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3.8 AVERAGE
3.8 AVERAGE
A little better than Ship Breaker, but a lot more brutal.
I don't really know what "Ship Breaker #2" means, but I'm taking it to mean it's the second in an (x)-part series. I wouldn't necessarily characterize it as a sequel, though. More on that in a minute.
This is another tale from Bacigalupi's well imagined dystopian future. Though definitely aimed at a younger audience than Windup Girl or anything from Pump Six, TDC is significantly darker & more violent than Ship Breaker. That said, it's not any worse than some other YA titles topping bestseller lists these days, so ... whatever. The violence & horror work in the context of the story. It hardly bothered me.
I liked the book, but I'm a fan of this author. I feel like he's building to something with these books, but in an oblique manner. This is what I was getting at with mentioning that it's not exactly a sequel. There was only one character that carried through from Ship Breaker to The Drowned Cities: Tool, the half-man. We are given more insight into Tool's character and personality this time around. He's a major character in this novel, but I'd hesitate to call him the protagonist or hero. I like the idea of building a multi-book arc by using one character to thread seemingly unrelated stories together. I think that just may be what's happening... the way the book ends hints that something bigger is in store for Tool. I wonder how we're going to meet up with him again in the next book(s). I'm looking forward to finding out!
This is another tale from Bacigalupi's well imagined dystopian future. Though definitely aimed at a younger audience than Windup Girl or anything from Pump Six, TDC is significantly darker & more violent than Ship Breaker. That said, it's not any worse than some other YA titles topping bestseller lists these days, so ... whatever. The violence & horror work in the context of the story. It hardly bothered me.
I liked the book, but I'm a fan of this author. I feel like he's building to something with these books, but in an oblique manner. This is what I was getting at with mentioning that it's not exactly a sequel. There was only one character that carried through from Ship Breaker to The Drowned Cities: Tool, the half-man. We are given more insight into Tool's character and personality this time around. He's a major character in this novel, but I'd hesitate to call him the protagonist or hero. I like the idea of building a multi-book arc by using one character to thread seemingly unrelated stories together. I think that just may be what's happening... the way the book ends hints that something bigger is in store for Tool. I wonder how we're going to meet up with him again in the next book(s). I'm looking forward to finding out!
The Drowned Cities is the darkest, most starkly troubling young adult book I remember reading. I'm not really sure how it is Young Adult except that it has a teenager as main character.
Bacigalupi explores themes of community, prejudice, and greed quite thoroughly. For that I recommend it. But the narrative skips and jumps quite a bit in pacing and mood giving me the impression that the author wrote chunks of the book at different times and then patched it together with little editorial work.
That said, the ideas and characters worked for me, but this is the weakest of the three books I've read from Paolo.
Bacigalupi explores themes of community, prejudice, and greed quite thoroughly. For that I recommend it. But the narrative skips and jumps quite a bit in pacing and mood giving me the impression that the author wrote chunks of the book at different times and then patched it together with little editorial work.
That said, the ideas and characters worked for me, but this is the weakest of the three books I've read from Paolo.
The Shipbreaker world is not quite as compelling to me as the Windup Girl world, and the first few expository chapters in this book are a bit tedious.
But once Bacigalupi gets going, this book is hard to put down. The story moves, and is moving- he breaks down the child soldier experience from the inside and outside in a very compelling way that seems genuine.
I would have liked to see (especially given the YA nature of this book) an afterward or some sort of mention that some of the things mentioned in the book are happening today in the real world.
But once Bacigalupi gets going, this book is hard to put down. The story moves, and is moving- he breaks down the child soldier experience from the inside and outside in a very compelling way that seems genuine.
I would have liked to see (especially given the YA nature of this book) an afterward or some sort of mention that some of the things mentioned in the book are happening today in the real world.
4.5
Sometimes a book is just all that much better for being so disgustingly horrible. For not glossing over the gruesome details, for keeping the reader hooked in wide-eyed horror. This is that kind of book. The author doesn't waste his time on niceties, this story's about the harsh realities of survival and the unfortunate lengths that people have to go to in order to just stay alive. This book is nasty and gritty, and yet none of the violence and gore felt gratuitous, and above all else [a:Paolo Bacigalupi|1226977|Paolo Bacigalupi|http://photo.goodreads.com/authors/1278742221p2/1226977.jpg] is actually an incredible writer.
