A poetic urban fantasy with a taste of cosmic horror that functions as (yet another) love letter to New York city. The fundamental concepts, that cities can inhabit one of their denizens who function as their avatar and defend themselves from nefarious beings from across the multiverse, lay a grand stage but the mechanics didn't make much sense to me. There is a lot of hand waving that means you just have to roll with it, and combined with the decorative language it makes for a surreal read, the sort of thing I'd normally enjoy. It feels like the sort of thing that would adapt well to animation, or at least you can see how animation may have inspired it.

However, the book also functions as an intersectional feminist tract, employing an extremely diverse cast of characters and watching them wind each other up. The big bad is the personification of colonialism, gentrification and white supremacy and their broad remit somewhat dilutes the metaphor. There is a moment near the middle where Aislyn, the avatar for white suburbia, is dramatically humanised and it seems like the whole book is going to gel, but it dissolves into a series of melodramatic stand offs and ends with her left as the entry point for everything bad in the multiverse.

It doesn't help that I'm pretty sick of stories about miserable people being awful to each other in New York somehow being spun as charming and witty. The entire city appears to have been in denial about the abusive relationship it has with itself for decades and at this point it's just boring.

I wanted to like this and I think the idea of it is good and courageous, but ultimately it felt a bit preachy and tedious. A few good moments where there is a glimpse of its potential, but not a patch on the Broken Earth and I doubt I'll bother with the sequel.