The City We Became, by N. K. Jemisin

Jemisin took some chances with writing this book, and it's apparent from reading some of the other reviews. The core of the book is about deeply identifying with a place, specifically a city, so much so that the place itself takes on an identity. New York City is the most written about example in America, but there are other places (Chicago, Los Angeles, Albany NY, etc) that get that treatment in literature. But if you're a suburban reader or simply more rootless (pretty common) then your experience with that kind of place identification is second hand.

The context of the book is people from various oppressed groups viewing the city through the experiences they have had there. White supremacy culture is named and held up as toxic, personified by Staten Island but pervasive in the story. If you are white, consider yourself liberal, and have not "done some work", this story is going to grate on your "ally" sensitivities (non-liberals are not a target audience for this book, and would mostly read it in order to troll it). If you've read and digested books like Ta-Nehesi Coates' "Between the World and Me" you're better prepared to appreciate the road this book is traveling.

Since I have that context I was better able to appreciate how the book was written. It's not perfect, but it's pretty darned good. The fantasy world construction is pretty thoroughly subordinated to the social justice context--see above. But the characters themselves and their stories are absolutely engrossing. I tend to read late at night and set time limits but I had a really hard time putting this one down.

One can learn a lot from this book if one is open to it, but it's not about teaching. It's telling a story very much in today's context. It will be interesting to see where it sits 20 years from now. 

My Goodreads Review

The Midnight Bargain, by C. L. Polk

This was nominated for a Nebula award for 2020. Not sure why. Not that it's a bad book. It's reasonably fun to read.

But it's pretty much a standard romance novel, maybe elevated a little bit. The setting is basically Regency England, though all country names and geography are changed. Lots of attention to the layers and layers of clothing that wealthy women of the time wear. Including its social implications--the stays and stomachers that forced women into artificial shapes.

Women are severely oppressed in Chasland, prevented from studying magic and forced to dull their powers with "warding collars" due to very real danger to unborn babies. The danger is spun into a whole social structure that oppresses women. Pretty familiar. It's an uplifting story, and would have been a cutting-edge plot 80 years ago. Not so much now. The author does try to flip the racial script, but having the desirable people be dark-skinned with no other discussion of racial dynamics at all doesn't really help.

It's a fun read, a little slow early on but it picks up. The ending is a bit pat, romance-novel style. 2.5 stars rounded up.

My Goodreads Review