BOOKS 2 SCREEN PICK
Blackfish City by Sam J. Miller (Ecco, 2018)
Summary: 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.
Notes: Miller has created ambitious, imaginative, and big-hearted dystopian ensemble story, The floating city of Qaanaaq was constructed after many mainland cities burned or sank. The arrival of a woman draws a disparate group together. Ankit, a political aide, wants to free her institutionalized birth mother; her brother, Kaev, is a brain-damaged fighter at the end of his career; Fill, a rich playboy, has the breaks, an illness that throws sufferers into strangers’ memories; and Soq, an ambitious nonbinary street messenger, is trying to hustle their way into a better life. Together, they uncover a dramatic series of secrets, connections, and political plots. The setting is chilly and well defined, the world building is intensely clever. There is some genuinely inspired mythology here. “The breaks” are somewhat terrifying and allegorical, as the story unfolds within the world’s view of each individual character it is often unexpected and entirely addictive.
Miller has crafted a thriller that unflinchingly examines the ills of urban capitalism. Qaanaaq is a beautiful and brutal character in its own right, rendered in poetic interludes. Imaginative, compelling, realistically fantastic and blimey a right proper page turner with beautifully immersive descriptive prose and characters that just pop. The plot is intelligently woven and every level of this city and it’s people is explored, opened up to the reader and shown in all it’s gorgeous, stark, unrelenting forms.
The way everyone came together at the end works like a tapestry.
The Book to Screen Club 