Blackfish City: A Novel

Dude spraying other dudes with semen. Nope not my kind of book

Fantastic. Haven't enjoyed a book this much in a long time. Such a unique perspective and original story. The author has created a whole new world that's both completely foreign to our own and yet drawn from so much wisdom and insight into our world. Reminds me of early Neal Stephenson, which were some of my favorite books. Can't believe this is only his 2nd book/1st non-YA novel. Can't wait to read more by him.

Blackfish City
Sam J. Miller
Scribd Audio

A dystopian story taking place after 'the climate wars' and when most of the planet is underwater. The setting is a floating city in the Arctic Circle heated by geothermal fueled by an oceanic vent. It's a typical city, rich, poor, young, old homeless, immigrants, racism, discrimination, crime, corruption, and a disease called 'the breaks', mostly transmitted through sex.

Technology runs the city, and the world, it is also implanted in the citizens, and with a touch of their jaw, or tongue to the roof of their mouths they can access the internet for communication, news, and to listen to a 'pod cast', which has its own chapters.

Five (+?) other characters have their own chapters also, and the story flips between them, interweaving them when a woman riding an orca, who also has a polar bear, arrives at the city.

This story is part history, and a reflection on today's society, and how the things we do today we still do tomorrow, the rich out to get richer hurting whoever gets in their way, even singling out a group of people, blaming them for the reason why the world is suffering, getting others to commit genocide so those with the money can make even more without getting their hands dirty.

While it started off interesting, getting to know the city and the people, how it all came about wasn't completely explained, nor what was going on in the rest of the world except for a few mentions. And the title of the book really didn't have anything to do with the name of the city, only that the woman came with an orca.

Towards the end of the story, I felt that the characters started to merge together and I stopped caring who was doing what and why and that's where it flopped and lost a star.

And then the story was just over; 'This and this was done, and the characters did this, but the reason is vague'.

But it did make one point in my mind, 'Even those with an honest heart are corruptible.'

2 Stars

I enjoyed the dystopian world building and many of the characters. However, the plot left me a little disappointed. A few things seemed just Too convenient. I'm not overly bothered by that usually, but it just kept happening that things were Wow Connected out of sort of nowhere. The climax of the story was hard to follow and the ending rang a little hollow. I feel that the author lost their way a bit and struggled to tie up all the loose ends in a way that made sense, was satisfying, and stayed true to the theme and messaging of the book. Overall, I don't regret reading it but I wish it was just a little bit better.

I wanted to like this book more, but it never reached a point where the book completely gelled to me. I know this is going to sound strange, but it almost felt too short. Momentous events happened suddenly, and it felt like the characters didn't earn the things that happened to them. There was a lot of characters being in the right place at the right time. This book was definitely character driven, but I never felt more than a cursory attachment to them. If a book's plot isn't going to keep my turning pages, then the characters have to be up to some interesting stuff. Sometimes they were, but this book was really more about the city. Qaanaaq is a very interesting place, and I loved exploring it. The city could live alongside other famous scifi cities, it is definitely that unique. Its an awful dystopia, and I wouldn't want to live there, but it was interesting to read about. There were other good ideas in this book, especially the idea that AIs and programs did most of the governing, and that political power is not held by people as much because it was too easy to manipulate people in positions of power. I felt like the ending was also a little abrupt and would have loved to have a small denouement for the characters. Overall, good concepts, fairly interesting characters, if a little shallow, but never quite gelled for me.

I still don't know how I feel about this. It was a slow, atmospheric read that I found difficult to get through at times. I found the "City Without a Map" portions the most boring, although I also understand those sections were important to some capacity. I still feel conflicted about most of the characters and the ending was an odd mix of depressing and hopeful, implying that things will be okay for the found family, but there was also a rather abrupt series of major deaths/injuries that weren't really addressed and I just feel a little unsatisfied. It feels like the portion of build up was good, but the end was quite rushed. I enjoyed the political commentary but found the violence a bit... offputting and I found myself unsure how I was meant to feel about any of the characters by the end except maybe Soq and Ankit who are arguably the most important of the protagonists you're meant to root for. I also can't decide if not knowing how I feel about anything that happened is a good thing or a bad thing. I've never read a book like this before, but I guess if I had to sum up it's thesis it would definitely be: "fuck landlords" which in general, I do agree with. I would say read it for the unique atmosphere and city, but if you don't like it within the first few pages you probably won't like it at all.

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

This is great! Post-climate-catastrophe, floating city, refugee crisis, tech-telepathy with orcas and polar bears. I loved the mash-up of different cultures, the vibrancy of the city, and the way gender identity was handled. Full of ideas big and small, loads of action. Well done.

This is a delightful read. The investment you make in the first 100 pages pays off in a rich, enfolding experience of very able, capable worldbuilding by Author Miller.

Four PoV characters seems like a lot, I know, but each presents the reader with a different lens on a world that is all about where you are in its hierarchy as to what it looks like, feels like, and how Qaanaaq functions to meet your needs. Wealthy and privileged and bored Fill and Kaev, males at opposite ends of the city's caste system, and Kaev the professional fight-thrower is about to slip a few more rungs down the ladder. Ankit and non-binary Soq are the mobile middle-dwellers, each functioning in their differing-status jobs to support the power structure. Soq the messenger, the Mercury of Qaanaaq, was probably my favorite PoV in the book. The stealth they possess; the invisibility that rejecting binaries confers on them; all the moments of revelation this leads to make them a character I'd've loved to hear more from.

Author Miller is a top-notch talent, a maker of archetypes and a weaver of worlds whose skills are already as sharp as many with much longer résumés. What points of complaint I have are negligible compared to the central, overarching concerns he presents in this three-year-old and already timeless title.

Some of my favorite lines:
Money is a mind, the oldest artificial intelligence. Its prime directives are simple, it's programming endlessly creative. Humans obey it unthinkingly, with cheerful alacrity. Like a virus, it doesn't care if it kills its host. It will simply flow on to someone new.
–and–
The American fleet had lacked a lot of things—food, shelter, fuel, civil liberties—but it hadn’t lacked weapons. The global military presence that had made the pre-fall United States so powerful, and then helped cause their collapse, had left them with all sorts of terrifying toys.
–and–
“Fine line between good business and a fucking war crime,” he said. “Ain’t that the goddamn epitaph of capitalism.”

Read this book for my f2f bookclub. It is a dystopia book written by Sam J. Miller and is set in the near future after a climate and techno disaster destroys most of the world. People are living on this floating object in the arctic circle area. It is science fiction involving nanobonding (people to animals) and bots, AI, etc and like a lot of SF it addresses current cultural issues of capitalism, the right to own property, and genders/pronouns,

While it was easy to read, there were difficulties as well. There is a aspect of mystery and thriller and goodly amount of blood and violence.

Climate change has turned much of humanity into refugees. Qaanaaq is a floating city in the Artic, controlled by its shareholders and teeming with both registered and unregistered occupants. When the sole survivor of a genocide arrives with an orca and a captive polar bear, she provides an impetus for a war by a crime syndicate against a powerful shareholder. All the while, the strange disease the breaks is driving people to horrible deaths amidst images of lives they’ve never led, and the AIs running the city can’t do anything about it. Although almost everything goes wrong and key players don’t make it to the end of the story, it’s also about the kind of hope that can persist even in ashes, and the family connections that survive all kinds of wrongs.