African American sci-fi and fantasy author NK Jemisin has earned an impressive number of awards for her works. In fact, she currently stands as the only person to win a Hugo Award for Best Novel three years in a row, for all three of the books in her Broken Earth series (2015’s The Fifth Season, 2016’s The Obelisk Gate, and 2017’s The Stone Sky). She has an incredible knack for creating sympathetic, believable characters within the truly unbelievable, fantastic worlds she builds, which makes sense considering her background as a psychologist; she only stopped practicing to focus on her writing full time in 2016. Excited to read The City We Became, her forthcoming novel and the first in a brand-new trilogy in which “every great city has a soul,” some cities like NYC have several, and five of its avatars must come together to save it. NYC, that is. by Leilani Polk