LINKDING

<blockquote>New Orleans stank to the heavens. This was either the water, which did not have the decency to confine itself to the river but instead puddled along every street; or the streets themselves, which seemed to have been cobbled with bricks of fired excrement. Or it may have come from the people who jostled and trotted along the narrow avenues, working and lounging and cursing and shouting and sweating, emitting a massed reek of unwashed resentment and perhaps a bit of hangover. As Jessaline strolled beneath the colonnaded balconies of Royal Street, she fought the urge to give up, put the whole fumid pile to her back, and catch the next dirigible out of town.</blockquote> ➤ Steampunk alternate history about Haiti!

<blockquote>New York City is about to go through a few changes. Like all  great metropolises before it, when a city gets big enough, old enough, it  must be born; but there are ancient enemies who cannot tolerate new life.  Thus New York will live or die by the efforts of a reluctant midwife… and  how well he can learn to sing the city’s mighty song.</blockquote>

<blockquote>Her neighbor — the other one, across the hall — helped her figure it out, long before the math geeks finished crunching their numbers. "Watch," he'd said, and laid a deck of cards facedown on her coffee table. (There was coffee in the cups, with a generous dollop of Bailey's. He was a nice-enough guy that Adele felt comfortable offering this.) He shuffled it with the blurring speed of an expert, cut the deck, shuffled again, then picked up the whole deck and spread it, still facedown. "Pick a card." Adele picked. The Joker. "Only two of those in the deck," he said, then shuffled and spread again. "Pick another." She did, and got the other Joker. "Coincidence," she said. (This had been months ago, when she was still skeptical.)</blockquote>

<blockquote>Even so, we kept our guard up. Who knew what new diseases they might have developed, up in the sky and surrounded by strangeness? Infected blankets. Germs as spears and arrows. Accept no gifts from them, the griots had warned, but of course people are greedy.</blockquote> ➤ I'm...not sure I follow what this story is trying to do? But it's good and interesting anyway