Cassie McCullough

You were born in New York?

Jemisin is?

Well, she's a black writer, an American writer, whose Broken Earth trilogy, which is made up of The Fifth Season, The Obelisk Gate and The Stone Sky, they're three books that really set the fantasy world on its ear a few years ago.

And I have to say, it's some of the best climate fiction I've ever read.

It's wildly imaginative.

And even more than this, it's a bit hard to get your head around when you first start reading it.

Those three books won the world's biggest fantasy awards three years in a row.

That's the Hugo Awards of 2015, 2016 and 2017.

So she's deliberately moving away from white and Anglo-Saxon mythologies in her work, setting up a whole critique of whiteness everywhere.

and racism.

So Cassie, that's who N.K.

Jemisin is.

Can you take us to this new series, this new book that we're talking about today?

Oh yes.

Well, it turns out that he is one of the avatars that represent different parts of the city of New York.

But I think we've heard enough from me.

Denise, how does this work?

Who is this character, Manny, and where does he fit in?

So on the one hand, you're talking about the actual place that is New York.

But as a story, there's something else going on.