Thank you to Little Brown Book Group UK, Orbit and Netgalley for the review copy in exchange for an honest review. This does not change my opinion in anyway.
Book: The World We Make (Great Cities 2) by N.K. Jemisin
Release Date: November 1st 2022
Tags: Adult | Urban Fantasy | New York | M/M Relationship
Other books in this series I reviewed
The City We Became
All is not well in the city that never sleeps. Even though the avatars of New York City have temporarily managed to stop the Woman in White from invading—and destroying the entire universe in the process—the mysterious capital “E” Enemy has more subtle powers at her disposal. A new candidate for mayor wielding the populist rhetoric of gentrification, xenophobia, and “law and order” may have what it takes to change the very nature of New York itself and take it down from the inside.
In order to defeat him, and the Enemy who holds his purse strings, the avatars will have to join together with the other Great Cities of the world in order to bring her down for good and protect their world from complete destruction.
The World We Make was one of my most anticipated reads of 2022 so I am sad to say that I was somewhat dissapointed by this book.
In this sequel we continue on in the struggle the New York avatars have with the white woman and her influence on the politics of it all. Aislynn is still friends with the white woman and it damages the hold the others have on New York.
I’ll be honest and say that I read the first three chapters and then apparently skipped to chapter 15 or so. I did not notice I skipped 12 chapters of the story. They were talking about the summit and then they were at the summit. The fact that I was not all confused and just read on (only noticing that I accidentally skipped a good portion a few chapters later) doesn’t speak well for the story. Of course I went back to see what I missed. It didn’t feel like a lot.
Jemisin herself admits that she was done with this story, turning it from a trilogy to a duology in the afterword. And I think that it kind of shows. The heart of the characters and story felt missing for me.
Having said that, I do think the basics of the story and how it wraps up works for the story. And once I am over my dissapointment I will revisit this duology and read it in one go. Because it still holds a special place in my heart regardless.
A Dance With Books 
I’m still waiting for Hoopla or my Library to get the audiobooks of this duology. I requested the first one last August, but they never purchased it. I’m going to look again to see if Hoopla has gotten it. They did have a short story about a character from this series that I listened to, but I didn’t much care for her writing style. Thanks for sharing your thoughts. ☺
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Yeah that story was written before she wrote the actual duology 🙂
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I really liked the short story this started as, but I haven’t read either novel yet. (I do own book one already, so I’ll get to it sooner or later.) I was curious how long the series was going to be, though—I guess this answers that question! 😉
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I loved the first book but this just didn’t seem to match up.
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