Steven’s Reviews > The City We Became > Status Update

So by the end of this, the Avatar's woken up, R'lyeh been chased back into the shadows and the story ends as it began. The Avatar's still largely a bland non-entity, the city's avatars are largely bland stereotypes with little to their name and the Enemy is white people.

Why is this story lauded again?

Couple things:
1. The Enemy is literally the embodiment of R'lyeh. Lovecraft's city. So either this is a backhanded compliment to him or Lovecraft is the Enemy of mankind.

2. It's taken this long for the plot to finally kick it up a gear. The pacing is horrible.

They're being attacked by buildings infested by the Enemy. Cosmic horror mixed with architecture. Except....the buildings are Starbucks. They're being attacked literally by gentrification.

This should be scary or at least tense. Its making me roll my eyes.

Are you kidding? You're racing across the city to prevent the apocalypse and you think now is the time to discuss the sociology of rap music?

So the actions finally kicked in. That's cool. But it's kinda rich for the Bronx to be complaining about stereotypes when her and the rest are almost nothing but.

I love that all the avatars have gathered and yet finding Staten Island is the last thing they consider doing.

You lot are dumb mother fuckers.

References to the Summit - some parliament of cities. And I couldn't give a shit because it's all loredumping.

Adding to that the gentrification is a result of....a massive corporation.

Because subtlety is for nerds.

Ah yes, the evils of gentrification, another hamfisted thing for Jemisin to shove into the book.

And again, I should state, I largely share Jemisin's politics. This is just lazy writing

Of course when Jemisin references Lovecraft specifically, she references the Horror at Red Hook, the one story that I wager most readers of Lovecraft dismiss with extreme prejudice because it's a vile piece of racist rubbish.

Jemisin, you're not subtle and you're not smart. This is lazy.