Hajóbontók

Really clever worldbuilding, and really memorable and dynamic characters. I think what I loved best was the way the world unfolded piece by piece, becoming a bigger and bigger place for us even as it did for Nailer. No idea why I sat on this one so long--I was so caught up in it I just read the whole thing in one sitting.

Could only read around 75 pages when I grew weary of it, but the character of the boy and his struggle with his father was gripping. It reminded me of Huckleberry Finn, how sometimes in order to survive you must abandon your family and find a group like a family that can give you that love and support.

Nailer is a ship breaker - he crawls through the ductwork of hold oil-burning ships to scavenge copper and other materials for recycling. After a major storm, he and a friend find a wrecked ship - with a living rich girl aboard. Is she worth more dead or alive? and who is she worth the most to?

Took a while to get into, and even then it wasn't terribly enthralling. The writing itself was strained and repetitive. The premise was interesting, but the moralizing a little heavy handed for my taste.

Paolo Bacigalupi's Ship Breaker is another one of those average dystopias - it's not terrible, it's just not amazing either. However, it is still a great story - it just wasn't executed well enough for me to rate it higher.

One of the things I liked about Ship Breaker is that it touched upon a variety of important morals and virtues. This book covers a variety of different topics such as the importance of loyalty (and when loyalty goes to far), social class ethics (rich vs. poor), and even some hint of racial inequality. The author does an amazing job of incorporating these morals and virtues into the story and even teaching readers a lesson or two. "Killing isn't free. It takes something out of you every time you do it. You get their life, they get a piece of your soul. It's always a trade."~Page 174 My biggest concern with this story was the lack of well-developed characters. The characters in Ship Breaker seemed, in a way, quite flat and one-dimensional. It seemed like the author gave them characteristics, but he didn't really build off of these qualities. This being said, it was hard for me to empathize for the characters. I never really felt for them; and I think the book would definitely be a "5-starrer" if Bacigalupi had just done a wee bit more character development.

The plot was interesting and quite original. I've never really read a book quite like Ship Breakers, but I loved it! It's got a really unique plot that definitely caught my attention until the very last page. The high amount of twists and turns in the story also shocked me! The writing, however, seemed average - but there are definitely some great, memorable quotes here and there.
The world-building in Ship Breaker seemed average. I enjoyed seeing Bacigalupi's ideas of how the world will be like in the future. His depiction seemed quite accurate that it was almost scary! I thought his idea of a future world was quite creative and the book definitely shows evidence of him putting in a lot of work developing his world. Category 6 hurricanes, lost towns...I'm in!
My MAJOR critique is that there's no backstory! Yes, Bacigalupi's world-building is great, but there is no real explanation of how the world became this way. It might have cleared up my confusion if this was addressed by the author.

All in all, Ship Breakers is a great addition to the dystopian genre and is highly recommended. Happy reading!

3.5 Need to pick up the sequel.

In a future where all of the cities have drowned due to global warming and resources are scarce, 17-year-old, Naller, works as a metal scavenger. When he finds a beached Clipper Ship with rich cargo inside (including the beautiful "swank" Nita) he must decide whether to kill her --or save her. There are equal doses of adventure and romance in this thriller.

Great, great adventure. This definitely ranks up there with The Hunger Games - at least as a first installment. This took sleep time away. The first night I really got into the story I put the book down a couple times then had to pick it back up again. I eventually decided I didn't want to see the daylight before sleeping. Then I picked it up again and finally saw daylight appear before I could stop. Everything was just right - the characterizations, the pacing, the dialogue, the world. I was due for this.

Enjoyed this story set in the shambles of the Accelerated Age -- that is, set in earth's future.

Not exactly a literary read, but fun, quick plot, and interesting characters/universe. Good summer read.

I would definitely say I'm a fan of Bacigalupi. And not just because his name is fun to say.
I really liked 'Ship Breaker,' but it wasn't as good as either The Wind-Up Girl or the short stories in 'Pump Six.'
It's aimed at a more YA audience, which means that the action-adventure takes center stage over the cautionary-disaster stuff, and it actually has some characters who are nice people. Well, one, at least.

Actually, it has quite a lot of cautionary-disaster stuff and a large number of really nasty, self-centered characters.

I felt like it was entirely possible that this book takes place in the same future as The Wind-Up Girl - just in a different part of it. Post-environmental-collapse, ship breakers are working in the Gulf, dismantling the rusting hulks of old tankers. It's dangerous work, for nearly no money - but there's nothing better. The work teams are viciously cutthroat to each other.

Our lead, a young man, sees new, solar ships in the distance and dreams of another life. But his life experience is so limited he hardly knows what to dream of. When he and his friend find a wrecked ship - and in it, an injured rich girl who claims to be an heiress, their first instinct is to simply murder her. But, hoping for advantage, they don't... and adventure ensues.

