Ship Breaker : Paolo Bacigalupi

Ship Breaker by Paolo Bacigalupi

I love when a book feels real. My measure of a good nonfiction book is if I have to stop and think “Whoa, this could happen”. Paolo Bacigalupi (which is probably the best name for an author ever) makes a very real feeling world in his book Ship Breaker.

Global warming is very real in the world of Ship Breaker. You could even say it competes with Nailer as the main protagonist  Nailer is a teenager who scavenges abandoned ships for cash and copper along the Gulf Coast. Nailer is a part of team of other young adults, called a Light Crew, that go to wrecked oil tankers to strip them of their wiring and anything of value. Their treasures are turned over to a boss who sells them to an even higher boss. Nailer is betrayed by one of his team members after finding a lucky strike (a pocket of oil) on a ship when she leaves him to slowly sink into the black ink like substance. Through pure luck, he escapes and earns the name Lucky Boy. Lucky Boy has another run in when one of the many City Killers (massive Katrina like hurricanes) sweeps into his coastal town. He barely survives the storm and happens upon a beautiful freshly wrecked clipper ship with a mostly dead crew on board. I say mostly because the beautiful daughter of a wealthy man barely lives on board.

This vision of the future is deeply rooted in reality. I couldn’t help but to think of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill or the ruin and wreckage of Hurricane Katrina while reading this book and I bet you will too. The setting of this book doesn’t seem so far away from us today. The other thing I really enjoyed about this book was how real the cultures felt. Sometimes when reading nonfiction, cultures and class systems seem a little too far fetched but this felt incredibly real. I can feel the roots of the people of the Gulf but they are stretched and molded into something  fresh. The world building is outstanding. People who live on the outskirts of the beach fighting to survive; indentured to their jobs. Religions with offers to sand and wind and storms. Men with genetically altered DNA made to work hard and only to work hard. Children, young and small boned, crawling through ship ducts to strip a wire of spare copper. This book is exaggerated and big but still so real feeling.

 I’m not sure if it is the environmental threat or the engaging cultures but I really enjoyed this book. It was refreshing to have a male voice narrate and refreshing to not have a heavy focus on romance (but you all still know I’m all about the romance). Sometimes you just have to switch it up and this book does exactly that. This book is perfect for a rainy day at the beach. Just think, that rain could fall harder and you could be stuck in a world like Ship Breaker.