A review by karastotle
Blackfish City by Sam J. Miller

4.0

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.