Book links: Amazon, Goodreads

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: N. K. Jemisin is a Brooklyn author who won the Hugo Award for Best Novel for The Fifth Season, which was also a New York Times Notable Book of 2015. She previously won the Locus Award for her first novel, The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, and her short fiction and novels have been nominated multiple times for Hugo, World Fantasy, and Nebula awards, and shortlisted for the Crawford and the James Tiptree, Jr. awards. She is a science fiction and fantasy reviewer for the New York Times, and you can find her online at nkjemisin.com.

Publisher: Orbit Page count: 368 Formats: audiobook, ebook, paperback

I really liked The City We Became, so I went into The World We Make expecting another winner. Unfortunately, this one didn't quite get there for me. That sounds harsher than I mean it to. I still enjoyed the book, but I never loved it the way I loved the first one.

The core idea remains fantastic. Cities with souls and avatars must face up to cosmic horror, politics, culture, and identity. New York is fighting back against forces that would rather see diversity, creativity, and humanity replaced with something sterile and hateful. N.K. Jemisin's affection for the city comes through in every page. You can practically hear the noise, smell the food, and feel the collective exasperation of millions of people trying to get through another Tuesday.

The cast is still fun, too. I liked spending time with the borough avatars again, especially Padmini. And I appreciated that Staten Island's avatar wasn't given some neat redemption arc. 

My problem is mostly with the pacing. A lot of the book feels condensed, like there was supposed to be much more story here. Which, as it turns out, there was. Jemisin originally planned a trilogy, but the series became a duology, and I could feel that while reading. Some relationships don't get enough space. Certain ideas are introduced and then rushed along before they have a chance to breathe. There are moments that feel less like scenes and more like bullet points for scenes that never got written.

I also missed some of the energy of the first book. Several conflicts play out in familiar ways, and a few action sequences gave me a strange sense of déjà vu. The stakes are bigger, but somehow the story itself feels smaller.

That said, I still had fun. The comic horror elements remain strange. There are giant cosmic threats, impossible cities, weird metaphysical battles, and enough New York attitude to fuel a small country. Some of the ideas involving other cities and the wider universe left me wishing we'd gotten that third book after all. Maybe that's my biggest complaint. The World We Make doesn't feel bad,  just  unfinished.

Not every sequel lives up to the first book. This one certainly didn't for me. But I'm still glad I read it. The Great Cities duology remains one of the more original things I've come across in recent years, and I'll happily read whatever Jemisin decides to do next.