To hide the fact that Soq is their lovechild, Miller leads us to believe that their relationship is purely business, the syndicate boss and her reluctant henchman. Maybe I’m heartless, or perhaps I find it hard to muster compassion for a privileged, promiscuous twenty-something who only begins to take life seriously when he contracts a life-threatening disease.Īnd then there’s the relationship between Kaev and Go. When Fill is incinerated as part of a plot to get revenge on his grandfather, I felt nothing. I’m also not invested in these characters. In another sense, it undercuts the impression that Qaanaag is a city populated with a million people. In one sense it’s clever how Miller weaves together the disparate lives of the four main characters: Ankit, Kaev, Soq and Fill. There’s a brief mention in the opening pages that the most recent American Government has fallen with “pundits predicting it’d be the last.” Refugees from these broken nations have headed out to the Arctic Circle, to the floating city of Qaanaag, built like an asterisk, the home for almost a million people. The flooding of cities across the world has led to civil strife and revolution. knee-jerk observationsĪs with a good chunk of contemporary science fiction set a hundred or so years into the future, Blackfish City takes the disastrous effects of climate change as a given. Miller’s new novel Blackfish City, it’s because I want to and has nothing to do with the buzzy buzz the book is receiving. I’m either slow on the uptake, wary of the hype or just being my own guy, refusing to be dictated by those damn gatekeepers and tastemakers. This is despite the fact I’ve heard only praise for his work. Miller, not his short fiction, not his young adult novel published last year. By banding together to save their city before it crumbles under the weight of its own decay, they will learn shocking truths about themselves.īlackfish City is a remarkably urgent-and ultimately very hopeful-novel about political corruption, organized crime, technology run amok, the consequences of climate change, gender identity, and the unifying power of human connection.I’ve not read any Sam J.

The “orcamancer,” as she’s known, very subtly brings together four people-each living on the periphery-to stage unprecedented acts of resistance. When a strange new visitor arrives-a woman riding an orca, with a polar bear at her side-the city is entranced. The city’s denizens have become accustomed to a roughshod new way of living however, the city is starting to fray along the edges-crime and corruption have set in, the contradictions of incredible wealth alongside direst poverty are spawning unrest, and a new disease called “the breaks” is ravaging the population. 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.

Blackfish city book