{"id":9980,"date":"2023-09-11T08:00:00","date_gmt":"2023-09-11T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/?p=9980"},"modified":"2023-09-10T17:29:41","modified_gmt":"2023-09-10T21:29:41","slug":"the-world-we-make","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/2023\/09\/11\/the-world-we-make\/","title":{"rendered":"The World We Make."},"content":{"rendered":"\n

N.K. Jemisin\u2019s The World We Make<\/a><\/em> is the conclusion to the series she began with 2020\u2019s Hugo-nominated The City We Became<\/a><\/em>, which was a mild surprise since it seemed like this was a longer series in the making. (I thought it was supposed to be a trilogy, but I can\u2019t find a reference to that, although there are interviews with Jemisin where she discusses how real-world events overtook her plans for the series<\/a>.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When last we saw our five heroes, the human avatars of New York City and the four boroughs that matter, they were preparing for some sort of showdown with Woman in White, also known as R\u2019lyeh, the destroyer of worlds, who has gotten her long white tentacles into Aislyn, the living avatar of Staten Island, which the authorities could just build a bridge over to get me from Jersey to Brooklyn and I\u2019d be completely fine with it. Anyway, the five good avatars are trying to navigate the new world in which they inhabit, as they\u2019d been previously unaware of the fact that cities were alive and could coopt humans to serve as their living embodiments, while they\u2019re also dealing with some sort of multidimensional enemy they know they can hold off but can\u2019t defeat without help.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In The World We Make<\/em>, however, we start to hear from other cities, as a couple of their avatars visit New York and also engage in clandestine meetings in a dimension beyond our own to discuss the fate of our world and maybe some others as well. The real gift of this novel, however, isn\u2019t the plot, which can be fun and has a fair amount of action but also largely goes where you\u2019d expect it to go, is the characterization of all of the boroughs and a few of the cities as well. Jemisin has created a world that\u2019s as diverse and lively as New York City itself across all demographics, a multidimensional cast of characters with interconnecting relationships within the quintet and with people outside of it \u2013 a daughter, a boss, another city \u2013 that keeps the book moving even while the core plot with R\u2019lyeh is still in neutral.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The story slows down when we get to Aislyn, the walking stereotype of the Staten Islander who is afraid of Manhattan to the point that she\u2019s never gone there. Imagine growing up a ferry ride away from (sings in Hamilton) the greatest city in the world, and you never go there for your entire childhood and at least a few years of adulthood. I knew people like that growing up on Long Island, but at least there you could argue that it was an hour away by car, a little more by train, and that\u2019s not much of an excuse but taking the Staten Island Ferry is easier than taking the LIRR and it\u2019s free. She throws her lot in with R\u2019lyeh\/The Woman in White, because foreign is bad, more or less, which isn\u2019t a criticism of Jemisin but of the world in which we live, where fear and ignorance led 70 million Americans to vote for Donald Trump. Their interactions are just not that interesting compared to the lively, fun interplay between the characters on the good side of things, or compared to some of the badass action sequences (the one with Brooklyn and the chop shop particularly stands out as some brilliant action writing, a car chase as exciting as anything in Baby Driver<\/em> but without Ansel Elgort to drag it all down).<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n <\/script> \n \n\n\n\n

It turns out that R\u2019lyeh\u2019s battle against the New Yorkers (sans Staten Island, but that\u2019s basically Jersey anyway) is just a tiny front in a multi-dimensional war where the fate of this specific instance of the universe hangs in the balance, so, yes, it\u2019s up to the four boroughs and the city itself to save the universe from the destroyer of worlds. Jemisin\u2019s trying to set the stakes high enough to keep up the narrative greed, but I never actually believed that the universe would end in the book, and kept waiting for the story to get back to the Furious Five. R\u2019lyeh\u2019s reasons are not that interesting; Aislyn\u2019s are, although she\u2019s such an obvious proxy for the sort of white Trump voters that the New York Times<\/em> loves to interview in a midwestern diner that her story arc also fails to garner the same interest or connection that the other four boroughs get.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jemisin has commented in a few places about how real-world events overtook her plans for the series, however long it was supposed to be, and that turned what seemed like it would be an ass-kicking sci-fi series into more of a fun adventure story about a makeshift family and a love letter to New York, or at least the four-fifths of it that count. That still makes for an enjoyable, quick read, but I\u2019m grading Jemisin on a curve here, and I just wanted more from the sequel given how much I loved the first book.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Next up: I just finished R.F. Kuang\u2019s Yellowface<\/a><\/em> and have started Ann Patchett\u2019s latest novel, Tom Lake<\/a><\/em>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

N.K. Jemisin\u2019s The World We Make is the conclusion to the series she began with 2020\u2019s Hugo-nominated The City We Became, which was a mild surprise since it seemed like this was a longer series in the making. (I thought it was supposed to be a trilogy, but I can\u2019t find a reference to that, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9980","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","entry"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9980","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9980"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9980\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9981,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9980\/revisions\/9981"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9980"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9980"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9980"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}