For those of you - like me - who felt that [b:Ship Breaker|7095831|Ship Breaker (Ship Breaker, #1)|Paolo Bacigalupi|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1327874074s/7095831.jpg|7352929] was a little bit too much of a "boy book", despite being impressed by the writing and the imagery, I want to let you know that you should have no such concerns about [b:The Drowned Cities|12814594|The Drowned Cities (Ship Breaker, #2)|Paolo Bacigalupi|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1333712780s/12814594.jpg|13677912]. Not only is this a much better book than its predecessor, it has a broader reach. This, in my opinion, is about so much more than high-action scenes to please teen male readers, there are strong messages about war and loyalty and survival.
The story mainly focuses on three individuals, Mahlia, her companion Mouse, and a genetically engineered soldier which combines parts of various animals and human DNA to make the ultimate killing machine (called Tool). War plays a big part in this book, it is what threatens the safety of the characters, what forces them on, what challenges them to make a number of big decisions. Mahlia, with only a stump at the end of her right arm, is already a victim of this war. A war that is a lot more familiar to humanity than most of us would like to think.
To digress slightly, tomorrow I will be taking an exam in international relations and one of the key topics is what we call "new wars". These are a certain type of wars that have been on the rise for the last couple of decades, the kind that sees new technology creating cheap and light weaponry that can be handled by children. Some of these children are five years old when they are recruited and forced to kill or be killed. The relevance? Mahlia and Mouse are children also caught up in a war, a war where the "soldier boys" are nothing but children with attitudes and big guns. Children who've been brainwashed into seeking cruelty and violence - because their only other option was to become a victim. [b:The Drowned Cities|12814594|The Drowned Cities (Ship Breaker, #2)|Paolo Bacigalupi|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1333712780s/12814594.jpg|13677912] may seem to be a futuristic/dystopian novel, but the war that the characters are facing is nothing that hasn't already happened in our world, nothing that isn't happening right now.
This is a very sad, honest tale of war, with particular emphasis on the effect it has on children. There are many questions being asked here that I think [a:Paolo Bacigalupi|1226977|Paolo Bacigalupi|http://photo.goodreads.com/authors/1278742221p2/1226977.jpg] wants us to seriously consider. It is so easy to forget that children are being forced into this kind of life through fear, not in a different world or dimension, not in a possible future, but right now across the globe. This is a much deeper and thought-provoking book than I imagined and I know I'll be thinking about it for quite some time.
adventurous
dark
sad
tense
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
This was such a disappointing book after the amazing Ship Breaker. Bacigalupi returns to the dystopian world he created there, but with all new characters, except for Tool the engineered half-human/half-animal. While the first novel explored great themes of family, loyalty, truth, etc., and really looked into father-son relationships, this one touches on them very superficially, and then adds a theme of the futility of war. The only problem is that the dialogue is basically a lecture about that; the reader is not really allowed to discover it himself. There's all these warring factions, and it could have been very easy to let the action flow to the point that it would be so obvious that the conflict will never end until everyone is dead. I found the jargony/new slangy words to be annoying because they were used far too much. It's OK to try to create a different world with different words, but if you use "licebiters" over and over and over, it just grates, at least on me. The final battle was probably the best part of the book, but the writing to get to it was weak, imho.
This felt as if Bacigalupi rushed it to press, even though he claims it took him longer than he thought. It just did not rise to the level of Ship Breaker, nor to the level of other dystopian fiction.
This felt as if Bacigalupi rushed it to press, even though he claims it took him longer than he thought. It just did not rise to the level of Ship Breaker, nor to the level of other dystopian fiction.
Brilliant. Beautiful writing, tragic and heartbreaking.
While I did enjoy reading this book, I kept waiting for the story to really begin. Ship Breaker was better, but I still liked this follow-up and finding out what happened to Tool.
adventurous
tense
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes