The World We Make

This is the second and final volume in The Great Cities duology. I really enjoyed The City We Became (although I am not a New Yorker to know how any of that landed), but this book just doesn't feel as tightly written and as solid as the first.

Jemisin gets at this in the acknowledgements after the book. US politics and covid caused plot wranglings, and what was intended to be a trilogy got smushed into a duology to at least get it done. I feel like you can this compression in the book itself. The boroughs don't really get much character development. I wanted to see more of the other cities.

The ending itself was quite satisfying to wrap everything up, but the path to get there felt rushed.

Not quite as good as "The City We Became". The concept of city avatars can only be stretched so far, I guess. We get to meet a few more cities - which is cool but sometimes verges on stereotype. The political aspects aren't as poignant as in the first book and feel somewhat derivative and unsubtle. But it all comes together really well in the end.