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Ship Breaker
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* "This thriller will grab and keep readers' attentions as Nailer and Nita 'crew up' in their fight to survive."-- "The Horn Book", starred review
Book Description
Award-winning author Paolo Bacigalupi delivers a thrilling, fast-paced adventure set in a vivid and raw, uncertain future.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
7 of 7 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase
I love Paolo Bacigalupi's writing, building on the deeply evocative wind-up girl this story takes us to a near future Gulf coast where obsolete tankers and other large ships are broken and salvaged. The future is environmentally challenged and impoverished and instead of the Gulf we know of today it's more like Bangladesh. The story revolves around two teenage salvage workers Nailer and Pima and their discovery of a wrecked ship (complete with helpless, lost rich girl), stuffed with riches beyond the dreams of avarice, well food and money, their horizons are as impoverished as their lifestyles and environment. It's a classic actioneer do they take the money or save the girl? The dystopian near future is well sketched out, well if you imagine the future to be like coastal Bangladesh anyway, and the main tropes of environment awareness, morality and ethics are finely drawn into the plot.
I was surprised to find this billed as a YA book, parts of it are properly dark and quite nasty on occasion but it's an enjoyable romp and a cracking read.
I was surprised to find this billed as a YA book, parts of it are properly dark and quite nasty on occasion but it's an enjoyable romp and a cracking read.
9 of 10 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
Ship Breaker, released in May 2010, is the second full length novel by Paolo Bacigalupi after The Windup Girl, which won the Nebula Award and is currently in the running for the Hugo Award, and his first Young Adult novel.
Ship Breaker is set in the Gulf Coast region of the United States in the near future, a world ravaged by poverty when oil reserves have been depleted and the sea level has risen dramatically due to climate change, causing geographic and societal shifts. Oil tankers, freighters and other huge sea vessels are no longer of any use due to the lack of oil, their only remaining value is whatever can be salvaged from them. On the Coast, ship breakers work at salvaging whatever they can from these huge ships, tearing them apart bit by bit until nothing remains. Light crews, constituted of children and teenagers due to their ability to fit into cramped ducts, are responsible for the smaller salvages such as the copper wiring or scrap metal whereas heavy crews salvage the bigger, heavier components.
Nailer Lopez, a teenager, is a Ship Breaker, he works for a light crew struggling as best he can to make salvage quota. After a severe hurricane known as a "City Killer" hits his coastal community, he and his crew-mate Pima discover a shipwrecked Clipper inside which they find wealth beyond their wildest dreams: silverware, food, paintings, etc. The crew are all dead, but they stumble upon the unconscious body of what appears to be a very wealthy, and beautiful, teenage girl. They are faced with a dilemma, salvage anything they can from their "Lucky Strike" before anyone else notices the wreck, or go against their instinct and save the girl.
Ship Breaker is a very enjoyable read full of action and adventure that tackles some themes currently in the Zeitgeist (climate change, peak oil) in a convincing way. This especially rings true with the current oil leak in the Gulf Coast. Bacigalupi paints a very bleak, dystopic portrait of our future if we don't find solutions to these problems soon. Clearly, one of the main messages this book sends is that we need to take a lot better care of our environment if we want to live as a species, and not just survive as best we can. I must say the world building in this book was phenomenal, the setting feels both plausible and alive, I would very much like to read more stories set in this world. The huge gap in wealth between the rich corporation owners and everyone else and all the other social commentary felt very à-propos.
The characters and their interactions were mostly vivid and fun to read, I especially liked the idea of the human-dog hybrid slaves. The relentless pace, action and adventure get you hooked in right from the start, it's a real page-turner. It's hard not to feel empathy for Nailer and his friends and the things they go through make you care even more for the characters. However the plot itself felt a bit formulaic and, to me, left something to be desired.
At times I found it hard to believe this novel is aimed at young adults, since some of the darker parts and events of the book had me a little squeamish. I hear this is typical of Bacigalupi, however this is the first book of his that I've read so I wouldn't know. At other times, the moralizing felt a bit heavy handed and repetitive, reminding me that this is a YA novel.
Had this novel been available when I was 13, and had I read it at that time, I'm sure it would have become one of my all-time favourite novels, much like Ender's Game. If the themes or the setting interest you, I highly recommend you read this book, whether you are in the target age group or not.
Ship Breaker is set in the Gulf Coast region of the United States in the near future, a world ravaged by poverty when oil reserves have been depleted and the sea level has risen dramatically due to climate change, causing geographic and societal shifts. Oil tankers, freighters and other huge sea vessels are no longer of any use due to the lack of oil, their only remaining value is whatever can be salvaged from them. On the Coast, ship breakers work at salvaging whatever they can from these huge ships, tearing them apart bit by bit until nothing remains. Light crews, constituted of children and teenagers due to their ability to fit into cramped ducts, are responsible for the smaller salvages such as the copper wiring or scrap metal whereas heavy crews salvage the bigger, heavier components.
