Ship Breaker by Paolo Bacigalupi

Nailer is small for his age, but that is a good thing. It allows him to stay on light crew and crawl through the ducts and pipes of wrecked freighter ships looking for salvage, especially copper wire. It’s a tough life on the beach, working hard to make quotas on the salvage and a dangerous one too, especially when your father is a violent man. But your crew always has your back —or at least they are supposed to.

After a violent storm, Nailer and his friend, Pima, find the wreck of a clipper ship. They have only seen these ships, owned by the wealthy, nicknamed Swanks, sailing across the horizon. Here is one beached and just waiting to be salvaged. This could be their ticket out of poverty and hard labour into a rich life. Excitedly, they climb on board and search the ship. The crew is all dead. In one of the cabins, they find a girl about their own age trapped under wreckage, even just the jewelry she is wearing is more wealth than they can imagine.

But just then, the girl opens her eyes. She is still alive. Should they leave her or kill her and make off with as much wealth as they can before others find the wreck, or should they help this half-dead girl that they don’t even know? It is a decision they wrestle with, and the answer forms the basis for the rest of the story.

This is an interesting story set in a well-built, believable world. It is violent, but what put a damper on the story most for me was the author’s choice to use “potty” words throughout the book. I almost closed it a couple of times because of this, but I kept going to the end. The Los Angeles Times compared this book with Suzanne Collins’ The Hunger Games. I enjoyed The Hunger Games, but I would not rank the book at the same level. Still, it is a good dystopian story if you get past some of the language.

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