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The City We Became

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The City We Became

By: N. K. Jemisin
Narrated by: Robin Miles
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About this listen

Winner of Best Fantasy at the Audie Awards.

Winner of the BSFA Award for Best Novel.

Shortlisted for the Hugo Awards.

Nominated for the Nebula Awards.

Five New Yorkers must band together to defend their city in the first book of a stunning new series by Hugo award-winning and New York Times best-selling author N. K. Jemisin.

Every city has a soul. Some are as ancient as myths and others are as new and destructive as children. New York City? She's got five.

But every city also has a dark side. A roiling, ancient evil stirs beneath the earth, threatening to destroy the city and her five protectors unless they can come together and stop it once and for all.

©2020 N. K. Jemisin (P)2020 Hachette Audio UK Fantasy Fiction City Paranormal

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Critic reviews

"A glorious fantasy, set in that most imaginary of cities, New York." (Neil Gaiman on The City We Became)

"The most celebrated science fiction and fantasy writer of her generation...Jemisin seems able to do just about everything." (New York Times)

"Jemisin is now a pillar of speculative fiction, breathtakingly imaginative and narratively bold." (Entertainment Weekly)
All stars
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I need more cities and their personhoods 🥺🥺🥺
it was just so incredibly good in every way

just excellent

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Best N. K. Jemisin yet, what a ride, makes me want to go back to NYC, despite the interdemetional threats in this book!

Amazing story, can't wait for the next one!

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I don’t always love urban fantasy, but I loved this - just as I’ve loved everything else written by the amazing author.

The narrator was fantastic and at least to my uneducated British ear did a great job of bringing the different characters and their accents to life.

Can’t wait for credit day to get the sequel.

Fantastic!

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I've never really enjoyed any urban fantasy but love N.K. Jemisin so thought I'd give it a whirl. Unfortunately not even the mighty NKJ could persuade me otherwise. I found the characters a little stereotypical but then that was kind of the point so I can't really criticize there. Dunno, I just found the lack of nuance in any of it a bit disatisfying.

Mostly a very good range of vocal characterisations but a couple that didn't work for me. Have to say though that Robin Miles managed to make the characters instantly identifyable which most of the female narrators I've listened to find tricky so she gets two thumbs up for that.

Not sure.

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Wicked. Wicked. Wicked.

This ambition and scale of this epic is breathtaking. The muscular flex of imagination was comparable to a Ms Universe contest. Oh, and the performance by Robin Miles is stunning.

The germ of this idea features in ‘How Long Til Black History Month’ (as available on Audible) and hearing it I was blown away. I then knew it was to be my first foray into Jemisin’s work. So check that out too.

N. K. Jemisin and Robin Miles are like Clark Kent and Superman, and if you understand the mythos you’ll get it. Great job ladies! ☝🏿

Phf’k yeah!

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I really enjoyed this book. So incredibly evocative of New York it made me want to book a holiday immediately. I imagine if you're a love of the place you would adore the book. It made me pine for one about my favourite city (Paris). The characters are well rounded, interesting (and pleasingly diverse). The story rattles along like a subway train, I suspect this is one I'll want to revisit in a few years too. Special mention for the OUTSTANDING narration, easily one of the best read audiobooks I've ever listened to.

Enjoyable and evocative. Superlative narration

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I first read the book and then listened to Robin Miles' narration. I love the wonderful mix of accents, the vocal variety and mix of tempo and pace. It's a fantastic exploration of the rich source text.

Brilliant

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This book is aimed at New Yorkers only for the description of the city from many angle. The story is non sensical. It feels like a long fable of heavy moral, in a manicean setting

For New Yorkers only

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I'm absolutely amazed by both this novel and performance. The narration, voice modulation and audio effects made this whole experience extra dramatic and full of action. And the story is fantastic, just a pure eldritch horror but upgrated to modern standard. I also now very little about New York but I found I still enjoyed immensely.

The Best Way To Do Urban Fantasy

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Robin Miles narrates this beautifully, dropping in and out of characters from all over New York, and further afield, with perfection. The audiobook itself also has some lovely production touches - music, distortions - that really add to the story. Which is a good thing, because for me, that's where this is weaker.

It's conceptually tricky - 5 main characters (too many to really connect with them deeply) wake up to find themselves as avatars of the NY boroughs they come from: Manhattan, Brooklyn, the Bronx, Queens and Staten Island. They ARE cities in human bodies, and must work together to fend off an attack from a metaphysical Lovecraftian invader, whose presence is very nicely described, and whose attack signals the "birth" of NY as a city in itself. Some parts of this conflict are very effectively written, where others seem to flash by in a moment with hardly any peril to speak of.

Thematically there are some interesting elements - gentrification, racial tension, confronting mistakes from the past - but they're all given quite short shrift in the big fantasy of it all, and I found myself struggling to know what the overall point was. I liked Vanessa as a character though, so was happy with the ending she got.

Don't think I'll persist with this Jemisin series, but I must get back to the Broken Earth series...

Great audio production & voice acting, story not so much

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