A review by alex_watkins
Ship Breaker by Paolo Bacigalupi

4.0

Our small hero is a poor ship breaker, basically the salvage old ships, mostly oil tankers. In this world oil has ran out, global warming has upended world order and flooded coastlines, huge hurricanes are a regular occurrence the the north pole is opening to shipping. It has a young protagonist but the book is mature, with child abuse and poverty among the main themes. My main annoyance was it seemed to be a book about poverty and I kept thinking, this didn't need to be set in the future this kind of stuff is happening right now. even some of the worst things like organ harvesting. I enjoyed the world of global warming, where sail boats have made a comeback in a big way, and I understand using a science fiction world to make parallels to our own. However this isn't a science fiction world, it is our own some few hundred years in the future, I wouldn't want people to think this is what lies only in our future. But the plot is good the setting is well down and the action is exciting. One particular chapter ending cliffhanger had my mouth agape.