She typed up a dramatis personae to remind her how each character should sound. Miles, for her part, traversed New York by subway and ferry, listening to strangers. Jemisin hired half a dozen sensitivity readers-including one from Brazil, one from Sri Lanka, and another from India-to insure that all her depictions were accurate. Each of the five boroughs is embodied by a character so are other cities, including London, Hong Kong, and São Paulo. Jemisin’s tenth novel, “ The City We Became,” is set not in a fantastical land but in New York City. Listen to the author’s interview with Robin Miles on The New Yorker Radio Hour. “She’s as serious about her art as I am about mine,” Jemisin said. While working on the sequel, she often reminded herself, “I need to think about what this character sounds like.” After Miles narrated “The Fifth Season” and its sequels, Jemisin asked her publisher to hire Miles for her subsequent books. They’re not real!’ ”īut, later, after listening to the finished audiobook, Jemisin recognized that the soundscape was an important part of the world she was building.

“I kept just saying, ‘It’s a fantasy novel! It doesn’t matter how they’re pronounced. She usually struggles to read her work after it’s been published she tends to think about what could have been better. There were words in the book, Jemisin admitted, that she had never even said aloud. How do Sanzeds, midlatters, and Eastern Coasters usually speak? How do you pronounce Essun, Damaya, and Tonkee? “She wanted to know exactly what kind of accents to use at certain places, and where characters were from within their countries,” Jemisin told me recently. Miles had just been hired to narrate the audiobook of Jemisin’s new novel, “ The Fifth Season,” about the inhabitants of a continent called the Stillness, and she had some questions. Jemisin got an e-mail from the voice actor Robin Miles.

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