The adventure was OK. But it wasn't really what I liked about the book. I really liked how Bacigalupi draws the different worlds that the characters come from, and how he throws their perspectives into conflict. I like how he took the lifestyle that ship breakers elsewhere in the world are really living, right now, and put it in the (former(?)) United States, challenging readers' perspectives in much the same way as he challenges his characters' perspectives.

I like his all-too-likely visions of the future, and how he doesn't shy away from a realistic depiction of the worst aspects of human nature - and how they're entwined with the best that people are capable of. I very much appreciated that he did this even in a 'YA' novel. But... the adventure was just OK.

Still, I'll definitely read the sequel. I hope he goes back to 'adult'-oriented books, though.

A teen book by the same author as The Windup Girl–Nailer faces a life of brutality scavenging recyclable materials in grounded oil ships until the day he falls through a hole into an oil pocket. While he saves himself, he loses the oil but his luck changes. He finds a new ship grounded with gold and other valuables; however, the presence of a young girl who is still alive complicates his discovery. Nailer faces the consequences and advantages of his choices as he encounters the possibility of a new life.

There was just something about the book that made it difficult to put down. It was an interesting story, because it takes place in a post apocalyptic dystopia, but the main characters are not struggling against the government in some sort of revolution, as in many dystopias. Instead, the main character, Nailer, who lives a tough existence on the Gulf of Mexico, is in a fight for his life against his own father after he discovers something worth fighting for.

The setting, the characters and the writing were all fantastic. I love the contrast between the hard and soft features of the characters. Nailer is a complicated, likeable character, and I look forward to the next adventure.

Grim and gritty and engrossing. I enjoyed this book very much indeed, as I immersed myself into its dystopic pages. The language was vivid and evocative, without being tedious - Bacigalupi has painted a very fine - and disturbingly realistic - picture of what our world might indeed look like one day - given climate change and the increase in natural disaters. The characters were well developed, and I felt the half-men were a nice touch. I am looking forward to continuing with this series.

This was an interesting follow-up to watching the latest film version of Treasure Island (with a brilliant Eddie Izzard as Long John Silver) on the Syfy channel, and then reading The Secret Sharer by Joseph Conrad (and an homage story by Robert Silverberg). This, too, is a sea adventure in a gritty glimpse-into-the-future, if-this-goes-on kinda way. I would highly recommend to those who might think The Hunger Games is the last word in YA dystopian fiction. Bacigalupi does a wonderful job of making me believe in his world; believe that it is, indeed, my world, just a little further ahead in time...and he doesn't skimp on the adventure piece. What would it feel like trying to swim in a vat of oil? It may just be what I've read recently, but I felt like he tipped his hat to both Robert Louis Stevenson and Joseph Conrad. I think they would be proud.

Ship Breaker by Paolo Bacigalupi weaves his excellent world building skills with a exciting YA high-sea adventure story. Having previously read and loved his book, The Windup Girl, I knew what the author’s vision for the future of earth is, and Ship Breaker is set amid this waterlogged world peopled with the very rich (swanks) and the have-nots. The world is a different place in the future, global warming has seen the poles melted, the water has risen covering many cities, earth’s natural resources are running out and there is money to be found in collecting old materials. Nailer is a young scavenger who works with a crew on a beach that is near the drowned city of New Orleans dismantling old ships. He is little better than a slave, having to reach a quota every day or face dismissal. While working in the dark and dangerous nooks of these old ships he dreams of escaping and discovering a better way to live. When he stumbles on a wreak after a storm and rescues a beautiful girl who is obviously a swank, he first decides to use her to help him find his better way but after they get to know each other and form a bond of loyalty, he decides to put his faith in her and help her get back to her people. The story has excitement, action, murder and desperation and while I found Nailer to be a well defined character, I would like to learn more about Nita and her background which hopefully the second book will explore. The story of Nailer and Nita’s fight for survival was interesting but definitely geared for a YA audience being far less detailed or sophisticated as The Windup Girl. However, I now feel invested in these characters and will definitely be reading the sequel The Drowned Cities.

An interesting setting, premise and characters turns in to a disappointing chase novel for the final l00 pages.

Set in a recognizable American dystopian future, _Ship Breaker_ will appeal to readers grades 8+.

Ship Breaker is a gripping read, with an engaging protagonist, but it is the world building that is the real star. Bacigalupi's stand-out talent is to immerse the reader, and in Ship Breaker we are taken to a dystopian future, post peak oil, where Nailer and his crew scavenge for copper and other valuable stuff in the guts of wrecked ships washed up by the retreating tides of the Accelerated Age.[That's us, by the way, the wasteful, blind people who have left the world wrung out and damaged.]Nailer encounters an entirely new way of living when he and Pima find a 'swank' boat, washed up after a storm. Finding an unexpected survivor presents him with moral challenges, and for the rest of the book he must deal with the consequences of his actions.Bacigalupi is a thoughtful and passionate author who puts character, ideas and context above plot. His message about environmental and social decay is a powerful one, but he skilfully conveys it as part of the story, rather than as a rant.I have been eyeing this YA novel on my school Library shelf for a while, and finally got round to it after reading Paolo Bacigalupi's new novel 'The Water Knife', which is very good indeed.

Nailer is a ship breaker, one of the many scavengers on the beach taking apart abandoned tankers piece by piece. It's dangerous, hazardous work and the dangerous, impoverished life makes for hard edged people. One learns not to expect much in this life, except a distant hope of striking it rich with some lucky find. When Nailer discovers a survivor inside a clipper ship that washed ashore after a storm, he has to choose between scavenging the ship for wealth or saving the swank girl. Bacigalupi has shaped an almost believable dystopian world, which is starkly divided into poor and wealthy. Global warming has caused the seas to rise and fossil fuel has declined. The scavenge is a necessary part of business and the wealthy owners, who run things from a distance, don't much care what happens to the crews on the beach. I liked Pima and Sadna, Nailer's friend and her mother who have cared for Nailer since he was a child and nursed him after his father's beatings. They had a practical sort of compassion for Nailer and others whom they considered crew. I also liked Tool, the half-man, but he disappeared from the story just as his character arc was getting interesting, which was disappointing. I would have liked to have seen more of his character.The story was fast paced with Nailer and Lucky Girl struggling to survive from one moment to the next and Nailer's father is appropriately terrifying. A solid novel overall.

SHIP BREAKER was an engaging futuristic science fiction story. The earth has experienced global warming melting the polar ice and drowning the coastal cities. The gulf of Mexico sees frequent super storms. Fossil fuels have been depleted.The story begins with a boy named Nailer who is part of a light screw scavenging old freighters for any usable bits - copper wire, aluminum. He is part of a crew who works in dangerous conditions without adequate safety precautions to make their quotas. They are mostly hungry and live in sorts of gangs.Nailer's father is an alcoholic and drug user who is violent most of the time. He takes refuge with friends when he can get away from his father.One day, when out scavenging, Nailer and a friend discover a wrecked sailing ship and a passenger who is almost dead. The friend suggests that it would be better if the girl were dead but Nailer wants to rescue her. Nita is a Swank. Not only is she rich but she is heir to one of the biggest surviving corporations. However, she is on the run from the part of her family that wants to overthrow her father.Nailer, a half-man named Tool, and Nita decided to go to Orleans to see if they can find some ships loyal to Nita and her father. They need to jump on a moving train to get there which just starts their adventures. The story is filled with sailing ships, sea-going battles, treacherous people, and ones that can be trusted though sometimes it is hard to tell the difference. I liked that Nailer got a chance to see what was out there in the bigger world. The world building was well done and the plot was entertaining. I liked Nailer and liked watching him grow through the book.

A tale of the near future, survivalists and the meaning of loyalty. Ostensibly written for young adults, it still holds interest. It takes awhile for things to get going, but the background makes the story more authentic.

Scary to think this could be the future. I was disappointed with the ending, but overall I enjoyed it.

Nailer is on light crew for about another year before he gets too big to crawl through duct work looking for salvage, so when he and Pima stumble on the wreck of a new clipper they want to salvage it for themselves. Until Nailer finds a swank girl clinging to life in the wreckage and decides to save her. Now he's dragged into her family's fight, and they must run to avoid the people hunting them.

I liked all of the characters and I was especially interested in Tool and was dying to know more of his back story, but unfortunately it wasn't provided. There is a lot of action and it was nice to see that Nailer and Lucky Girl's budding romance was only referred to minimally. The world building was definitely interesting and felt like a realistic take of what things would be like if the polar ice caps actually melted.

I liked that Nailer learning to read ended up having a vital part to play in the story. I also thought Nailer's father was a great villain and that the author did a good job showing how Nailer's father affected him. I also felt like class differences were very well illustrated here. The gap between the haves and have nots was huge and even among have nots there could be massive differences.

I'm afraid that this was too YA for me. The protagonists are threatened and they escape and then they are threatened again and they escape.....[to end of book]. I was looking for a compelling arc (or any arc at all) but I didn't find one. When the ending came to the audio book, I was really shocked that that was all there was to the story.

