The City We Became (Great Cities #1)

 

The City We Became by NK Jemisin is the first in their Great Cities series. 

As a man arrives in Manhattan he forgets who he is but he can feel the city around him. He knows that something in the city does not belong and he feels sure it is up to him to fight it. 

This is happening to one person in each borough. As the city fights to become alive, it will need those who are true to it to help. 

In the Bronx, an artist whose family has been here since before Columbus sets up a photo exhibit of graffiti that captures the essence of the city. In Brooklyn, a rapper come city official fights gentrification of her home. In Queens, a mathematics student originally from from elsewhere fights to protect her borough. And in Staten Island, a young woman will have to decide between two options - both of which are scary.

Jemisin has created a series for people who love, not only NYC, but cities and their personalities. This novel has science fiction elements but reads as magical realism with an interdimensional twist. A fun read.

Jemisin, NK. (2020). The City We Became. New York: Orbit.

House of Earth and Blood (Crescent City #1)

House of Earth and Blood by Sarah J Maas is the first book in her Crescent City series, a fantasy series that also includes technology of our world (cars, computers, guns, etc...).

Bryce Quinlan is half Fae and half human. She lives in Lunathion, also called Crescent City, and is known as a partier. Her best friend Danika Fendyr is the leader of a pack of wolf shapeshifters. Bryce works at an auction house that deals in rare to forbidden art, books, artifacts, and is owned by a sorceress who is reported to turn those who annoy her into animals.

A brutal murder changes Bryce's life forever. Due to her relationship to the victims and her attempt to kill the demon who did it, she is tasked to help find who summoned the demon. She is assigned a bodyguard / partner who is a fallen angel known as the Shadow of Death.

Their investigation takes them to all levels of the city, into their own dark pasts, up against incredibly powerful creatures.

This first in Maas's new series will not disappoint. She has quickly grown to become on of the most loved fantasy authors. Her books are cleaver, fast, twisty and sexy.

Maas, Sarah J. (2020). House of Earth and Blood. New York: Bloomsbury.

An Easy Death (Gunnie Rose #1)

An Easy Death by Charlaine Harris is the first book in her alternate history / fantasy / western series featuring Gunnie Rose.

In an alternate history of North America, where other countries (Canada, Mexico, Russia, England) control part of what we know at the United States, Rose works as a gunnie on a crew that transports people between what is once again Mexico (now called Texoma) and New America to the north - across the lawless region in between.

When all goes wrong, she is forced to take a job by two wizards from the Holy Russian Empire (California to Alaska) as a local guide and gunnie while they look for a missing man. She doesn't tell them that she knows exactly what happened to him - she needs the money.

This is a great start to another fun series by Charlaine Harris, best known for her Southern Vampire series that became True Blood on HBO. With a feel both western and dystopian, this is the start of a wonderful series.

Harris, Charlaine. (2018). An Easy Death. New York: Saga Press.