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Blackfish City (2018)

par Sam J. Miller

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7402630,228 (3.4)28
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.… (plus d'informations)
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Affichage de 1-5 de 26 (suivant | tout afficher)
2.5 stars. Good ideas mixed up with too much preaching mixed up by a POV switch every 2 pages (literally, the book jumps POV like 125 or 150 or maybe more times, sometimes after only a page) mixed up with not-at-all-scifi-actually-just-techno-fantasy. It's like... the Johnny Mnemonic (movie) crossed with His Dark Materials crossed with... some environmental fiction.

So potentially good, but this book failed for me in many ways. The city is interesting, but the world behind it is annoyingly unconvincing in all the wrong spots. I suspect the author doesn't have a lot of familiarity with science, tech, or e.g. real climate model predictions. These characters all come together... magically. In all seriousness, it might have worked better if they just had a "destiny" to fulfill, a prophecy was foretold, etc. ( )
  dcunning11235 | Aug 12, 2023 |
Series Info/Source: This is a stand alone book. I borrowed this on audiobook from the library.

Thoughts: I enjoyed this, it is a bit of an odd book. Originally you hear from a bunch of different POVs that don't seem to be related. I enjoyed the setting though and how the story ends up coming together.

We hear from a number of different POVs throughout the book. There are four main ones I think. All of these people live in a city that floats in the ocean in the Arctic Circle. After horrible climate events, this city is one of the remaining places to escape to and live. Unfortunately, a new disease called "the breaks" is tearing through the population. People with the breaks start to disassociate with reality and have mental confusion as they see past events through other people's eyes.

Initially we are just following these characters through their day to day lives but then a woman riding an orca appears and as she starts to integrate herself into events around the city, it brings together the people whose POV we are reading from in an intriguing way.

I loved the post-apocalyptic setting that blends both cyberpunk elements and climate change crisis elements. The cyberpunk elements are definitely there in the bleakness of the city, the body modifications, and the general despair of the populace. I also really enjoyed how the different story threads, that at first seem unrelated, tie together so well in the end.

Weak points of the story for me were the characterization and pacing. I didn't love these characters and I struggled to engage with them, but they were still interesting. The story starts slow and is a bit confusing at first but really picks up pace at the end. I am glad I stuck with this to the end.

I listened to this on audiobook and the narration was very well done (Adam is a great narrator). Oh and I love the cover for this book, it really grabs your attention and embodies the feel of the story well.

My Summary (4/5): Overall I liked this book. The unique setting, cyberpunk elements, climate crisis elements, and plague elements were well done. I enjoyed how all the different story threads came together in the end. This was a bit weak on characterization and the pacing was sluggish in the beginning but picked up towards the end. I would recommend to those who enjoy strange post-apocalyptic cyberpunk reads...or are just looking for something a bit different to pick up. ( )
  krau0098 | Jun 9, 2023 |
Blackfish City is a dystopian, post-climate-change novel set in Qaanaaq, a floating city north of the Arctic Circle. Political corruption, organized crime, and a mysterious illness called "the breaks" shape life in Qaanaaq, where life is gritty and the environment unforgiving. Daily survival is a struggle for most residents. No one looks too closely at anything around them. Few ask questions that might draw attention.

When a stranger shows up, a woman riding an orca and accompanied by a polar bear, people look up. They notice this nanobonded human, Masaaraq, wonder to many and abomination to some who would kill her, given the chance. But Masaaraq has other plans. The last survivor of her kind, she's come bearing change—and justice—to Qaanaaq.

Blackfish City is told through the experiences of four very different main characters, as well as a narrator who relates pieces of backstory through "City Without a Map" broadcasts on a frequency available to all residents of the city. In the beginning, each of the characters' tales are given to the reader in isolated patches. Yet as the story evolves, its threads begin to form a recognizable pattern until we see that these individuals are connected in unexpected ways.

The city itself is also a sort of character. Warmed by a massive underwater geothermal vent and built on a floating platform with boats docked at stations all around it, Qaanaaq is shaped almost like an asterisk, with eight arms. Each "arm" is distinct in income level and thus lifestyle, and each has its own offering for the city. The uppermost arms, pointing northwest, north, and northeast, are home to the least fortunate of the city. Personal space is non-existent. Residents rent sleep bubbles, stacked atop one another in columns and rows that make the most of available space. Migrant workers, paid to harvest ice for water, fill the ships that dock at the edges. The southernmost arms hold gardens, glass tunnels that connect the buildings at the upper levels, comfort unthinkable to the masses. Most of the story takes place in the contrast between those extremes.

The world that produced Qaanaaq is one the current climate change predictions could have foretold. Coastal cities are flooded. Heat extremes have forced people to move north. Water wars have waged for years, as well as race riots and shortages of space. It's a very different global situation than what we have today, and though this sort of scenario has appeared in a number of sci-fi novels by now, it remains a stark and unsettling view.

The characters themselves are distinct, intriguing, and well-rounded. Fill is distinguished by his wealth, and naivete. Ankit, by her conflict between ambition and doing the right thing. Kaev, by his fighting skill, and his emotional turmoil. Soq by their deliberate distance from the people around them and by their pragmatism. Each character deepens as the story unfolds, slowly drawing the reader in. I was unsure how these very different individuals would connect, but was certain from the beginning that they would, somehow, some way. While I did foresee part of the eventual reveal, I was surprised by at least part of the conclusion.