This was a strange reading experience for me. Although I found the world of ship breakers really interesting, and was engaged with the characters from the beginning, I found myself feeling really distanced from everything. I couldn't quite connect to either the world or the characters, for whatever reason, and though I was interested in the plot, I also wasn't compelled by it. For the first half of the book or so, I read along out of habit, because I'd picked it up, but could have easily enough forgotten about it if I'd accidentally left it somewhere out of the way. Then, maybe two-thirds of the way through, things picked up and began spinning forward. I still felt some distance from the characters... but I wanted to know what happened next, enough even that I'm left thinking about picking up the companion novel to the piece.So, why the distance, and the 3 stars instead of 5? Truly, it's hard to say. I'm tempted to say that the characters were simply too tight, and too unchanging. I got hints of complexity from the minor characters who appeared in the book less constantly--and I'm really just tempted to pick up the companion book because I believe one of them is at its center--but when it came to the two characters at the center of the book... well, I suppose I just wanted more depth, and more small details to help me feel them as real, believable characters.In the end, I'm left wanting more, and I'm fairly sure that want is due to the characters at the heart of this, who felt too flat for me. There was so much room for them to change... and yet, I don't feel like they actually did. So, much as I engaged with the world... I'm not sure where I'm left after reading this one. I guess that in itself says it all.

I thought the environmental issue (how we have caused so much destruction) was dealt with in a nice round-about way. Definitely a book to add to the dystopian list.

Somewhere along the Gulf Coast at a time when New Orleans and its successor cities have been washed away and submerged at least three times, Nailer works light crew in a scrap yard for the obsolete oil tankers that used to transport the now rare petroleum around the world. It’s dark and dangerous work crawling through the unlit depths of the wrecks looking for copper wire and other valuable metal to salvage before the heavy crews come to rip the ship apart for its iron and steel. He almost dies the first day we meet him on the job. He dreams of the great sailing clipper ships, “sleek, fast and completely out of reach.” Then unexpectedly a hurricane brings him right up to one, and he discovers that his dream comes with a terrible choice and a high price.

As a New Orleans native, what I loved about Ship Breaker was the post-apocalyptic setting along the Gulf Coast and how Bacigalupi manages to effectively create a believable world where global warming has melted the ice caps and hurricanes that destroy cities is a common occurrence. The main character, Nailer, is not your typical hero; he's a short, scrawny, scrappy, and scarred adolescent suffering from poverty and an abusive father. He spends his days salvaging copper wiring from decaying oil tankers, hoping to come across a hidden oil reserve so he can live a better life. Instead, he comes across a shipwrecked clipper with a young girl trapped inside. Nailer is faced with the decision of either saving the wealthy girl or letting her die so he can salvage the ship and make loads of money. Bacigalupi does a fantastic job pulling the reader into this futuristic world by keeping the pace going and moving the action around so the reader gets to see more of the setting. While the characters were well developed, I didn't feel as connected to any of them as I felt I should, but maybe that has more to do with who the characters are themselves (tight-lipped and suspicious of outsiders). This book is a great introduction for students to the issues of loyalty, friendship, family, and wealth in society, along with subtly stressing the importance of environmental issues. I would definitely suggest this as a primary text for an ELA unit on dystopian literature, especially in the Gulf Coast region.

A Moral Dilemma I noticed this book won an award a while back so I put it on my TBR but have just now had a chance to read it. I'm glad I finally did though. It's one of those stories that will make you appreciate all the things you have and take for granted on a daily basis. It's set on the Gulf Coast in a post-oil dystopian world which I did not realize until I started reading and I was a little confused at first because the author doesn't give any background upfront on the alternate world and characters. That part is pretty much overlooked until toward the end of the book so it did take me some time to figure out what a lot of the terminology and roles were of the supporting characters.
As for the story itself, it's about a boy named Nailer, who lives in a shanty town on Bright Sands Beach and works on the "light crew" scavenging copper from wrecked oil tankers. The whole beach area where he is from has been devastated by extreme hurricanes and is now poor and rife with crime. Nailer is desperate to get away from that life and his abusive, alcoholic father and is always hoping that his luck will change for the better one day. Then another bad storm occurs and a wealthy clipper ship wrecks on their beach and Nailer is faced with having to decide whether to help the only survivor on the ship or help himself survive by scavenging the ship before anyone else gets there. There is more to the story then that but you'll just have to read the book because I don't want to spoil it.
All in all, it was a good thought-provoking story but I definitely think there should have been more background given on the alternate world and supporting characters. The author does a really good job though of developing the main characters and setting the atmosphere. He paints such vivid descriptions of the struggles and hardships the main characters face which helps you sympathize with the decisions they have to make to survive. If you are ever in need of a reminder of how good we really have it, you should definitely read this one!