, The Obelisk Gate, The Stone Sky

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Popular Highlights in this book

What are popular highlights?

“People who say change is impossible are usually pretty happy with things just as they are.”
Highlighted by 1,671 Kindle readers
This is the lesson: Great cities are like any other living things, being born and maturing and wearying and dying in their turn.
Highlighted by 1,039 Kindle readers
“The harbingers of the Enemy will hide among the city’s parasites. Beware of them.”
Highlighted by 661 Kindle readers

From the Publisher

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

An Amazon Best Book of March 2020: N. K. Jemisin brings her reality-ripping storytelling skills to her own backyard of New York City in this vivid series starter. In The City We Became, few people realize that Earth’s grandest cities—London, Hong Kong, São Paolo, and others—are alive. When New York City tries to join that select group, five people in the city unexpectedly become the living embodiments of each of the city’s five boroughs. Unfortunately, the first thing they learn is that the newborn city is under attack from a very ancient enemy that has successfully killed cities before, and now the five New Yorkers are targets as well. More fortunately, the city’s avatars soon discover that with great responsibility comes great powers. Paranormal battles on top of cabs, hidden subway stations, New York City politics, and local artists’ galleries thread through each other in a live-wire love letter to the city and its diverse denizens. While Jemisin has won awards with her previous novels, this one may be the most likely to win readers’ hearts as well. —Adrian Liang, Amazon Book Review

Review

"It's a glorious fantasy, set in that most imaginary of cities, New York. It's inclusive in all the best ways, and manages to contain both Borges and Lovecraft in its fabric, but the unique voice and viewpoint are Jemisin's alone."―Neil Gaiman

"The City We Became takes a broad-shouldered stand on the side of sanctuary, family and love. It's a joyful shout, a reclamation and a call to arms."―The New York Times

"Jemisin is now a pillar of speculative fiction, breathtakingly imaginative and narratively bold."―Entertainment Weekly

"A love letter, a celebration and an expression of hope and belief that a city and its people can and will stand up to darkness, will stand up to fear, and will, when called to, stand up for each other."

―NPR

"The City We Became is a raucous delight, a joyride, a call-to-arms, a revolution with plenty of dancing. Eat your heart out, Lovecraft."―Alix E. Harrow, author of The Ten Thousand Doors of January

"Some of the most exciting and powerful fantasy writing of today... Jemisin's latest will attract ... even those who don't typically read genre fiction."―Booklist (starred review)

"The most important speculative writer of her generation...She's that good."―John Scalzi

"A love/hate song to and rallying cry for the author's home of New York... Fierce, poetic, uncompromising."―Kirkus (starred review)

"The City We Became is a wonderfully inventive love letter to New York City that spans the multiverse. A big middle finger to Lovercraft with a lot of heart, creativity, smarts and humor. A timely and audacious allegorical tale for our times. This book is all these things and more."―Rebecca Roanhorse, author of Trail of Lightning

"N. K. Jemisin has captured the living, breathing soul of New York City in a way that only a writer of her skill can. The City We Became is a masterpiece that plays by no rules-beautiful, musical, joyfully weird, and as impossibly fantastical as it is deeply true."―Peng Shepherd, author of The Book of M

"Without a doubt, one of the most brilliant books I have ever had the honor of reading. An homage to New York City, packed with all its love and harshness, and so incredibly inventive that I felt my own imagination and the boundaries of what fantasy can be expand."―S. A. Chakraborty, author of City of Brass

"The greatest fantasy novelist currently writing turns her magnificent eye and ear and heart on New York City, and the result is every bit as full of love and rage and crazy compelling characters as my beloved city deserves."―Sam J. Miller, Nebula-Award-Winning author of Blackfish City

"One of the most celebrated new voices in epic fantasy."―Salon.com

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Orbit; First Edition (March 24, 2020)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 448 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0316509841
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0316509848
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.48 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6.4 x 1.85 x 9.9 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #46,559 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #1,977 in Fantasy Action & Adventure
- #2,648 in Paranormal & Urban Fantasy (Books)
- #3,803 in Literary Fiction (Books)

Customer Reviews:
4.3 7,215 ratings

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N. K. Jemisin

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N. K. Jemisin is a Brooklyn author who won the Hugo Award for Best Novel for The Fifth Season, which was also a New York Times Notable Book of 2015. She previously won the Locus Award for her first novel, The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, and her short fiction and novels have been nominated multiple times for Hugo, World Fantasy, and Nebula awards, and shortlisted for the Crawford and the James Tiptree, Jr. awards. She is a science fiction and fantasy reviewer for the New York Times, and you can find her online at nkjemisin.com.

