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3.8 AVERAGE
3.8 AVERAGE
Good story, YA-ish but brutal, child soldiers figure prominently. I have not read Ship Breaker.
What I appreciate most about Paolo's books is that he doesn't sanitize violence. The violence in this book is awful: painful, grotesque, horrifying. No bravely wounded, perfectly coiffed protagonists staring down an army and miraculously prevailing against the odds. The characters in these books fight, they sacrifice, they hurt, and they struggle as they try to survive amidst the horrors of their world.
These books aren't about self-respect or dignity. There about what happens when society has utterly and totally collapsed into anarchy and what people do to stay alive. I know, this doesn't sound like YA to me either, but there it is. So many YA authors right now are exploring dystopian worlds. I hope they're not prescient.
In any case, this is a compelling, horrifying novel. Read it, but don't expect to go out partying afterwards.
These books aren't about self-respect or dignity. There about what happens when society has utterly and totally collapsed into anarchy and what people do to stay alive. I know, this doesn't sound like YA to me either, but there it is. So many YA authors right now are exploring dystopian worlds. I hope they're not prescient.
In any case, this is a compelling, horrifying novel. Read it, but don't expect to go out partying afterwards.
I listened to this book on audio. While it was gritty at times, I really enjoyed it. I sat on the edge of my seat through the whole book. I was happy to see Tool, my favorite character, had a much bigger roll than he did in Ship Breaker. The author did a good job of painting the post-apocalyptic world in a very realistic light and showing the political situation. I’m really hoping there will be a third book in this series because I really liked this one and want to see more of Tool.
This is the second novel and more of a companion novel to Ship Breaker. (You can read in any order)
I'm rereading this book and I felt like it was dragging a bit and it was hard to stay engaged. The world building was really nice, but I felt like it was hard to stay fully engaged with the story.
I'm rereading this book and I felt like it was dragging a bit and it was hard to stay engaged. The world building was really nice, but I felt like it was hard to stay fully engaged with the story.
Not Bacigalupi's best but still a good story worth reading. I love a book in which the main characters aren't just more Mary Sues and chosen ones for which Deus ex machina never fails. Bacigalupi's characters are always great and make any story worth the read despite plot. Not that the plot isn't good too!
I like that there is never a storybook happy ending in these tales.
I just wish this book had explained how Tool ends up where he ends up in another book. Oh well.
I like that there is never a storybook happy ending in these tales.
I just wish this book had explained how Tool ends up where he ends up in another book. Oh well.
I adored Ship Breaker, and this is not quite as good - a bit heavy-handed with the message. But the last chapter is heart-stopping, and once I finished it I wanted to go back and spend more time with these characters. A sequel is inevitable.
Another book worth reading by Bacigalupi. It's basically a sequel to Ship Breaker which was a YA book from what I remember - this one not so much YA. Basically its an after-the-day and the US sucks. It is people behaving badly and child soldiers and war and no really good ways out. So it is not a happy book or an especially deep one. But it is a quick read, well written and original.
The Drowned Cities by Paolo Bacigalupi (2012):
Oh Paolo Bacigalupi, you are so awesome and I so wish I could enjoy your books as much as I appreciate and admire them. The Drowned Cities is a companion novel to Ship Breaker. Both books are set in the same world but The Drowned Cities is in a different location and set years earlier. The connection between the books is obvious in some ways but I often wished some hint of how the plots and characters impacted each other.
Some background on my reading history with Bacigalupi: I read Ship Breaker when it was a Cybils finalist the last time I judged SFF. I had a lot of problems with it.) that one--problems that did still turn up here--but I was happy to see writing that was much improved compared to Bacigalupi's first exploration of this world. I also picked up The Drowned Cities as a Cybils judge. It was, again, a book I would not have picked up otherwise given my own tastes as a reader.
There were a lot of interesting things here. Bacigalupi seems to work a lot with the power of names which is one of my favorite things. I liked seeing how naming came into play for Mahlia and Ocho. And I thought the concept of name was taken to especially good effect with Mouse's story. The concept of Luck and Choice was also present and interesting although by the end I thought it got a bit heavy-handed with everyone doing horrible things basically all the time and wondering what that meant for their humanity.
I found all of the main characters hard to take in the beginning when they were more self-centered, calculating and ultimately mean. Though, giving credit to the author, that was definitely the point but it was almost unbearable reading about all of these people with almost no redeeming qualities.
My largest problem was Mahlia and her lack of a right hand. By the end of the story, I got that it was important to the karmic side plot Bacigalupi was working and everything coming full circle. That said, having a one-handed character means I, as a reader, am going to be thinking A LOT about how that character does things. Early on Mahlia is at pains to mention that she grips with her left and balances with her stump to plant that seed early on. Generally any time Mahlia was "in action" I was taken out of the story as I tried to figure out how she was doing something (or why she had no phantom pains). How does she wring out a rag with one hand? How does she tie a cloth around her head? How does she "fiddle" with a rifle with one hand?
