Ship Breaker [Hardcover]

Nailer, a teenager, is one of many people who live in shantytowns along the US Gulf Coast, trying to eke out a dangerous living by working on disassembling crews, taking apart abandoned -- and now obsolete -- oil tankers. The work is dangerous, and taking risks is almost a necessity, because if the young workers don't make quota, there are always other starving kids ready to take their jobs. Once the children get too big to crawl down the narrow ship ducts in search of copper wiring and other recyclable metals, there aren't many options left to them... and if they're not strong enough to do the heavier work, prostitution, crime or starvation are almost inevitable.

At the start of Ship Breaker, Nailer finds an undiscovered oil reservoir in the ship he is exploring -- a lucky strike that would be sufficient to feed him and possibly provide escape from his abusive father. However, when he almost drowns in the oil, and one of his young crew mates finds him, she decides not to rescue him and leaves him to die so she can take advantage of his find. Even though Nailer manages to escape, this incident, set early in the novel, is a perfect introduction to the competing themes of "loyalty in the face of adversity" vs. "everyone for themselves" that run through Ship Breaker. After all, when Nailer finds a gorgeous clipper ship run aground during a hurricane, he faces the same choice: should he rescue the rich "swank" girl trapped inside, or let her die so the ship's salvage can make him wealthy?

YA novels have changed just a tad, haven't they? Yep, although you maybe wouldn't guess so from the paragraphs above, Ship Breaker is actually the first Young Adult novel by Paolo Bacigalupi. You can draw a straight line right from the author's excellent SF novel The Windup Girl, which also focused on the disastrous consequences of environmental change, to Ship Breaker. Even though the reading level is YA, and most of the main characters are teenagers, the grimness (not to mention the violence) is definitely straddling the border between adult and YA.

Be that as it may, Ship Breaker is a well-written, gripping SF novel. The story's scope continually broadens, from Nailer's initial find, to the arrival of the clipper, and ultimately to everything the ship's owner stands for. Likewise, the dystopian future gradually becomes clearer as Nailer becomes more aware of, and eventually ventures into, the world outside his beach shantytown. As mentioned before, the theme of loyalty is approached from different directions. Just to name a few: Nailer's relationship with his abusive and addicted father; the connections with and between his crew's members; and maybe most interestingly, the concept of "halfmen," genetically engineered to be loyal to their owners.

While I enjoyed Ship Breaker, and would recommend it to mature YA readers, I can't help but wonder if this story wouldn't have worked better as a regular, non-YA novel. Some of the darker concepts, situated on the periphery of Nailer's story, are only broadly hinted at rather than described outright, which left me feeling frustrated and wanting to read more. If you told me there was a 600-page adult version of this 340-page YA novel, in which Paolo Bacigalupi really embraced the story's darkness and delved more deeply into the world's history and set-up, I'd be first in line to read it.

Still, armchair-quarterbacking aside, Ship Breaker is a good novel with a likable protagonist, a gripping story, and a vision of the future that's sadly becoming more probable by the day. If the grim realism of the environmentally ruined future described in The Windup Girl didn't bother you, and you're in the mood for something in the same vein but at a slightly easier reading level, definitely check out Ship Breaker.

I enjoyed Ship Breaker quite a bit, with all the popcorn munching enthusiasm of watching a really good action flick. I definitely give it props for its entertainment value, and considering that his target audience can be quite fickle, I think Mr. Bacigalupi did a fabulous job with the pacing, moving the action around, and always giving us something new to see. This book would make a great film, and I wouldn't be a bit surprised to hear that it's been optioned already.

What impressed me no end was how well he plunges the reader into a life of extreme poverty. As I was reading about Nailer's life, I thought, we don't need to wait for a dystopian society to see people living like this. It's real, and it's happening now, and I think any middle class teenager could benefit from thinking about how some kids have to grow up. It's shocking, and startling, and the line between the haves and the have nots is bigger than the Grand Canyon. I got all riled up, and it's my hope that other readers do too.

Entertainment value aside, I think the story falters a bit on the emotional side. I felt a connection to Nailer, but it didn't go bone deep. Considering all the terrible stuff that happens to him over the course of this book, I should have been crying for him at some point, and I never did. I'm also curious to see whether teens will embrace Nailer, who is the antithesis of the typical tall, straight-limbed, attractive hero. He's short, scrawny, and horribly scarred. He's not attractive by any conventional standard, so my inner cynic is questioning whether true young adult readers can overcome their natural inclination for superficial beauty.

