mary_soon_lee 's review for:

Blackfish City by Sam J. Miller

3.0

---

"Blackfish City" is one of the six nominees for the 2018 Nebula Award. The story takes place in a dystopian science fiction future scarred by climate change and social disruption. The specific setting is Qaanaaq, a floating Arctic city built to harness a geothermal vent, a city that is as much a character as the four human point-of-view characters. Although the worldbuilding is strong, the story took a long time to draw me in. I love to lose myself inside fiction, but "Blackfish City" left me distanced for at least its first third. Sometimes I felt sympathy for the characters, but I wasn't immersed in their lives. The switches from one character to another felt choppy, and it took quite a while before the puzzle pieces started coming together for me. Had I not been reading this book in order to vote on the Nebula awards, I might have stopped before I came to the sections I liked best. So, while I unequivocally like the worldbuilding, and while I was enjoying the book by the end, I am ambivalent about the book as a whole.