"This one was rough" Jemisin writes in the acknowledgements, and I couldn't agree more. If your "creative energy was fading" to the extent that you decided to cut an entire novel's amount of characterization and development from a projected trilogy then maybe you should have just left it as a standalone? Or better yet, as much as I loved The City We Became, maybe it should have just remained an amazing short story?? I haven't been this disappointed by a reading experience since I powered through Clive Barker's The Scarlet Gospels. Ugh. I look forward to Jemisin's next project because she has definitely wowed me before but yeah, there's a reason it took me nearly a month to finish this.