Ship Breaker -- Paolo Bacigalupi
Due to his slight build, someteen¹-year-old Nailer has been able to keep his light crew position for longer than most -- he's still small enough to scavenge copper by crawling through the duct work of the Gulf Coast's slowly rusting oil rigs. He knows that time is running out, though. Once he's too big for light crew, his luck will dry up for sure -- because he'll never be large enough for heavy crew work.
So when he comes across a recently wrecked swank clipper ship, he knows that this is probably it: his one chance at a Lucky Strike. A way to set himself up for an easier life -- if, that is, he can keep the wreck secret from the others on the beach. Especially from his drug-addled and unpredictable father.
But when he explores the wreck, he discovers that there's a hang up. There's a survivor. And so Nailer has a decision to make: Let her die, and take what he can now, or save her life, and gamble on the hope that she'll lead him to an even brighter future.
Here you go, lovers of post-apocalyptic worlds: Say hello to Paolo Bacigalupi's Ship Breaker. Reasons that it's awesome? Bacigalupi drops you right into the story, with no explanation of the terms, the slang, or the world. He (rightly) assumes that you'll be bright enough to figure it out as you go, which adds to the realism of the story and the world as well as showing that he's got respect for his audience².
It's fast-paced and action-packed without skimping on character development or prose stylings. As a trio, Nailer, Nita and Tool bring three vastly different perspectives, personalities, prejudices and skill sets to the same set of problems, and as the story progresses, we learn more about their world through hints about their very different pasts.
Nailer's world has clearly been affected by problems in our present -- lack of oil, rampant pollution, global warming -- but Ship Breaker never feels like a Preachy We Must Change Our Ways Or Suffer This Fate story. The characters don't spend any time bemoaning the mistakes of their predecessors -- they're too busy trying to survive, and also, what good would it do? Things are the way they are, and moaning on about the mistakes people made in the past won't accomplish anything -- the only thing they can to is move forward, and hopefully, make things better.
If you're at all squeamish, or have trouble with realistic, graphic violence, this one probably wouldn't be the best pick. I'd especially recommend it to fans of Scott Westerfeld and Dasher's The Maze Runner, and I'd definitely try it out on open-minded-to-the-YA adult SF fans as well.
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¹ He doesn't know exactly how old he is.
² Paolo Bacigalupi doesn't even flirt with condescension in this book. Which, as we well know, is generally dangerous territory for a writer moving from the adult to YA audience. I'm still giving you laserbeam eyes, John Grisham.
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Book source: ILLed through my library.