The World We Make

Product Information

The World We Make is the second and final installment of the Great Cities duology, a gloriously weird SFF story of a group of seemingly random New Yorkers slammed together as they are transformed into the living avatars of their multifarious city just in time to fight for their very survival. Some of the most exciting and powerful fantasy writing of today...Jemisin's latest will attract...even those who don't typically read genre fiction." ― Booklist (starred review)

In The World We Make, a city’s soul is represented by an individual resident who becomes its avatar. New York City has an avatar, as does each of its five boroughs (and Jersey City, an honorary sixth borough). The avatars embody New York in all its multicultural glory, representing a wide spectrum of gender, race, religion, ethnic and linguistic origin, sexual orientation, political engagement, domicile, education, and class positions—a rebuke to the many stories about NYC that erase people of color. Insisting on a monochromatic story, however, is The Woman In White, the avatar of R’lyeh, an extra-dimensional city invading our world. R’lyeh is one of H. P. Lovecraft’s most famous creations, a lost city housing a demon seeking to obliterate humankind. Phantasmagoric battles are waged between the avatars and regular New Yorkers on one side and The Woman In White and her legions of monsters on the other. The City We Becametakes a broad-shouldered stand on the side of sanctuary, family and love. It's a joyful shout, a reclamation and a call to arms." ― The New York Times Jemisin, in this book as much as the first, lays bare the racism, sexism, inequities and unfairness of our world, but also uplifts so many cultures and communities. For many passages, you’re either nodding knowingly or learning something new.

And you know what other author displayed those exact same flaws when he wrote? HP Lovecraft. If you *like* incomprehensible ancient tentacled horrors from beyond the realm of spacetime and you're able to forgive Lovecraft, you have to forgive Jemisin. From the record-breaking, four-time Hugo Award-winning N. K. Jemisin comes 'a glorious fantasy' (Neil Gaiman) - a story of culture, identity, magic and myths in contemporary New York City. The sequel to the critically acclaimed The City We Became, this is the final book of the Great Cities Duology. New York City isn’t the only sentient city in The World We Make. All the large cities of the world (except American cities for reasons that eventually are revealed) have avatars. The older cities form a cantankerous, stubborn oversight committee of sorts that sort of governs the sentient cities. They have a system where the previous youngest city mentors the current youngest city. This way the old cranky cities don’t have to deal with young avatars as they learn the ins and outs of being a sentient city. The older cities really don’t like being bothered by the younger cities. When New York City tries to ask for help because the enemy is still harassing them, the old cities basically say “your problem, leave us alone”. An interconnected world the pacing is weird. you can tell it's a chopped down version of two books. it's crowded, and though each subplot is resolved coherently, the resolutions are usually abrupt.

New York City tries hard to deal with the Woman in White on their own but eventually, two things become clear. The first is that they can’t do it on their own. The second is that it is definitely not just “their problem”. If the other cities cannot get over their elitism and listen then the whole world is in danger. Four-time Hugo Award-winning and New York Times bestselling author N.K. Jemisin crafts a glorious tale of identity, resistance, magic and myth. Jemisin also helps readers understand the fears and motivations of New York’s opponents, specifically the avatar of Staten Island, whose betrayal of the city is a central theme. Several of the most poignant scenes in the book revolve around the Staten Island avatar’s tortured realization that her decisions are harmful in a chapter entitled “The Pizza of Existential Despair” and her growing awareness that many of her neighbors exclude iconic Staten Island creative forces like the Wu-Tang Clan. Jemisin even takes pity on The Woman In White, who is herself merely the tool of big bosses at the sterile, Brutalist core of the multiverse, and who may desire the very creativity she works to destroy. As always, Jemisin's writing is visionary and immersive...[Jemisin is] a science-fiction/fantasy GOAT." ― GQ

My eyes search for people who are and who have the kind of light that provides the present and the future with hope.’ The painting ‘Kingdom’ (2022), showing a young child at the top of a slide, both asks us to look positively at future generations whilst reminding us of the transient nature of childhood and the vulnerabilities inherent to it. The title of the exhibition, ‘The World We Make’, is a meditation on, as Sherald says, the fact that ‘as we walk beyond what we have been living through, we have a world to remake’, a message that at once contains hope, while suggesting there is work to be done. But the battle from book one isn’t done. The enemy, appearing to the avatars as a Woman in White, is still there, and she’s gaining power. Can New York survive? Will other awakened cities agree to help? And what if she’s not the only foe they must fear? The World We Make focuses on the newly born city of New York City. With all its different boroughs, seven different avatars were chosen: The Bronx, Brooklyn, Manhattan, Jersey City, Staten Island, Queens, and NYC itself. Of these seven, six come together to protect New York, and one, Staten Island, breaks away and sequesters herself on her island. Initially, this seems unimportant to the other avatars but eventually, it becomes a much bigger problem. Fighting to exist in The World We Make