The Maiden Voyage of New York City

Girod’s debut introduces a fresh, futuristic urban landscape brimming with potential but sets a disappointingly simplistic, unsubtle tale within it. Decades after the floods of 2090 subsumed Manhattan, a miraculous technological solution raises the city’s skyscrapers to float above the water, leading to a renewed burst in tourism. This boom does not extend to the other boroughs, which remain crime-ridden and dilapidated. Responding to the city’s financial problems and extensive drug trade, as well as the recent disappearance of several prominent billionaires, Mayor Sophia Ramos commissions an unpopular project to motorize the buildings in the “slums” and clear them out by sailing them down the river. Meanwhile a gossip columnist and a pair of Brooklyn gumshoes investigate the disappearances and a revolutionary organizer calls for the revolt of a working class who do not want to see their city disappear. The villainous upper class is portrayed as flat and cartoonish, a uniformly decadent and stupid mass, and the solution to the mystery of the missing billionaires is ultimately trivial. By painting in such broad strokes, Girod fails to satisfactorily explore his fascinating postapocalyptic, steampunk-infused setting. Readers excited by the premise will wish it were better executed. (May)