After my disappointment with Paolo Bacigalupi's The Wind-Up Girl, I decided to give him another chance and picked up his 2010 novel Ship Breaker. I was pleasantly surprised. The future history setting is similar, but rather than Thailand, Ship Breaker takes place on the American Gulf Coast. Nailer lives with his abusive, drug-addicted father, and works as a ship breaker, scavenging materials from wrecked ships along the coast. When a storm brings a luxurious yacht to the coast, Nailer claims it for his own and begins to strip it of its wealth before other scavengers discover it. But the wreck had a survivor: a wealthy girl who is heiress to an enormous shipping fortune.
As Nailer becomes friends with her, his interest in her is less about wealth and reward. For the sake of friendship and justice, he agrees to help her find her way back home while avoiding her father's business rivals, who would love to see her dead. Bacigalupi's world is gritty, dark, and unkind. Nevertheless, the action and settings are well-written, and his characters are compelling. Even in this dark future, surrounded by adults who do not value any life, much less Nailer's, Nailer finds reason to hope and a will to prevail. Ship Breaker was enjoyable enough for me to forget about The Wind-Up Girl and appreciate Bacigalupi's vision and writing.
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