This book throws you into a post-apocalyptic city through multiple short POVs without holding your hand with explanations. It's a bit hard to keep up at first, but the more satisfying it is once things start to clear up.

The characters are quite well built despite not having that much space for development. I found all of them interesting. Also, the city feels very alive, especially thanks to informative/thoughtful interludes from mysterious source.

All in all, very satisfying read. Just maybe not completely polished in the end. ( )

2.5 stars. Good ideas mixed up with too much preaching mixed up by a POV switch every 2 pages (literally, the book jumps POV like 125 or 150 or maybe more times, sometimes after only a page) mixed up with not-at-all-scifi-actually-just-techno-fantasy. It's like... the Johnny Mnemonic (movie) crossed with His Dark Materials crossed with... some environmental fiction.

So potentially good, but this book failed for me in many ways. The city is interesting, but the world behind it is annoyingly unconvincing in all the wrong spots. I suspect the author doesn't have a lot of familiarity with science, tech, or e.g. real climate model predictions. These characters all come together... magically. In all seriousness, it might have worked better if they just had a "destiny" to fulfill, a prophecy was foretold, etc. ( )

Series Info/Source: This is a stand alone book. I borrowed this on audiobook from the library.

Thoughts: I enjoyed this, it is a bit of an odd book. Originally you hear from a bunch of different POVs that don't seem to be related. I enjoyed the setting though and how the story ends up coming together.

We hear from a number of different POVs throughout the book. There are four main ones I think. All of these people live in a city that floats in the ocean in the Arctic Circle. After horrible climate events, this city is one of the remaining places to escape to and live. Unfortunately, a new disease called "the breaks" is tearing through the population. People with the breaks start to disassociate with reality and have mental confusion as they see past events through other people's eyes.

Initially we are just following these characters through their day to day lives but then a woman riding an orca appears and as she starts to integrate herself into events around the city, it brings together the people whose POV we are reading from in an intriguing way.

I loved the post-apocalyptic setting that blends both cyberpunk elements and climate change crisis elements. The cyberpunk elements are definitely there in the bleakness of the city, the body modifications, and the general despair of the populace. I also really enjoyed how the different story threads, that at first seem unrelated, tie together so well in the end.

Weak points of the story for me were the characterization and pacing. I didn't love these characters and I struggled to engage with them, but they were still interesting. The story starts slow and is a bit confusing at first but really picks up pace at the end. I am glad I stuck with this to the end.

I listened to this on audiobook and the narration was very well done (Adam is a great narrator). Oh and I love the cover for this book, it really grabs your attention and embodies the feel of the story well.

My Summary (4/5): Overall I liked this book. The unique setting, cyberpunk elements, climate crisis elements, and plague elements were well done. I enjoyed how all the different story threads came together in the end. This was a bit weak on characterization and the pacing was sluggish in the beginning but picked up towards the end. I would recommend to those who enjoy strange post-apocalyptic cyberpunk reads...or are just looking for something a bit different to pick up. ( )

Blackfish City is a dystopian, post-climate-change novel set in Qaanaaq, a floating city north of the Arctic Circle. Political corruption, organized crime, and a mysterious illness called "the breaks" shape life in Qaanaaq, where life is gritty and the environment unforgiving. Daily survival is a struggle for most residents. No one looks too closely at anything around them. Few ask questions that might draw attention.

When a stranger shows up, a woman riding an orca and accompanied by a polar bear, people look up. They notice this nanobonded human, Masaaraq, wonder to many and abomination to some who would kill her, given the chance. But Masaaraq has other plans. The last survivor of her kind, she's come bearing change—and justice—to Qaanaaq.

Blackfish City is told through the experiences of four very different main characters, as well as a narrator who relates pieces of backstory through "City Without a Map" broadcasts on a frequency available to all residents of the city. In the beginning, each of the characters' tales are given to the reader in isolated patches. Yet as the story evolves, its threads begin to form a recognizable pattern until we see that these individuals are connected in unexpected ways.

The city itself is also a sort of character. Warmed by a massive underwater geothermal vent and built on a floating platform with boats docked at stations all around it, Qaanaaq is shaped almost like an asterisk, with eight arms. Each "arm" is distinct in income level and thus lifestyle, and each has its own offering for the city. The uppermost arms, pointing northwest, north, and northeast, are home to the least fortunate of the city. Personal space is non-existent. Residents rent sleep bubbles, stacked atop one another in columns and rows that make the most of available space. Migrant workers, paid to harvest ice for water, fill the ships that dock at the edges. The southernmost arms hold gardens, glass tunnels that connect the buildings at the upper levels, comfort unthinkable to the masses. Most of the story takes place in the contrast between those extremes.

The world that produced Qaanaaq is one the current climate change predictions could have foretold. Coastal cities are flooded. Heat extremes have forced people to move north. Water wars have waged for years, as well as race riots and shortages of space. It's a very different global situation than what we have today, and though this sort of scenario has appeared in a number of sci-fi novels by now, it remains a stark and unsettling view.

The characters themselves are distinct, intriguing, and well-rounded. Fill is distinguished by his wealth, and naivete. Ankit, by her conflict between ambition and doing the right thing. Kaev, by his fighting skill, and his emotional turmoil. Soq by their deliberate distance from the people around them and by their pragmatism. Each character deepens as the story unfolds, slowly drawing the reader in. I was unsure how these very different individuals would connect, but was certain from the beginning that they would, somehow, some way. While I did foresee part of the eventual reveal, I was surprised by at least part of the conclusion.

Interestingly, the name of the book is taken from Masaaraq, "the orcamancer" as she is known by city residents. She is a heavy presence throughout the story from the very first page, yet she is given point-of-view voice in only one chapter. Bonded to her orca from a young age through nanite therapy, she doesn't quite think like other humans. Part human, part animal, her perspective is unique in the story, and offers some insight as to how she can see solutions everyone else overlooked. It also explains the savagery of her sense of justice. An orca is not known for its gentle nature, after all.

The other unspoken character in Blackfish City is the mysterious illness called, by most, "the breaks." Characterized by mental instability, a loss of capacity for clear speech, onset of memories in a victim's mind that come from someone else, and other odd symptoms, no one knows what it is or where it originated. The breaks is always fatal. There is no known cure. Several characters in the story are infected, some to a greater degree than others, and it is this looming death sentence and the mystery surrounding it that drives at least part of the subplot.

Author Sam Miller did a splendid job in building this grim world, which is not at all like most Western settings I've seen. Qaanaaq is a blend of Norse, Swedish, Mandarin, Thai, Icelandic, and other cultures, and American voices are few and far between—as well as being viewed with some disfavor. I actually liked that departure from the usual expectation. Qaanaaq itself strikes me as a bit of a cautionary element in the tale. I can see parts of it, enough to know I wouldn't want to live there. But some of the details – the slide boots and slideways used by Soq and the other messengers, the implants in their jaws to allow communications and messaging, the type of commerce that takes place here – was so alien to my experience that it was hard to imagine. Some of it, the sleeping capsules for example, might not be far removed from contemporary reality in overcrowded cities where climate does not allow sleeping on the streets. I'm not sure, but I can imagine it being a possibility.

I must admit that I found some of the plot resolutions a bit of a stretch. Overall, though, I enjoyed the story. It's definitely worth a read. ( )

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 ( )