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Shay C

Everyone should read this masterpiece

Reviewed in the United States on January 20, 2024

Verified Purchase

What good does it do to be valuable, if nobody values you? - Chapter 1

Severe, brutal, blatant commentary on society, racism, prejudice, the default nature of humanity to form cliques and to hell with those unlike you. And at the same time, full of unfettered joy and unrestrained pride and the beauty of humanity in all their flaws and triumphs. Unique in story and also so familiar in other ways that I found myself laughing out loud even as I had tears on my cheeks from the truth of the words. If you've ever been to New York, you'll feel the pulse of the city in every word of this book, and if you haven't, you'll still feel it because that pulse can be found in all cities, in all towns, in all groups of people. This book is every bit a glorious love letter to the city that never sleeps, and truly all cities and humanity itself. I've rarely read something this incredibly distinctive, with each character's voice so special in its own way. Yes, it will force you to confront your internal prejudice (and we've all got it, even you) and yes, it does not hide the message in some soft, easy metaphor. This is a clear, vibrant, loud call to arms, merciless in many ways as it shows the vitriol that minorities face, as well as the environments that foster and fuel and create that narrow minded culture that The Woman in White personified so well throughout this book. Truly a masterpiece and I'm so eager to read more by N K Jemisin now. Read this.

One person found this helpful

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LA in Dallas

New York City suffers from Dissociative Identity Disorder

Reviewed in the United States on October 23, 2022

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I have a problem that will make it difficult for me to appreciate The City We Became. I have never been able to see a city as a thing. I lived in Dallas, Texas, for 21 years. I remember the schools I studied at, Brookhaven Community College and Southern Methodist University. I remember the school I taught at, UT Southwestern Medical Center. I remember the hospital area of Dallas, Harry Hines Boulevard and the businesses and institutions along it. I remember the functionally nonexistent public transport. I remember the highways -- I-635 circling the city, east-west roads I-30 and 114 and north-south roads 75 and the Tollway crossing to form the crosshair whose bullseye was Downtown Dallas, and I-35 striking out diagonally toward Denton and Houston. I remember the velocitous terror of driving through the Mixmaster at 60 mph, hoping not to be flung off in some random direction. I remember timing my trip home in the evening so as to see the reflection of the sunset from the prismatic skyscrapers of Downtown. I remember the Arts District and the Symphony screaming, "See? We are TOO sophisticated and artistic!" I remember the gay bars of the Oak Lawn district (never been inside one, but even from the outside they were something!), and the complaints from folks who spent an evening partying in Deep Ellum.

What makes no sense to me, however, is to throw all these things into a bag together and call them "Dallas". Partly, of course, that is because I sense how much is missing -- how much of Dallas I (or any one person) did not appreciate because of who I am and what I do. But it's more that those are separate things -- they don't combine into an identity. If you asked me to compare New York to Dallas, I would scarcely know how to start. It's like being asked to compare the Atlantic Ocean to Shakespeare's Hamlet -- it just doesn't make any sense to me.

**N.K. Jemisin has entered the chat **

NKJ: Hey there, L. I'm not a *bleep*ing idiot. I'm 'way ahead of you. Your objection is basically the whole premise of the book. As the publisher's blurb says, "Every great city has a soul... She's got six." Besides -- Dallas -- Pfft. Doesn't have a soul and never will.

L: Yeah, OK. I admit you did in some degree anticipate my point, even though you dumbed it down. I don't buy that the Bronx, for instance, is a single thing.

NKJ: I have a story to tell. There's not space for every *bleep*ing last real-world detail.

L: Fair enough.

A book like this inevitably lives or dies by its portrayal of The City. I am ill-equipped to judge Jemisin's New York, for reasons already described. I wish now I could ask my Aunt Althea's opinion. Aunt Althea was a nurse in Europe in World War II. She came home to the USA, where she worked at Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center on Manhattan for many years. Besides saving lives, she read and read and read. If she were still available for consultation I would ask her, "Have you read The City We Became? [A mere formality -- of course she'd have read it.] What did you think?" In a way, though, she pre-answered the question. She gave us Winter's Tale by Mark Helprin, another novel that personifies the soul of New York.

Our world is desperately cruel and beautiful. Consequently, so too are its cities. It is inevitable in novels such as City We Became and Winter's Tale that the cruelty of The City becomes evident. Helprin's New York differs from Jemisin in making beauty and joy more prominent. Helprin's portrayal is also more explicitly historical, and also more white. City We Became shows a side of New York that is difficult to discern in Winter's Tale.

I think Aunt Althea would have liked it.

16 people found this helpful

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Callum

One of the Best Books of the Year

Reviewed in the United States on March 28, 2020

Verified Purchase

It’s 4 a.m. and I just finished The City We Became. I can’t remember the last time I stayed up in to the early hours of the morning to finish a book. I’ve never purposely drank an energy drink at 11 p.m. to make sure this happens, but The City We Became deserved it because it is simply one of my favorite books I’ve ever read.