Interestingly, the name of the book is taken from Masaaraq, "the orcamancer" as she is known by city residents. She is a heavy presence throughout the story from the very first page, yet she is given point-of-view voice in only one chapter. Bonded to her orca from a young age through nanite therapy, she doesn't quite think like other humans. Part human, part animal, her perspective is unique in the story, and offers some insight as to how she can see solutions everyone else overlooked. It also explains the savagery of her sense of justice. An orca is not known for its gentle nature, after all.

The other unspoken character in Blackfish City is the mysterious illness called, by most, "the breaks." Characterized by mental instability, a loss of capacity for clear speech, onset of memories in a victim's mind that come from someone else, and other odd symptoms, no one knows what it is or where it originated. The breaks is always fatal. There is no known cure. Several characters in the story are infected, some to a greater degree than others, and it is this looming death sentence and the mystery surrounding it that drives at least part of the subplot.

Author Sam Miller did a splendid job in building this grim world, which is not at all like most Western settings I've seen. Qaanaaq is a blend of Norse, Swedish, Mandarin, Thai, Icelandic, and other cultures, and American voices are few and far between—as well as being viewed with some disfavor. I actually liked that departure from the usual expectation. Qaanaaq itself strikes me as a bit of a cautionary element in the tale. I can see parts of it, enough to know I wouldn't want to live there. But some of the details – the slide boots and slideways used by Soq and the other messengers, the implants in their jaws to allow communications and messaging, the type of commerce that takes place here – was so alien to my experience that it was hard to imagine. Some of it, the sleeping capsules for example, might not be far removed from contemporary reality in overcrowded cities where climate does not allow sleeping on the streets. I'm not sure, but I can imagine it being a possibility.

I must admit that I found some of the plot resolutions a bit of a stretch. Overall, though, I enjoyed the story. It's definitely worth a read. ( )
  DremaDeoraich | Dec 27, 2022 |
Loved the world building, didn't like the ending..... at all. (But it was not my story to tell)
Still worth a read and the COVER GLOWS IN THE DARK... Just an FYI ( )
  davisfamily | Dec 11, 2022 |
I really liked this book.
It wasn't perfect, and I'll get my minor complaints out of the way first.

At times I felt like there were all these really cool elements that were loosely thrown together instead of neatly tied together. But.... all those cool little elements were really really cool. So It's easy to forgive.

Also, I couldn't really sink into the characters as much as I wanted. Soq was my favorite character. But even with Soq I had a hard time really understanding their motivation. With Go, I felt like we were told that she was badass instead of shown. Kaev was interesting, but I couldn't get inside him either. Masaaraq was a very cool character. Kill bill meets Michonne and then rides on the back of an Orca. She was just awesome, but she felt uneven as well.

As for what I loved - there's a lot.

First and foremost, the world building. I loved this world. The author doesn't spend a lot of time giving you backstory or exposition. Instead you learn the world as you live in it. There are gaps in what you know about the world as a whole, but hey - there probably should be. It's not completely post-apocalyptic, it's more like post "things went south real quick and to a significant degree". The real world building takes place in the city of Qaanaaq. And I loved this city with it's sprawling arms over the northern ocean, sitting atop a thermal vent. The noodle stands on the streets and buildings with thin walls because heat is in unlimited supply. The lack of government and the invisible AI that runs everything.

It felt different and original. I have loved how many books have felt "fresh" in the past few years. New voices (even when they come from existing authors changing things up), and new stories with characters that have new perspectives. Soq is a great example. Soq might have existed in novels a decade ago, but the novel would have been about how Soq is different. I'm thinking of Ancillary Justice (a great book) and how it made us think about gendered pronouns. But it was a central device in Ancillary Justice. In Blackfish City Soq is "they". It's not a guessing game about Soqs gender, that's just who they are. And it is just one facet of the character, not the one that defines them. And the author does the same thing with issues of class, class, wealth, immigration, religion, prejudice... The author doesn't hold these issues up and say "let me tell you what I think about them". They are just woven into the story and left for the reader to mull over.

And I love the Innuit and Northwest Passage influences. That more of a personal thing. But form the cover are to the the names, it was an influence that added to the beauty and mystery of this near future world.

So ya... not perfect. But very good. I think I read that this is Sam J Miller's second novel, and their first adult novel. So I'll definitely be watching for what comes next.
( )
  WinterEgress | Dec 2, 2022 |
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Nom de l'auteurRôleType d'auteurŒuvre ?Statut
Miller, Sam J.auteur principaltoutes les éditionsconfirmé
Crowe, MichelleConcepteurauteur secondairequelques éditionsconfirmé
Staehle, WillConcepteur de la couvertureauteur secondairequelques éditionsconfirmé
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There is nothing safe about the darkness of this city and its stink. Well, I have abrogated all claim to safety, coming here. It is better to discuss it as though I had chosen. That keeps the scrim of sanity before the awful set. What will lift it?

-- Samuel R Delany, Dhalgren
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People would say she came to Quanaaq in a skiff towed by a killer whale harnessed to the front like a horse.
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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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