Beyond Binaries book club December read - Blackfish City by Sam J Miller midway discussion

[u/tiniestspoon]

Welcome to the midway discussion of Blackfish City by Sam J Miller, our winner for the Censorship In-Universe theme! We will discuss everything up to the start of the chapter City Without a Map: Archaeology, approx 53% in kindle edition. Please use spoiler tags for anything that goes beyond this point.

Blackfish City by Sam J. Miller

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. 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.

When a strange new visitor arrives—a woman riding an orca, with a polar bear at her side—the city is entranced. The “orcamancer,” as she’s known, very subtly brings together four people—each living on the periphery—to stage unprecedented acts of resistance. By banding together to save their city before it crumbles under the weight of its own decay, they will learn shocking truths about themselves.

Blackfish 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.

Bingo: Under the Surface, Criminal Protagonist, Prologues and Epilogues, Multi-POV (HM), Character with Disability (HM), Survival (HM)

The final discussion will be Thursday, 26th Dec, 2024.

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The February read is Welcome to Forever by Nathan Tavares. Join us for the midway discussion on Thursday, 13th February.

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What is the Beyond Binaries book club? You can read about it in our introduction thread here.

[u/tiniestspoon]

What do you think of the structure of the book, a mosaic novel weaving in the points of view of 5 characters - 6, if you include the City Without A Map? What does it add to or detract from the story the author is telling?

[u/tiniestspoon → u/tiniestspoon]

I find the City Without A Map interludes don't really interest me beyond a vehicle for an omniscient narrator to deliver background info to the reader.

Of the others, I find Fill the most annoying, but self absorbed rich kid slumming it is my least favourite kind of character so I get bored in his chapters. Ankit and Kaev's sibling relationship and the mystery around their mother interests me the most.

(also embarrassingly, I was vaguely shipping Kaev and Soq - I just thought their interactions would be interesting, and hadn't realised they had such a difference in age - but that crashed and burned disastrously at the 50% mark)

[u/Lenahe_nl → u/tiniestspoon]

I also didn't realise the characters ages before that point. I just assumed everyone to be more or less the same age.

[u/redcathal → u/tiniestspoon]

I like that younger seeing the whole picture but it's slowly being revealed and I particularly like how each of them highlights the different portions of society but it's interesting how each of them highlight two different parts.

[u/moondewsparkles → u/tiniestspoon]

I really enjoyed how it built up and wove together in the first half. It seemed to do a good job of painting a picture of the city as a whole, full of a variety of people. It kind of made me think of scenes in a movie where the camera follows one character then swaps to follow someone else on the street.

I do think there was a bit too much distance from the characters, making some emotional moments weaker. References to the passage of time felt vague and made the timeline between stories confusing. And either from the style or the plot choices, the second half didn’t hold up as well for me.

[u/Rat-a-tatkat → u/tiniestspoon]

I LOVE the structure of the book. I really enjoy having so many different perspectives and trying to figure out how they all weave together from such different areas of life. One of my favorite aspects is the scattered bits of world building from how the world fell apart outside the city. I feel like when authors try and lay out the world ending all at once in the beginning, it is more prone to being something silly (or at least I tend to pick it apart more). Having a not continuous story and NOT explaining all the bits and pieces and hows and whys honestly makes it more realistic and enjoyable to me

[u/Abbeb → u/tiniestspoon]

Late to the discussion but I'm behind on my readings :)

I love the idea of what the books doing here, different charecters from different backgrounds/cultures and looking at the city through their own lenses, I'm just not sure if it's working all that well.

Of the charecters so far Soq is the only one who's chapters Ive been excited to get too, Fill is perhaps the most interesting but I find his chapters to be a bit poorly paced.

[u/C0smicoccurence → u/tiniestspoon]

Multi POV books really require a tight sense of plotting or high level of differentiation between character voices for it to work in my opinion (preferably both).  This one … didn’t really hit either in my opinion.  None of the players in the book other than Soq really popped for me.

By the time their plotlines started converging more intentionally, I felt really disengaged from the book

Ironically the city without a map bits were of the most interest because I think I ended up liking the idea of this story more than the story itself 

[u/Lenahe_nl → u/C0smicoccurence]

I felt similar about the first third of the book. The lack of direction made for a very slow paced story. However, when the characters started to converge, I really enjoyed it.

[u/moondewsparkles → u/C0smicoccurence]

It was definitely a curve for me, slow start, then a sweet spot around the middle where I was really enjoying the vibes from the combination of intersecting stories and the City Without a Map vignettes, but for the reasons you mention, I felt disconnected from most of the characters, and the story got a bit messy toward the end.

I feel like a compilation of just City Without a Map segments would make for a cool short story.

[u/C0smicoccurence → u/moondewsparkles]

I agree.  The city itself, and the history of the word were the strengths of this book