I don’t say this often, but I think this book above all merits it: read the Afterword first. I don’t say it to take readers’ eyes from the prior ninety-nine percent of a truly incredible novel. But in the Afterword, N.K. Jemisin provides the context for the whole book, and I find it difficult to discuss The World We Make without that context—the fictional narrative contained within is almost inextricable from the reality that shaped it, a world of pandemic and insurrection and violence.
The past few years and their trauma took a toll on Jemisin, as she discusses, and so this story changed from its inception, becoming different in shape, though not in spirit. And while it moved from a trilogy to a duology, collapsing into a story Jemisin was able and happy to tell in these tough times, in many ways The World We Make still celebrates what its predecessor did as well as the very forces that shaped its reimagining: sometimes shit happens. Sometimes the world blows up and not everything remains the same. But you fight. You keep moving. You deal with change the way you deal with anything: with love, with friends, with grit, some righteous rage.
And if that isn’t New York City, then I don’t know what is.
(Some spoilers for The City We Became)
It’s been three months since the events of The City We Became. NYC has awoken as one of the great cities, the burden of power shared by five avatars of the boroughs of NYC, with the city avatar Neek at their head. The mercurial and and powerful Manny, (Manhattan), former-rapper-turned-politician Brooklyn (Brooklyn, of course), curator and keeper of lore, Bronca, (The Bronx), brilliant polymath Padmini (Queens), and the newly-minted borough, the quick-thinking and youthful Vereza of Jersey City. The insular and terrified Aislyn (Staten Island) has been lost to the Woman in White, avatar of the Enemy, whose city is R’lyeh, and whose aim is to not just crush the great cities of our world, but all worlds.
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The World We Make
Like any good middle manager, the Woman in White has bosses she answers to, using modernized tactics to combat the growth of these sentient cities. It’s not just NYC that’s in trouble, but the whole world (and worlds, to get multiversal up in here). The Woman in White directs Proud Men and fascists, and sends tentacles into the minds of citizens, attempting to not just change the people of NYC but change the city’s very story—its essence. It’s time for NYC and the cities at large to push back every way they can.
This book is, by necessity, an ensemble narrative. In The City We Became, we had time to meet each of our avatars in the first book, see how they embodied and interacted with their own boroughs and each other, this time we’re focused on team NYC working together for the greater good. Jemisin is an undisputed master of her craft, so even with the compressed nature of this book, every avatar gets their own personal arc and story; she balances all of them deftly, weaving them through the story with expert precision. I only mean to say that we spend more time with them as a group in The World We Make, sacrificing a little more individual narrative depth overall for the sake of the story.
The person who does get the sorely needed screentime is Neek; while he remains a cipher in many ways (possibly because, hey, can NYC ever truly be known by anyone?), we get more glimpses into who he was before his awakening and how he’s been handling the whole avatar thing. I did love seeing him as a part of the group since he was sidelined in book one. The interactions he has between each avatar (especially Manny), both as city and person, was fascinating—I really hope Jemisin revisits him and this whole crew again.
In The World We Make, we meet other great cities, unique and wonderful and dangerous in their own ways, as the NYC crew tries to get each of them to pay attention to the looming threat of the Enemy. These sections in particular sing with Jemisin’s ability to breathe life and complexity into these characters—people that are cities, sketched in a handful of pages and gone. The larger narrative beyond these two books make me even more ravenous for more stories set here someday; watching all these ancient cities clash and chat and cause friction with not just NYC, but potentially a whole new wave of young cities in the Americas, is Jemisin at her very best.
The World We Make may be a compressed iteration of itself. A story so very close to home, about our world and its many real, layered, complex, and systemic problems, was never not going to be affected by those very things, nor the author envisioning them. But it is a testament to N. K. Jemisin’s talent and heart that she pushed herself to finish this saga of cities, to show a vision of a way the world could be, if indeed we can stand up to hate and fear and with community at our back and love in our hearts, and find a new way forward; as the title says, a world made by us, by hands working in concert. Though this novel and its author were affected by the trauma and pain of the last few years, the world is indeed better because this novel is in it and because Jemisin wrote it. It’s a beautiful and fitting narrative conclusion to the Great Cities story, and I urge you to go and read it now and follow its light toward a better tomorrow. And as a New Yorker, I will continue to live here, walk these avenues in joy, and feel the power of my city.
The World We Make is published by Orbit.
Martin Cahill is a writer living in Queens who works as the Marketing and Publicity Manager for Erewhon Books. He has fiction work forthcoming in 2021 at Serial Box, as well as Beneath Ceaseless Skies and Fireside Fiction. Martin has also written book reviews and essays for Book Riot, Strange Horizons, and the Barnes and Noble SF&F Blog. Follow him online at @mcflycahill90 and his new Substack newsletter, Weathervane, for thoughts on books, gaming, and other wonderfully nerdy whatnots.
