Review: The City Born Great, by N. K. Jemisin

Great cities have souls.  If you’re alive to that kind of thing, you can feel it as you move from city to city.  And in time, Jemisin tells us, they begin to breathe, and think, and find their way into the world as living creatures.

There are enemies.  There are always enemies, but a great city will defeat them with the help of its chosen midwives, people who love their cities so much that they become a physical part of them.

It’s a beautiful idea, particularly if you live in a city you love, as I do. If you feel the rhythm of your city’s life and cherish it, and the people in it.  And Jemisin’s prose, though spare, spares us nothing of the fear, and hope, and joy of New York becoming a living city in the presence of Paris, Sao Paulo, and many others who gather there and await the birth.

It is a beautiful story.  I finished it and wanted to reread it immediately.  I didn’t.  It was late, I had two more Kindle singles to get through, and I was growing tired. But I know I will in the future, that’s how much I loved it.  Every time I read something by Nora Jemisin I recall again that she is a Hugo winner, and think, “Well of course.”