ms_rey's review against another edition
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
2.75
Started too slow, ended too fast. Took me ages to get invested, and I only got through the first half because it was an audiobook. Then the climax ran through a couple different scenarios that were meant to be important and gripping but instead felt glossy and lacking detail. A couple character deaths that meant nothing to me. A punishment for an antagonist shown offscreen. I wish I liked it but I’m not sure I do.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Classism, Injury/Injury detail, Animal death, and Chronic illness
Moderate: Abandonment and Forced institutionalization
nodogsonthemoon's review
dark
mysterious
sad
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
3.5
Content Warnings
Graphic: Blood, Death, Violence, Terminal illness, Mental illness, and Gore
Moderate: Abandonment, Animal death, Genocide, Sexual content, Suicidal thoughts, and Torture
booksthatburn's review against another edition
adventurous
reflective
sad
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
3.0
BLACKFISH CITY feels like post-apocalyptic cyberpunk (or maybe seapunk?), where it's been long enough after the destruction of significant portions of civilization that people have had time to rebuild, but nothing is as it was, and even less is as people would wish it to be.
The worldbuilding is great, with a backstory for the place itself which is told gradually throughout the narrative. There's an A.I. running everything, actually there are a lot of A.I.'s running things, and things are going about as well as they can when somebody a while ago built a nearly unaccountable system, put it on autopilot, and stopped claiming any active responsibility (i.e. badly). There are housing issues, xenophobia, immigration, and an illness spreading through the city that the authorities will neither acknowledge nor treat, but it's definitely present. Suddenly a woman shows up with an orca and a polar bear and her presence consumes the city in totally believable way. All of this is told through a rotation of protagonists from different circumstances who are seemingly unconnected. It's an interesting idea fleshed out into an excellent setting in which to place the characters. That's where it starts getting strange for me. The mysterious orcamancer woman was fascinating... until we actually meet her. Soq was really cool and made a ton of sense, with clear goals and understandable motivations... until they find out some of their personal history and start having unexplained goals that seemed to come out of nowhere. I'm not upset that the seemingly unconnected narrators turned out to actually be connected, that's a common trope which helps the narrative hang together so that they interact with the plot. That being said, I wasn't expecting them to be quite so connected. It took something that felt big and epic, people coming together as strangers to do something for the city and each other, and turned it into something much more dense and coincidental. Neither is bad, necessarily, but it meant I spent 70%-80% of the time thinking I was reading one kind of story before it suddenly changed to the other. Rather than feeling intimate it suddenly felt petty, at least for me.
There’s a moment where Soq, the nonbinary character, is implied to be intersex, but it’s conveyed briefly in a scene where a sexual partner is confused by their genitals (not described). Up until that scene they’d been pretty effortlessly and adeptly handled as a nonbinary character (with little explanatory moments but nothing that took me out of a scene), and then this encounter happens. Being intersex, if that’s what was meant, is distinct from being nonbinary. While it’s more than possible for someone to be both, it felt like their evidently intersex anatomy was offered as an explanation for their nonbinary identity in a way that was frustrating to read. They push back against the comment and correct the person, but it didn’t need to be in the story, just a bit of pointless interphobia.
The worldbuilding is great, with a backstory for the place itself which is told gradually throughout the narrative. There's an A.I. running everything, actually there are a lot of A.I.'s running things, and things are going about as well as they can when somebody a while ago built a nearly unaccountable system, put it on autopilot, and stopped claiming any active responsibility (i.e. badly). There are housing issues, xenophobia, immigration, and an illness spreading through the city that the authorities will neither acknowledge nor treat, but it's definitely present. Suddenly a woman shows up with an orca and a polar bear and her presence consumes the city in totally believable way. All of this is told through a rotation of protagonists from different circumstances who are seemingly unconnected. It's an interesting idea fleshed out into an excellent setting in which to place the characters. That's where it starts getting strange for me. The mysterious orcamancer woman was fascinating... until we actually meet her. Soq was really cool and made a ton of sense, with clear goals and understandable motivations... until they find out some of their personal history and start having unexplained goals that seemed to come out of nowhere. I'm not upset that the seemingly unconnected narrators turned out to actually be connected, that's a common trope which helps the narrative hang together so that they interact with the plot. That being said, I wasn't expecting them to be quite so connected. It took something that felt big and epic, people coming together as strangers to do something for the city and each other, and turned it into something much more dense and coincidental. Neither is bad, necessarily, but it meant I spent 70%-80% of the time thinking I was reading one kind of story before it suddenly changed to the other. Rather than feeling intimate it suddenly felt petty, at least for me.
