The City We Became by NK Jemisin review – a fizzing New York fantasy

Hideous apparitions attack NYC, as Jemisin has ‘a little monstrous fun’ after the Broken Earth saga

NK Jemisin is now such a major figure in science fiction and fantasy, it’s remarkable to think that her first novel was published only 10 years ago. Her ascendency has been as rapid as it has been deserved. All three titles in her Broken Earth trilogy – 2015’s The Fifth Season, 2016’s The Obelisk Gate and 2017’s The Stone Sky – won the Hugo award for best novel, an unprecedented achievement. Today she is certainly the most important fantasy writer of her generation; all of which means that major excitement surrounds The City We Became, her first novel since Broken Earth.

The problem is that buzz can build unrealistic expectations and lead thereby to anticlimax. Broken Earth is a work of extraordinary scope and grandeur, written with apocalyptic energy and verve, a story that moves mountains. In interviews Jemisin has described her new book as “my chance to have a little monstrous fun after the weight of the Broken Earth saga”, which is perhaps by way of dialling down expectations. And there is certainly fun to be had in The City We Became, though I suspect that native New Yorkers will have more fun than out-of-towners.

In Jemisin’s New York, the villains are the cops and corporations, and heroism is the bailiwick of ordinary citizens

Related: NK Jemisin: 'It’s easier to get a book set in black Africa published if you're white'

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