Blackfish City
Ratings24
Average rating3.5
15
Ratings24
Average rating3.5
After the climate wars, a floating city is constructed in the Arctic Circle, a remarkable feat of mechanical and social engineering, complete with geothermal heating and sustainable energy. Now crime and corruption have set in, the contradictions of incredible wealth alongside poverty are spawning unrest, and a new disease called "the breaks" is ravaging the population. When a strange new visitor arrives--a woman riding an orca, with a polar bear at her side--the city is entranced. She very subtly brings together four people--each living on the periphery--to stage unprecedented acts of resistance. By banding together to save their city before it crumbles under the weight of its own decay, they will learn shocking truths about themselves.
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3.25 out of 5 stars
My thanks to Edelweiss and the publisher for an advanced reader copy in exchange for an honest review.
Blackfish City is an imaginative and richly rendered novel about a floating city and its diverse inhabitants. I was immediately intrigued by the setting, which author Sam J. Miller builds from the ground (or seafloor) up by illustrating the physical makeup of the city, how people navigate its socioeconomically segregated divisions, and even down to invented sports that have flourished in the metal beam laden metropolis.
The chapters rotate between the POVs of five-ish characters who are all distinct and compelling in their own ways. Once the character storylines converge, though, their unique narratives are abandoned in service of the main storyline that feels significantly less captivating than what came before it. I had been invested in the individual stories, but tying them so tidily together does a disservice to the unique threads that had been crafted in the first part of the novel.
Overall, this is a well-written novel, with a cool setting, and while it hooked me in the earlygoing it never quite reeled me in.
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This book reminds me a Lot of Snow Crash, which is one of my favorite books ever. It has a great beginning and middle, and a very weak end. Also, its characters are effortlessly LGBT, and yes, I mean all of those; there is a woman searching for her wife, a gay man, and a gender-neutral bisexual character. None of these things are ever forced, and none of these things are the “point” of the story; they're not plot points, they just Are. I would recommend this book.
Overall, not a bad novel. I liked the premise (a post-climate-change world in a city run by AIs) and the characters, but the plot was disjoint and, at times, uninteresting. Also, it was somewhat difficult to get started with the novel because there are so many characters and the POV is always changing. I also had some trouble visualizing the floating city of Qaanaaq based on the author's descriptions.
You have to have some patience with this story; around 40% in did the plot begin to make any sense. Intriguing concepts around animal and human connections and viral infections.
