The City We Became
core novel 2020 The Great Cities Duology
Record
| First published | 2020 |
|---|---|
| Original language |  EN |
| Work type | novel |
| Canon status | core |
| Reader rating | 3.83 (81,017 ratings, collected 2026-09-13) |
| Page count | 437 |
| First-edition ISBN | 9780316509848 |
| Internal chronology | 1 |
Synopsis
The City We Became imagines that the great cities of the world are secretly alive, each protected by a human avatar once it becomes self-aware enough to need one, and that New York City's long-delayed birth is finally arriving. When the city stirs into consciousness, five ordinary New Yorkers, one for each borough, unexpectedly find themselves transformed into living avatars embodying Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, the Bronx, and Staten Island, each gaining strange new powers tied to their home turf. Before they can even understand what has happened to them, they discover the newborn city is already under assault from an ancient, reality-warping enemy that has destroyed other cities before they could fully wake, forcing this unlikely, mismatched group of strangers to find one another and work together if New York, and they themselves, are going to survive.
Where it sits
- Universe: The Great Cities Duology
- Series: The Great Cities core; position 1 of 2 in the series' recorded order
- Author: N.K. Jemisin
Awards (verified)
- BSFA Award (Best Novel), 2020: won
- Locus Award (Fantasy Novel), 2021: won
- Hugo Award (Best Novel), 2021: finalist
- Nebula Award (Best Novel), 2021: finalist
Notes
- From the series record (The Great Cities): Complete 2-book duology; sfadb's own bibliography lists no further entries in this series.
Neighbouring works
Publication order and internal chronology are tracked as two separate orderings, but they resolve to the exact same sequence for this book, so one combined line is shown instead of two identical ones.
- Reading order, within the series The Great Cities: position 1 of 2: next The World We Make (2022)
Sources
- sfadb: N. K. Jemisin Titles
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_City_We_Became
- BSFA, official past award winners
- sfadb: Locus Awards 2021
- The Hugo Awards: 2021 Hugo Awards history
- The Nebula Awards: The City We Became
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