I found myself reading at a very slow pace and googling unfamiliar sounding words with unfortunate regularity with the overall intention being to make sure I fully understood what was going on. As the world is so detailed and the language used is highly scientific it was difficult to get into initially.
An example would be that a combination of a telephone, translating system, and radio can be stored in someone's jaw. Many of the items used by the people of this world are logical but impressive advancements of equipment we use today. This is a mysterious and anonymous news service that civilians have access to.
He cleverly explains the social aspects, current technology, and the world's history through the characters points of views or with chapters presented by City Without a Map. Miller has created a world that is so deep, complex, and well-imagined that it almost appears to be a living breathing entity. This settlement is bustling with strife between classes, corruption, amazingly advanced technology, and also rumours of a mysterious lady who arrived one day accompanied by a killer whale and a giant polar bear. In this futuristic and dystopian world, people now reside in an astonishingly well engineered floating city that has been constructed in the Arctic Circle. The results of the climate wars were that the majority of the Earth was either flooded or burnt to rubble leaving very little in the way of habitual environments. Valente's gift for rich language seems to serve her well in what at times reads like stream-of-consciousness comedy.I received an advanced readers copy of Blackfish City in exchange for an honest review. Equally entertaining are her sometimes snarky sidebars about pop icons from David Bowie to the Carpenters (who "alone pretty much disqualify you" from having a chance, Jones is told).
One is an artificial intelligence that takes the form of the annoying Microsoft "Office Assistant" paper clip, another is an intelligent virus that turns other life forms into zombies. There are only two catches: The aliens choose who will represent Earth, and whoever ends up last in the contest gets their whole civilization wiped out.ĭecibel Jones and the Absolute Zeros desperately try to find a song that will enable them to save the world, but the plot takes a back seat to Valente's hilarious barrage of alien societies. When aliens, who look a little like flamingos and a little like the Road Runner, appear simultaneously all over the world, they make us an offer we literally can't refuse: competing in a gigantic Eurovision-type song contest called the Metagalactic Grand Prix. Admirers of Douglas Adams' "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" will feel at home in this wildly comical and cheerfully absurd galactic adventure, which finds the fate of human civilization in the hands of an over-the-hill glam-rock band whose star performer is already dead.
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