Reviews with content warning for Homophobia - The World We Make

A super fun conclusion to this epic story! I'll miss meeting all of the city avatars and watching New York fight an otherworldly entity that weaponizes hate, political unrest, and corporate stores. I feel like I wanted a little more from the ending than this whole Digimon-esque wrapup, but was not deebly disappointed.

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lilacs_book_bower's review against another edition

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challenging mysterious medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.0

I have to say that I didn't quite like this as much as The City We Became, but I still enjoyed it a lot. I feel like the villains got off a little too easy. And in a real world full of injustice, it would be nice to see justice served in fiction, but that is my moral code speaking. Aislyn is not likable in the first book and doesn't improve much here (which makes her an interesting character, but a bit harder to root for). This book felt lighter than the first one in content and action. My main complaint is I wanted more of the characters interacting. They are fun together! Things felt like they could have been fleshed out more. I really enjoyed seeing the other cities and the interesting revelation about Manny's family back in Chicago. It's such a fascinating conceit to have avatars for cities. If by some chance you have read this series, but not Jemisin's How Long 'Til Black Future Month?, the first story in that collection (which is excellent) is a prologue to this duology, where we see NYC being born. Well worth the read.

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thewildmageslibrary's review against another edition

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5.0

okay, wow. Didn't think this series could get any better, but yeah. I loved this so much.

Spoiler

You can't just bring up BEYONCE and then not address that again?? Or was I reading too fast and missed it?

Also, Manny's family KNEW about Cities?? AAAHHH.

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aileeniris's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional inspiring medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

5.0

NK Jemisin is one of my favorite authors. I love how she tells a story by building her characters and their worlds simultaneously. This duology is exactly what I hoped for, a tribute to the New York I love. It brought me home and reminded what I missed about the diversity and the strength of a city. I can’t express enough how much I enjoyed this.

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zone_a3's review against another edition

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challenging hopeful tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.0

Although I love Jemisin's body of work as a whole, and I enjoyed The City We Became, this book missed the mark for me. I understand and sympathize when the author's expressed difficulties in tackling this series' premise given the state of the real world at the time of writing, but I would be lying if I didn't acknowledge that it clearly negatively impacted the book.

While there were certainly elements I enjoyed, (every glimpse at other Cities was excellent), when I look back at this book and compare it to its prequel, its faults become very apparent.

Spoiler
In Book 1, there is clear, pervasive, present danger. In Book 2, any time danger starts cropping up, it is immediately resolved with no consequences.
Spoiler
In Book 1, a lot of effort is made to humanize all sides of the conflict. Jemisin makes it very clear that the villain doesn't "turn people evil", but rather people with certain (bigoted, hateful) beliefs are susceptible to evil influence. Useful idiots, if you will. If the villain disappeared in Book 1, many of the problems facing the heroes would persist. In Book 2, however, this nuance is completely gone. Useful idiots have been replaced with brainwashed zombies; and when the villain is defeated, it magically fixes all of the massive institutional problems the heroes were facing.
Spoiler
A large portion of the conflict in this book stems from mature (in many cases, literally multiple centuries old) adults deliberately failing to communicate. This is attempted to be justified, but I don't think it worked.
Spoiler
And of course there's the issue of pacing and the unavoidable plot rush of crunching a planned trilogy down into a single (significantly shorter) sequel. There just wasn't time to explore the ideas Jemisin had set up in Book 1 before Book 2 was over. It really felt like we gasped over the finish line; or maybe more accurately, we stopped short and just moved the finish line up.

I've been really harsh in the spoiler tags, so I want to pull back a bit and reiterate that the book does have good qualities; it just wasn't what I've come to look for from Jemisin as an author.

If you are largely discouraged/depressed by the state of the world, and want to have a bit of escapism to a version of reality where bad people get what's coming to them and evil is an external force which can be defeated, you'll probably have a good time with this book. If you prefer a more difficult, nuanced view of humanity and the nature of evil, with fewer clean, easy answers, you're probably better off sticking with Jemisin's other works.

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yourfavavery's review against another edition

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adventurous hopeful fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.5

So I loved this duology, mostly because it tackles difficult issues in a tangible way. It personifies both NYC and the outside forces trying to change the city, and shows how the city's traits (both kind and rude) are essential to its very nature. I live in DC, and want my city to have book too just to see how Jemisin would characterize us (I understand this won't happen lol).

The only note I have on this book is something the authors writes about in the acknowledgements. This series was originally meant to be a trilogy, and the ending feels a bit anticlimactic as a result. Apparently real life got a bit too close to fiction for Jemisin to continue with the plot she intended, which I totally understand.

Overall, if you want to read more speculative fiction this year, pick this series up! And then read Black Sun.

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grets_reads's review against another edition

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adventurous funny hopeful inspiring tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

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