973 reviews for:

Blackfish City

Sam J. Miller

3.61 AVERAGE

adventurous dark sad medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven: A mix
Strong character development: Yes
Loveable characters: Complicated
Diverse cast of characters: Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus: Complicated

What a freaking joyful surprise read!
Walking through my new public library, (recently just moved) taking a stroll through the new fiction, (as one will do lol) this neon Michael Chabonesque cover catches my eye. (I tend to always judge a book by it's cover. I recommend it ;), read the jacket and think 'Not so sure about this, but I'll give it a go around'
And BOOM!
SO FREAKING GOOD!
It was like Snowpiercer - meets - William Gibson - meets Hackers - meets Avatar.....with a full on cast of pseudo cyber punk queers to boot!
Loveloveloved this book.
Just perfect in it's approachability....not too over the top in any given direction.
Just an all over good freaking book!

An excellent dystopian novel with fascinating, individualized characters and a satisfactory ending (while avoiding the "happy ever after" syndrome). Its concession to the humanity of all its characters while firmly emphasizing the unfairness of its (and not incidentally our) society is refreshing.

I really enjoyed this book. It’s a really interesting world, and the characters are well done. I really enjoyed the way the stories all started coming together about half way through. I am left with lots of unanswered questions though, and I would love to see more stories set in this world.
Spoiler I’m still not quite clear on how Ora is connected to the Breaks. It really seems to be something that came out of Taastrup, where she was, and the nanites appear to be able to fix (not cure!) the problem, but it’s not totally clear.

Easily one of the best climate fiction books I've ever read. I'm still thinking about this novel, and wanting to write something just like it.
challenging dark sad tense slow-paced

A very creative dystopia set in the not-too-distant future. Miller has combined a lot of very cool elements in this novel (nanobots that let you bond with animals! robot overlords! a mysterious illness! futuristic parkour!) to create the world of Qaanaaq. However, the inclusion of all these elements meant that a lot of exposition was required, and the plot didn't start warming up until about a third of the way through the book. I also felt like all of the worldbuilding elements never quite cohered into a single whole, even though each piece was super interesting on its own. Miller does a pretty good job of handling all the POVs (I believe there's a total of five in this book?) and I liked seeing how their personal journeys converged as the book goes on. Given that the book is set in a future that isn't terribly far from our own, some of the parallels (i.e. extremism, climate change, etc.) felt a little on the nose to me, almost like Miller wrote this book explicitly to be an allegorical commentary on our own world. While this book is a standalone, Miller has a lot of potential as an author, so I will definitely keep my eye on his future writings.

There are so many ideas in this book with potential to have blown me away, but somehow I arrived at the end disappointed and confused, two undesirable feelings after looking forward to a book. The setting is a steampunk, post-Global Warming apocalypse, Arctic megacity floating in the ocean, replete with advanced AI and polar bears. It's a pretty cool world, but the world building is cut short by low stakes conflict between shady mob types, shady politician types, some shady disaffected kids who are actually possibly shady middle aged adults, and an Inuit ninja grandmother. Of course, there is plenty of violence - some of it quite random and seemingly without logic or cause - but the motivations behind the various protagonists, other than the aforementioned Inuit ninja grandmother, were... Well, unclear. The ending was a head scratcher for sure, and left me wondering who these people are and why waste such an amazing setting on them. But at least there was the polar bear.
adventurous emotional slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven: Plot
Strong character development: No
Loveable characters: Yes
Diverse cast of characters: Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus: Complicated
adventurous challenging emotional hopeful medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven: A mix
Strong character development: Yes
Loveable characters: Complicated
Diverse cast of characters: Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes