N.K. Jemisin's fantastical 'The World We Make' a love song to New York City

If you can make it here, as the song about New York City goes, you can make it anywhere. It also helps if you have a few friends to back you up.

“The World We Make” (Orbit, 368 pp., ★★★½ out of four, out now), is a sequel to three-time Hugo Award-winning author N.K. Jemisin’s 2020 novel “The City We Became,” and picks up three months after that book’s events.

New York City is settling into itself after the city came alive, its soul split between several people who are “avatars” of the Big Apple’s boroughs, as well as one for the city as a whole and one for adjacent Jersey City, New Jersey. They were all brought together to fight an alien enemy that attacked as the city was being born.

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The enemy has been infecting humans, spreading hateful messages and inciting unrest and violence, and it must be stopped before it kills off all the living cities and crushes the universe.

If you haven’t read “The City We Became” yet, you’ll want to check out that book before starting this one.

A quick recap of the avatars: there’s quiet, brooding Manny, the living embodiment of Manhattan; artist Bronca, who is the Bronx; politician/lawyer (and former rapper) Brooklyn, who is, well, Brooklyn; student and brilliant mathematician Padmini, who is Queens; anxious Aislyn, Staten Island’s avatar who decided not to unite with the others in the previous book's battles; and Veneza, who is Jersey City, and stepped in when Staten stepped away.

Finally, there’s Neek (as in NYC), the avatar who represents all of New York City. While unconscious for much of “City We Became,” Neek is more centered here. He’s adjusting to being a whole city, putting up a strong front for the other boroughs even if he’s feeling vulnerable. He also might be a little in love with Manhattan, and he’s very hungry. “New York is always hungry,” he says.

But the battle from book one isn’t done. The enemy, appearing to the avatars as a Woman in White, is still there, and she’s gaining power. Can New York survive? Will other awakened cities agree to help? And what if she’s not the only foe they must fear?

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Each chapter centers a different character, but Neek’s chapters are the only ones in the first person.

This tonal change allows the reader more access to the character, allowing us to know Neek in a way he won’t allow the others to know him. In a way, this second novel is all about deepening our understanding of these characters, who they are, and who their boroughs are.

So much media – books, movies and TV shows – set in New York City often treat the metropolis as an additional character, lingering on locations, shining on the sites and sounds. Jemisin’s duology is no different. “The City We Became” embraces New York, its history, its culture and most importantly its flaws (“all cities have their showcases of beauty and their blocks of beastliness,” after all).

But it’s also a city that “no longer exists,” Jemisin writes. The city – the world – has changed so much between the books' publications, and so must the characters and their conflicts.

Jemisin, in this book as much as the first, lays bare the racism, sexism, inequities and unfairness of our world, but also uplifts so many cultures and communities. For many passages, you’re either nodding knowingly or learning something new.

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Jemisin molds real-world events from the past few years with magic and myth into this fantastical page-turner.

If “The City We Became” is a love letter to New York City, then “The World We Make” is a love song, reminding you in its rhythm of what you had, and what you could be. At once hopeful, possibly unrequited, maybe bashful but still brash, however, you hear it – feel its frequencies – depends on the you you are in that moment. It’s up to you (New York, New York).

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: N.K. Jemisin's 'The World We Make' a love song to New York City