NK Jemisin – Cannonball Read 17

When Reality and Fiction Overlap in NYC

The World We Make by N. K. Jemisin

September 10, 2023 by CoffeeShopReader Leave a Comment

Bingo 17: North America This might be a little obvious but since The World We Make could actually fit several categories, I’m using for North America because it takes place largely in New York City, and most of the main characters are living avatars of the boroughs of NYC, as well as an avatar for the city overall. The gist of the novel remains similar from the prequel (this is part 2 of a duology): the avatars of Manhattan (Manny), Queens (Padmini), Brooklyn (Brooklyn), Bronx […]

New York I love you but you’re bringing me down

The City We Became by NK Jemisin

February 9, 2022 by MG Dietzel Leave a Comment

The City We Became is a love song to New York and all its messy parts. I imagine (hope) that part of NK Jemisin’s writing process for this book was wandering around all the different boroughs of the city, watching and listening to people. It is the first book of a “Great Cities” trilogy, but since according to her bio Jemisin actually lives and works in Brooklyn I am curious if her other books are going to have this level of adoration for the cities […]

Annual Short Story Collection Round-up

New York Fantastic: Fantasy Stories from the City that Never Sleeps by Paula Guran & Others

August 16, 2021 by Ale Leave a Comment

Because I’d never ask my students to do something I wouldn’t do, and also because NK Jemisin highly suggests reading short stories to get better at writing long stories, I try to read a short story collection every year. For whatever reason, no matter how good the writing is, short story collections take me EONS to finish, and New York Fantastic was no exception. With twenty stories by different speculative authors, New York Fantastic offers a wide variety of story types and a nice selection of award […]

The Best of the Trilogy

The Stone Sky by NK Jemisin

November 5, 2020 by Ale 1 Comment

While the whole Broken Earth series was incredibly deserving of the Hugo award, the Stone Sky, in particular, was a feat of literary perfection (at least in my opinion). As I’ve said with both of Jemisin’s previous novels, her ability to successfully deploy second person POV continued to astound me in this last chapter of her epic, and while hints are given in book two of who this narrative voice is, it all comes roaring to the surface in book three. As with any trilogy, […]

Stone and Ash and Magic

The Obelisk Gate by NK Jemisin

October 2, 2020 by Ale Leave a Comment

The more of Jemisin’s works I read, the more I fall in love with her craft. The Obelisk Gate is book two in her Broken Earth Trilogy, and even though I’m normally not the biggest fan of any middle book in a trilogy, I enjoyed this book even more than her first one. We pick up the story almost exactly where we left off in book one, and follow Essun as she pivots her focus from finding her daughter, Nassun, to assisting the orogenes of Castrima […]

Samantha’s hand were still red from the cold, the skin over her knuckles taut and dry.

Ark by Veronica Roth

Emergency Skin by NK Jemisin

Forward by Blake Crouch

April 20, 2020 by vel veeter Leave a Comment

Mostly I got this collection because I was interested in some short stories for walks and I like the mix of authors in general. Blake Crouch tells us in the intro/outro to each story the basic purpose of the collection, and like all such genre anthologies, it’s a mixed bag. The audio productions are really good with Evan Rachel Wood, Jason Isaacs, Rosa Salazar, David Harbour, Steven Strait, and Janina Gavankar are the readers of these stories. Each come in around an hour and all […]

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