Sequel to The City We Became, this book shines with the same love of New York and its in-your-face attitude. The overall plot is a little less focused, mostly because Jemisin, having introduced a Big Bad, needs to find a way to a) explain its presence, and b) defeat it, which necessitates a certain amount of infodumping and handwaving. Although it’s all perfectly well executed, the events of the plot honestly feel like a distraction from the best parts of the book, which are the various incarnations of New York being extremely and wonderfully New York to one another and to the world at large. The antagonists are a bit cartoonish and flatly menacing (“Make New York Great Again,” Proud Men, etc), but honestly, I can’t deny that their real-world counterparts feel a bit like that in the real world as well.