The City We Became: A Novel (The Great Cities Trilogy)

"This is by N.K. Jemisin. It’s from an original story that she had written which was then made into a book. It’s about the city breaking down its boroughs into avatars so someone gets to be the Bronx and someone gets to be Manhattan and someone gets to be Queens. So you have this opportunity to do a lot of vocal things that are very interesting. Robin Miles, the narrator, is the kind of person who goes around and gathers human experience and conversation. So she’ll meet someone and she might hear them talk and she’ll put that into her consciousness and use it later in a character. I think she really got to do a lot of that here, where she’s playing women and men from a variety of economic and racial backgrounds and she’s playing an avatar, so it’s like being online and having this persona. I wouldn’t say she’s over the top at all but she’s having a good time with these various characters. Get the weekly Five Books newsletter The book itself is dealing with New York and these struggles and fights New York is going through. It was written prior to COVID-19 but has a lot of parallel themes, of the city struggling with something. It was great listening. Again, it won in two categories because the text is awesome, the narration is awesome and you bring it together and suddenly you just can’t stop listening."