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Marie Vibbert: We Built This City (Clarkesworld) 2 stars

https://clarkesworldmagazine.com/vibbert_06_22/

We Built This City

2 stars

This is a novelette set in a floating city on Venus; Julia works an unglamorous but rewarding and important job repairing the dome and washing off the accumulating acid. It's a story about living precariously under capitalism, about trying to live up to family expectations, and about worker solidarity.

These are all timely themes, but I don't feel like this story did anything with them in a unique or captivating way for me. The story ends with a reconciliation of the family conflict, but I didn't feel like there was much motion to get to that point and so it felt a bit empty.