Review: The City Born Great, by N. K. Jemisin (Old People Read New SFF)

James Nicoll, the SF reviewer extraordinaire, has had a long running web blog series in which young people read old SF and review it. Spoiler: The results were, generally, that young people did not see the restless beauty and godlike mastery in 40s, 50s and 60s science fiction that we oldies, who read it as it came out, were wont to see in it. They often saw Hugo-winning work as sexist, ludicrous and stiff.

So James has initiated a series in which old people read new (online accessible) SFF. I was going to say, to see if older people feel a similar generation gap, but come to think of it, he hasn't actually said that.

I am one of the old people. In this first post, we are reviewing N K Jemisin's The City Born Great.

Read the story at this link (but don't read the website's introduction until afterwards!) and then read our old farty reviews at this link.

If you want to read the older Young People Read Old SF reviews, they are all at the same website. And very informative they are too.

Illustration for the Tor website publication by Richie Pope