Nailer Lopez, a teenager, is a Ship Breaker, he works for a light crew struggling as best he can to make salvage quota. After a severe hurricane known as a "City Killer" hits his coastal community, he and his crew-mate Pima discover a shipwrecked Clipper inside which they find wealth beyond their wildest dreams: silverware, food, paintings, etc. The crew are all dead, but they stumble upon the unconscious body of what appears to be a very wealthy, and beautiful, teenage girl. They are faced with a dilemma, salvage anything they can from their "Lucky Strike" before anyone else notices the wreck, or go against their instinct and save the girl.
Ship Breaker is a very enjoyable read full of action and adventure that tackles some themes currently in the Zeitgeist (climate change, peak oil) in a convincing way. This especially rings true with the current oil leak in the Gulf Coast. Bacigalupi paints a very bleak, dystopic portrait of our future if we don't find solutions to these problems soon. Clearly, one of the main messages this book sends is that we need to take a lot better care of our environment if we want to live as a species, and not just survive as best we can. I must say the world building in this book was phenomenal, the setting feels both plausible and alive, I would very much like to read more stories set in this world. The huge gap in wealth between the rich corporation owners and everyone else and all the other social commentary felt very à-propos.
The characters and their interactions were mostly vivid and fun to read, I especially liked the idea of the human-dog hybrid slaves. The relentless pace, action and adventure get you hooked in right from the start, it's a real page-turner. It's hard not to feel empathy for Nailer and his friends and the things they go through make you care even more for the characters. However the plot itself felt a bit formulaic and, to me, left something to be desired.
At times I found it hard to believe this novel is aimed at young adults, since some of the darker parts and events of the book had me a little squeamish. I hear this is typical of Bacigalupi, however this is the first book of his that I've read so I wouldn't know. At other times, the moralizing felt a bit heavy handed and repetitive, reminding me that this is a YA novel.
Had this novel been available when I was 13, and had I read it at that time, I'm sure it would have become one of my all-time favourite novels, much like Ender's Game. If the themes or the setting interest you, I highly recommend you read this book, whether you are in the target age group or not.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Format:Kindle Edition
I had previously read Windup Girl and was therefore familiar with the authors style - good plot, interesting perspective on future technology and a dystopian view of our ecological future, without ever getting `preachy' on the later point. I thoroughly enjoyed this book, perhaps more so than Windup Girl which at times was too convoluted for its own good.
Probably not enough hard science for some in this genre, but a great read.
Probably not enough hard science for some in this genre, but a great read.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
wonderful book!
Wonderful book! Fully captured my attention from the very start. An extremely well sketched future. Read more
Published 1 day ago by Aberter
This novel breaks towards the end...
Cracking start. Confused directionless middle. Gets better for a bit, then ends abruptly and unsatisfactorily. Read more
Published 3 months ago by Chris
Apparently it''s for young adults. I've read worse from serious...
If you've read Windup Girl by the same author, imagine a similarly dystopic near future world suffering from environmental and structural collapse, largely controlled by corporate... Read more
Published 5 months ago by Realist
Great world building, but not for me.
This was definitely a well written book but unfortunately it just wasn't for me. I'd give it around 2.5 stars for my enjoyment, but it does deserve more. Read more
Published 7 months ago by Stepping Out of the Page
The spirit of Robert Louis Stevenson
I read Shipbreaker after rave reviews from my 13-year-old son. I was struck by how much it resembled Treasure Island and Kidnapped: A boy on the brink of manhood, who is betrayed... Read more
Published 7 months ago by Traveler and Reader
Damp dystopia with 'high seas' adventure
I've seen Ship Breaker described as a dystopia. Well, it's certainly that, but in some respects there are plenty of people in the so-called developing world who already live this... Read more
Published 8 months ago by M. Cantrell
Finally a good and believable dystopia novel!
With dystopia almost as the new science fiction, and contemporary reality-based dystopia(1) as one of the most used fads in YA these days, it's hardly surprising that an author... Read more
Published 9 months ago by Els De Clercq
The Book Geek
A good read but not, I eventually realised, for me.
The story is about a boy called Nailer who works hard gathering copper wiring from old oil tankers in order to make... Read more
The story is about a boy called Nailer who works hard gathering copper wiring from old oil tankers in order to make... Read more
Published 9 months ago by Emily Mitchell
Cracking Foreign Author
The Teen market is one that is growing up and doing it fast as this title by Paolo Bacigalupi has gone to prove. Read more
Published 10 months ago by Gareth Wilson - Falcata Times Blog
Exciting futuristic tale for young (and older) adults.
An excellent book, aimed at young adults and so containing some violence and mildish swearing, Ship Breaker tells the tale of Nailer, scratching a living in the Gulf of Mexico in a... Read more
Published 14 months ago by Tinhead
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