There’s a moment where Soq, the nonbinary character, is implied to be intersex, but it’s conveyed briefly in a scene where a sexual partner is confused by their genitals (not described). Up until that scene they’d been pretty effortlessly and adeptly handled as a nonbinary character (with little explanatory moments but nothing that took me out of a scene), and then this encounter happens. Being intersex, if that’s what was meant, is distinct from being nonbinary. While it’s more than possible for someone to be both, it felt like their evidently intersex anatomy was offered as an explanation for their nonbinary identity in a way that was frustrating to read. They push back against the comment and correct the person, but it didn’t need to be in the story, just a bit of pointless interphobia.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Sexual content, Blood, Violence, Torture, and Animal death
Moderate: Ableism, Alcohol, Forced institutionalization, Mental illness, Terminal illness, Fire/Fire injury, Vomit, Suicidal thoughts, and Death
Minor: Sexism, Misogyny, Genocide, and Self harm
kipiekie's review
adventurous
dark
emotional
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Genocide and Animal death
Moderate: Violence and Mental illness
achillea's review against another edition
dark
mysterious
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
aksjkfjsaxewp??? ksjadiedw!! wakjfeopsx
Content Warnings
Graphic: Blood
Moderate: Animal death, Death, Forced institutionalization, Genocide, and Xenophobia
aardwyrm's review
challenging
dark
emotional
mysterious
reflective
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.5
Climate change dystopia in which horrible things happen endlessly, but the ultimate choice is hope. The world of Blackfish City is a world that has ended and is beginning to make itself again. The book rejects all easy answers but still loops back to the possibility of a better future. Its patchwork of viewpoints and intertwined themes of family and choice are powerfully executed and throw the reader into the City Without a Map.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Violence, Gun violence, Terminal illness, Torture, Trafficking, Sexual content, Religious bigotry, Police brutality, Murder, Mental illness, Medical trauma, Medical content, Gore, Grief, Genocide, Chronic illness, Blood, and Animal death
toriliz's review
challenging
dark
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
2.5
So, I really wanted to like this. It has a lot a factors I normally love in books; dystopian/futuristic setup, the seemingly out of place character (hello Orcamancer), a shifting POV...but that wasn’t enough. On its face, this had really interesting ideas but the writing wasn’t the best at seeing them through. There was barely any change between character voices, which made it hard to follow along. There were lots of ideas that were either barely explored or mentioned once or twice and then they just disappear (the breaks, nanobonding, the genocides mentioned). And, I’m not sure what the end was supposed to mean, if anything? It felt like someone was writing and said “Nah, I’ll just end it here” rather than writing something that felt purposeful and tied the ends together. It had a lot of potential but fell flat in most areas. On the plus side, I know this doesn’t count towards the actual content at all but whoever did the cover art deserves some kudos. It looks really fantastic.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Violence
Minor: Animal death
sarah984's review against another edition
dark
mysterious
reflective
slow-paced
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.0
This is kind of a conflicting one for me to review because I liked the overall story but I didn't really like the book. The setting was interesting, sort of an arctic-themed cyberpunk city run by AI with a few rich human "stakeholders", where organized crime is everywhere and people are on the streets losing their minds to an illness called the breaks that no one in power will deal with because of optics. The story of a strange woman and her entourage of animals sweeping in to turn this upside down is compelling.
I just really didn't like the writing. A few of the plot twists were things that annoy me in any narrative, the language is pretentious and weird, and the author uses the word orgasmic to describe way too many things. It's not inherently a bad book, but it definitely didn't work for me.
I just really didn't like the writing. A few of the plot twists were things that annoy me in any narrative, the language is pretentious and weird, and the author uses the word orgasmic to describe way too many things. It's not inherently a bad book, but it definitely didn't work for me.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Animal cruelty, Animal death, Blood, Confinement, Death, Forced institutionalization, Genocide, Gore, Gun violence, Police brutality, Religious bigotry, Self harm, Sexual assault, Suicidal thoughts, Terminal illness, Torture, and Rape
Moderate: Ableism, Genocide, Homophobia, Medical content, Police brutality, Toxic relationship, and Xenophobia
Minor: Vomit
My rape tag is for a scene where a character feels pressured into sex but technically consents (and sees themselves as having consented later). The perpetrator in this scene also transmits a fatal sexually transmitted infection to the victim without prior disclosure.whatcassiedid's review
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
tense
fast-paced
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
I wasn't sure about this one going into it but wow did I end up loving it. A well fleshed out post-climate change world with mostly BIPOC characters, and one of the main characters is non-binary!
Content Warnings
Moderate: Forced institutionalization, Gore, and Mental illness
Minor: Animal death
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