Ship Breaker is another excellent entry into the ever-growing category of young adult dystopian fiction. If you've enjoyed novels like The Maze Runner by James Dashner, or Inside Out by Maria V. Snyder, then definitely put this one on your list too.

I am reviewing an Advance Reading Copy from the publisher.

In this post-oil world stricken by global warming, it's hard not to find similarities between Ship Breaker and Bacigalupi's debut, The Windup Girl--positive similarities. As in his adult SF release, Nailer's future Earth is not pretty--in fact, it's quite desperate. Progressive rebuilding has resulted only in ruinous achievements. New Orleans has been reincarnated not once, but twice after the public realized it was prone to flooding. The worlds suffer similarly, as do the people. The privileged few oversee large corporate entities; the underprivileged majority do the worst possible jobs to get by every day (one has to wonder if this isn't happening right now). The divide between the rich and the poor is drastic.

Both are gritty dystopias. The worlds are, quite literally, falling apart. China is still a world powerhouse and humanity won't stop engineering composite lifeforms. Sea levels are rising at alarming rates, cities have been drowned. Despite the compulsion I felt to make a comparison, Ship Breaker is not entirely similar to The Windup Girl. There's something piratical that marks it distinctly from his debut and not just because there were large bodies of water and ships involved. Thievery mentality and loosely based support systems thrive along the wasted Gulf Coast. I couldn't help feeling that I'd never quite left Emiko's world, though. Things are not exactly the same--it's unfair of me to declare Ship Breaker the YA version of The Windup Girl. What is fair is to say the similarities I found in these two books are the same types of outcomes seen in a wide variety of dystopias.

It might be the thematic predictability of such books is what's turning a brilliantly adventurous book into something that didn't quite go as far as I would have liked, but I don't think so. Making the fantastical extrapolations that these dystopias do seems natural. The world is realizing our resources are not finite; the weather is acting strangely. These things are happening right now. Why not imagine a future where we do one day run out of oil, where the weather's gone to the extremes?

The characters are all a bit quirky with mono- and disyllabic names and a broad range of ethnicities and skin tones. What's amazing about this is how subtle and normal Bacigalupi makes this information. It's so offhand and inconsequential to what's really important that I wanted right there and then to tell him how much I appreciate this. Not making a fuss out of skin color is just as amazing as including minority representation.

One of the more interesting character elements was the inclusion of Tool. Tool is an odd collection of genes (hyena, tiger, dog, human) engineered to have utter loyalty, a fierce temperament when needed, but has the unfortunate side effect of having a face that looks a bit canine. While he may not look pretty, Tool's face is supposed to inspire fear, especially since half-men like him are mostly used as thugs and bodyguards. Tool makes a unique case. His rebellion against the natural order of half-men (and the irony of his name) has elevated him to the mysterious and aberrational ranks of Emiko. And here is one other similarity I found between Ship Breaker and The Windup Girl. What frustrated me the most wasn't the connection between how Tool acts and how Emiko acts--both break with convention and "go against their programming"--but rather the lack of a backstory. Tool keeps his past shrouded in mystery, constantly reminding Nailer and those around him how unexpected his actions are. I didn't stay frustrated for long; Tool's origins are probably best left unanswered, especially since I realized it was not knowing combined with how anomalous he was that became so fascinating. His right to secrecy allows him the dignity his social status wouldn't provide otherwise.

I did, however, wish I'd gotten more information on half-men in general so I could really relate to everyone's incredulity rather than being told how loyal they are and how unorthodox Tool's behavior was against those conventions. That would have helped me believe the other character's reactions much better. Ship Breaker is such a short book relative to the events that happen--I can see why Bacigalupi may have stylistically left that out. There was so much suspense and multiple rescues that I felt the book could have done well as two! We're never in any one place for very long before something happens. I found myself wanting to linger at certain scenes, but couldn't when Nailer was quickly whisked away to the next.

I think there's room for a sequel. I say this because I want a sequel. I want more adventures and the implications are there for another. Ship Breaker is one of the bestYA books I've read, not just this year so far, but ever. And this is the best solution I can think of when I say I want more. I wasn't quite ready to leave Nailer's world and wouldn't mind going back for another visit. Bacigalupi proves yet again he has the talent to write an engrossing story with very human considerations at heart.

› Go to Amazon.com to see all 118 reviews  4.2 out of 5 stars