Given Mahlia's life, the ending of the story also seemed over-the-top and felt contrived in order to give Mahlia a chance to deliver a very stirring speech. I get that it was a powerful scene and important to the story but I really felt the writing being manipulated to satisfy writerly ends when, really, Mahlia could have suffered any number of other hardships.
In that same vein, I was underwhelmed by the ending of the story overall. After following these characters through all of these horrors I wanted more than the hint of hope and redemption that we got at the end. I wanted more as a big message at the end of the book than war is hell and makes otherwise good people do monstrous things.
This is a trope that I've seen in some other novels recently, with less gore and violence, (and it pains me to say it because I do genuinely believe Bacigalupi is a wonderful writer) but it was handled better in other books including Code Name Verity and The 5th Wave. Fans of Ship Breaker will want to pick this one up as will readers who are fond of action, dystopians and stories that don't shy away from violence.
Oh Paolo Bacigalupi, you are so awesome and I so wish I could enjoy your books as much as I appreciate and admire them. The Drowned Cities is a companion novel to Ship Breaker. Both books are set in the same world but The Drowned Cities is in a different location and set years earlier. The connection between the books is obvious in some ways but I often wished some hint of how the plots and characters impacted each other.
Some background on my reading history with Bacigalupi: I read Ship Breaker when it was a Cybils finalist the last time I judged SFF. I had a lot of problems with it.) that one--problems that did still turn up here--but I was happy to see writing that was much improved compared to Bacigalupi's first exploration of this world. I also picked up The Drowned Cities as a Cybils judge. It was, again, a book I would not have picked up otherwise given my own tastes as a reader.
There were a lot of interesting things here. Bacigalupi seems to work a lot with the power of names which is one of my favorite things. I liked seeing how naming came into play for Mahlia and Ocho. And I thought the concept of name was taken to especially good effect with Mouse's story. The concept of Luck and Choice was also present and interesting although by the end I thought it got a bit heavy-handed with everyone doing horrible things basically all the time and wondering what that meant for their humanity.
I found all of the main characters hard to take in the beginning when they were more self-centered, calculating and ultimately mean. Though, giving credit to the author, that was definitely the point but it was almost unbearable reading about all of these people with almost no redeeming qualities.
My largest problem was Mahlia and her lack of a right hand. By the end of the story, I got that it was important to the karmic side plot Bacigalupi was working and everything coming full circle. That said, having a one-handed character means I, as a reader, am going to be thinking A LOT about how that character does things. Early on Mahlia is at pains to mention that she grips with her left and balances with her stump to plant that seed early on. Generally any time Mahlia was "in action" I was taken out of the story as I tried to figure out how she was doing something (or why she had no phantom pains). How does she wring out a rag with one hand? How does she tie a cloth around her head? How does she "fiddle" with a rifle with one hand?
Given Mahlia's life, the ending of the story also seemed over-the-top and felt contrived in order to give Mahlia a chance to deliver a very stirring speech. I get that it was a powerful scene and important to the story but I really felt the writing being manipulated to satisfy writerly ends when, really, Mahlia could have suffered any number of other hardships.
In that same vein, I was underwhelmed by the ending of the story overall. After following these characters through all of these horrors I wanted more than the hint of hope and redemption that we got at the end. I wanted more as a big message at the end of the book than war is hell and makes otherwise good people do monstrous things.
This is a trope that I've seen in some other novels recently, with less gore and violence, (and it pains me to say it because I do genuinely believe Bacigalupi is a wonderful writer) but it was handled better in other books including Code Name Verity and The 5th Wave. Fans of Ship Breaker will want to pick this one up as will readers who are fond of action, dystopians and stories that don't shy away from violence.
The thing about [a:Paolo Bacigalupi|1226977|Paolo Bacigalupi|https://d.gr-assets.com/authors/1375566282p2/1226977.jpg]'s dystopian future novels is that they don't feel very future. I heard him speak after [b:Ship Breaker|7095831|Ship Breaker (Ship Breaker, #1)|Paolo Bacigalupi|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1327874074s/7095831.jpg|7352929] came out, and he said that the way people lived in that book is no different from the way some kids are living right now in developing countries--the same thing is true of The Drowned Cities. There is no point where you think, as I did in both the Divergent or Hunger Games books, "Wait, I just don't see a society ever really functioning like that. How would we get from here to there?" In The Drowned Cities, the people are living just like people are living right now in parts of Africa, probably in Syria--I felt like I was reading history that just hadn't happened yet. After the climate change report that just came out, that future seems closer than ever. Fortunately, Bacigalupi maintains a sense of possibility; though this book was so much more real than [b:The Knife of Never Letting Go|2118745|The Knife of Never Letting Go (Chaos Walking, #1)|Patrick Ness|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1277071696s/2118745.jpg|2124180], it was still less bleak and miserable. I think because Bacigalupi has a real mission to make a genuine change in the world--make the future too bleak, and no one will have the energy to try to make things turn out differently.