Let me back up and give a quick synopsis for the book before we dive in to the review:

Five New Yorkers must come together in order to defend their city in the first book of a stunning new series by Hugo award-winning and NYT bestselling author N. K. Jemisin. Every city has a soul. Some are as ancient as myths, and others are as new and destructive as children. New York City? She’s got five. But every city also has a dark side. A roiling, ancient evil stirs beneath the earth, threatening to destroy the city and her five protectors unless they can come together and stop it once and for all.

This book excels on every front: it has characters that are simultaneously totally real and complete stereotypes of the boroughs they represent. It has such solid world building in its use of NYC, you can see the sights, smell the streets, feel the living, breathing city ooze off the pages. The plot is such a great tale of unification, a celebration of a city but also just humans as a whole, of the strength of evil and what it takes to overcome it. The writing is, of course with N.K. Jemisin, of the highest caliber.

This book is a legitimate piece of art. It’s heart and soul are bared for the world to see and it absolutely shines. What has been crafted and so tightly, excellently written here is nothing short of brilliance. There have been so very few books that have left me with this feeling, I can’t even think of what the last one was.

There is so so much I want to say about this book. The use of diverse, real people in a city like NYC is entirely perfect and fitting but stands out for how well written and used they are, especially when their nemesis brings out the alt-right, shitty racist cops and gentrification as a form of its evil. The evils that really face NYC and, to an extent, all big cities in real life are superbly used and fit in to the narrative effectively. There’s a sequence towards the end of the book – around the 75% mark – that by total coincidence feels oddly prescient of current conditions with Covid19. You know no one could have seen this coming but, like, how is it so scarily accurate? And it just feels wonderful to say I finally feel like someone has given Lovecraft and all his horrible racist views the justice and send off he deserves.

Something small but also super awesome I wanted to point out that shows the level of care and craft Jemisin has put in to this novel – the one character from England, Bel, is so realistically written. Jemisin has him using language and slang I haven’t heard since I was a kid living in England, and it was surreal to see it so accurately used. I’ve read plenty of English authors who haven’t used slang so well.

I honestly don’t know where to go with this review from here other than to say to anyone at all that may read this: please please please go buy this book. It is absolutely astonishing and wonderful and you won’t regret a second of the time you spend with it. It is one of my personal favorite books I’ve ever had the pleasure of reading. I will be talking to anyone and everyone I can about this story for a long, long time to come.

29 people found this helpful

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Kindle Customer

NK Jemisin is a genius

Reviewed in the United States on December 3, 2023

Verified Purchase

She revived my interest in epic fantasy. I never need to read another fantasy involving princelings in cloaks wielding swords. I'm just Over It with fantasy worlds built on European medieval fantasies. Jemisin is absolutely original, surprising, and inspiring. I'll read anything she writes, usually multiple times. Buy this book, y'all, then go buy all of her other books.

3 people found this helpful

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Top reviews from other countries

Christina

Wonderfully creative, hard to put down

Reviewed in Canada on December 2, 2022

Verified Purchase

The author does a fantastic job of capturing the 'personalities' of NYC's boroughs (not forgetting Jersey City! ) It was great to read a book that inspired my brain to work at picturing what was written. It is so darn interesting and creative I was happy to do the work.

Ana Carolina

Wow

Reviewed in Brazil on August 18, 2021

Verified Purchase

This book was amazing. I wanted to get in there and hug all the boroughs, and I got to understand New York better because of Jemesin's work (stuff that I, as a Brazilian had seen in movies depicting NY, but hadn't made sense until now) and the story was thrilling. One of the best openings that I've read, the development was great, and I was screaming at the end (my grandmother was in the room with me, she was very puzzled by this). Also, her depiction of São Paulo was great. Not perfect, but still fantastic and the best representation of anything Brazilian that I've seen in American media. (I'm from São Paulo)

3 people found this helpful

mrls

Boooooorrrrriiinnngggg

Reviewed in France on March 1, 2023

Verified Purchase

Took me 1 full month to reach the end of that one.. no story, no character, nothing. Jemslin at her worse.

One person found this helpful

Benjamin Dittes

A wild, poetic ride

Reviewed in Germany on October 6, 2021

Verified Purchase

Just like the city it describes, the book pulls you in and doesn't let you go till the end. Masterfully woven, a many-layered love letter to New York.

2 people found this helpful

Emm Campero

Amazing

Reviewed in Mexico on July 8, 2020

Verified Purchase

It's been a while since if felt this elated after finishing a book. I felt that Ive learned a lot, I got entertained, shocked, excited , giddy, betrayed and more. I will be waiting patiently for the next installment.

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