SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: The World We Make by NK Jemisin

 

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: The World We Make by NK Jemisin: https://t.co/ZwJp8e7ppB

Short Review: 8 out of 10 -The sequel to The City We Became concludes the story as the avatars of New York City search for allies to fight against the Woman in White & her outside city, as...
1/3

— Josh (garik16) (@garik16) December 22, 2022

Short Review (cont): the Woman uses new plans to destroy the uniqueness of NYC, like a mayoral candidate who wants to make the city "Great Again"...for white people like himself of course. Unsubtle but very good, although a bit rushed due to the shift to a duology.
2/3

— Josh (garik16) (@garik16) December 22, 2022

The World We Make is the conclusion to NK Jemisin's Great Cities Duology*, which began two years ago with her "The City We Became" (itself an expansion of her short story, The City Born Great). Jemisin is one of my favorite writers, with more perfect score books from me (The Stone Sky, The Broken Kingdoms, and The Kingdom of Gods) than any other writer. Add in the fact that The City We Became and this series eschewed the normal secondary worlds Jemisin has thrived in for a magic filled and Lovecraftian-assaulted version of New York City, and well - this New York native could not be more primed to enjoy this series. And The City We Became was very good as it showcased the personifications of the various boroughs of New York City fighting against a Lovecraftian other - a "Woman in White" - who is trying to get them to conform and standardize (from the perspective of a White person of course) before their originality can emerge as one power, even if it didn't quite hit the marks of Jemisin's earlier works for me.

*This was originally marketed as a trilogy but was condensed for reasons I might discuss later into a duology*

The World We Make continues the story of the boroughs, now aided by the general avatar of the City (named Neek), as it faces new threats - such as a mayor who preaches the return to a time that never was when the city was "Great" or foreign forces who want to change the conception of the City to what they see in their own fears - as well as new plots by the Lovecraftian Woman in White. Once again the story is hardly subtle, but it works real well, even as it weaves in more concepts, more things ripped straight from our own lives, and the reactions of other personified Cities around the globe who should band together with New York but often refuse to admit the danger. Jemisin again ends this on a hopeful note, one that is very satisfying, even as she portrays a ton of evils that you'll recognize in our own world, and makes clear how difficult fighting this enemy can be (although perhaps the conclusion and things are a bit too rushed for this to be as good as it might otherwise be).

---------------------------------Plot Summary--------------------------------------

New York City has awoken, with its main avatar Neek now awake and healthy and its borough avatars all active and joined together, even the unexpected avatar of Jersey City. Except for one such avatar, Aislyn, the avatar of Staten Island, a place which has welcomed their enemy, the lovecraftian beings from beyond shepherded by the Women in White who seeks to destroy the City's individuality and lives in place of conformity, all for the sake of her own people's supposed survival. Now the monstrous enemy hangs just outside of the City, above Staten Island itself, where it wields its monstrous influence.

Its an influence that the avatars of New York City are ready to fight....except they know they will need help to win it. But when they reach out to other Cities that have awoken for health, they're often met with cold shoulders and a reluctance to believe that the enemy is a real sentient entity, one which threatens them all. And even worse, that the enemy has subtly manipulated its way into all of their Cities' societies, changing them slowly in accordance with its racist xenophobic wishes.

And then there's the newest threat, people who, even without the Women in White's influence, fear New York City as it truly is and want to recontextualize it to wipe out all its individuality so that they no longer have to feel that fear. These people and the Women together are somehow causing the Avatar's powers to fade out, and one of these people is running to be the next Mayor of New York City, where he could do untold damage to the real people who make NYC the great city it really is. To stop them all, the Avatars will need to come together like never before and find a way to fight unlike any City has ever done, and even that might not be enough when their own interpersonal baggage keeps rising to the surface....

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The World We Make is like its predecessor in that the story bounces around between the various avatars of New York City and its boroughs, with occasional interludes dealing perhaps with other Cities from around the world whom the NYC Avatars are petitioning for help. The story still isn't super subtle...and yet it does deal with a bit more subtlety kind of, as the newest threats faced by our good guys are the hate filled actions of others to reimagine New York City through the media, through organizations, and through politics (there's a combination Donald Trump-Eric Adams-esque mayor-like antagonist, who is a major presence here), as those outside forces attempt to weaken the City not by directly attacking it necessarily (although they do that) but by reimagining it as the monolithic horrible other they fear....rather than the diverse triumph of peoples of all stripes coming together it really is. And so the fight for our protagonists is even harder than before, because they're dealing with a campaign to change people's beliefs as much as they are dealing with a Lovecraftian-tentacle wielding horror. But naturally they're able to find ways to fight....for example, Veneza (Jersey City) is a skilled graphic designer, and Brooklyn is to her dismay not a bad politician.....

And the book deals with some ideas that are kind of new to some extent, like how the older more established Cities are more content once again to sit by and let New York City possibly fail (something that was touched on last book, but seen explicitly here), because they'd rather be in denial about the threat that affects all Cities than understand that their old ideas of how to fight and survive are no longer viable. Or how the ultimate destruction of a City might not come from a physical attack as much as a general forgetting and fading into obscelesence, such that no one remembers how that City was or how it used to exist as a vibrant society. And we have a really fascinating twist in the end about how all the chaos and conflict possibly could be stopped if those who hate the Cities, like New York City, could simply leave people alone within it to live in peace without them. These themes work really well together, leading to a satisfying conclusion.

There's also character moments between the avatars and other main characters, like Manny's struggle with his desire for Neek and Neek's difficulty admitting he's afraid to be in a relationship due to being hurt in the past (and Manny's struggle with his past that he wanted to put behind himy by forgetting it all). There's Brookyn's political campaign and fight for her City, as well as Padmini (Queens) struggling with being an immigrant on a work visa who finds her stay in the City jeopardized by immigration when her asshole white male tech company lays her off for refusing to let a White male colleague make a mistake that she noticed ahead of time. There's how it deals with Aislyn (Staten Island) and how she can really be a part of the City that she fears as a white (kind of indoctrinated and abused) girl from Staten Island who fears the outside. And of course there's the fight against the racist white cops, who attack not just the Avatars, but people like Bel, Manny's trans college roommate, who simply wants space to survive...and finds it in a group of Queer New Yorkers who fight back. This all works really well in general, as you'd expect from Jemisin.

It doesn't all work, and I think the book's biggest weakness is that some things were sacrificed as Jemisin converted this from a trilogy to a duology, as recent events made her feel unable to really want to write more in this setting with these themes. For example, the aforementioned Mayor is a serious threat in how he is running to take over the City in favor of racist fearmongering ideas, with the book making clear that he's not even a product of the Women in White's influence, but rather honestly a racist fearmongering power hungry jackass who spouts ideas that don't make sense for the purpose of increasing his influence via a cult of personality all the way to the Mayoral seat. And yet 2/3 of the way through the book he sort of drops out of the plot, as the protagonists deal directly with the Women in White and the power behind her, and when they defeat those forces, the evil Mayoral candidate just loses off page, as if he was entirely propped up by her as opposed to just supported like the early parts of the book portray. It's as if Jemisin didn't feel she could deal with this plotline, which touches very very close to home given the success of Eric Adams in the last mayoral race, and so she just shunted it to the side. And there's a bunch of things like that here, given short shaft so the book can wrap up all its threads.

The result is that The World We Make is a strong book that's still very relevant to today's world, but one that clearly had bigger ambitions it just doesn't live up to. So it's still very good, just a bit below Jemisin's incredibly high standard.