Ship Breaker

De: Paolo Bacigalupi

Narrado por: Joshua Swanson

Printz Award Winner, 2011

In America's Gulf Coast region, where grounded oil tankers are being broken down for parts, Nailer, a teenage boy, works the light crew, scavenging for copper wiring just to make quota - and hopefully live to see another day. But when, by luck or chance, he discovers an exquisite clipper ship beached during a recent hurricane, Nailer faces the most important decision of his life: Strip the ship for all it's worth or rescue its lone survivor, a beautiful and wealthy girl who could lead him to a better life.

In this powerful novel, award-winning author Paolo Bacigalupi delivers a thrilling, fast-paced adventure set in a vivid and raw, uncertain future.

©2010 Paolo Bacigalupi (P)2009 Audible, Inc.

Reseñas de la Crítica

• AudioFile Earphones Award Winner

"Narrator Joshua Swanson makes this harsh dystopian world all too believable. He adjusts the pacing to fit the intensity of the action and gives each character a voice that fits his or her personality. This is superb listening for teens—and adults too—even those who aren’t big fans of science fiction." (AudioFile)

A Fine Story; Not The WindUp Girl

On it's own, this is a likable book. The characters in Ship Breaker are fine and appropriately likable/hatable, but Bacigalupi has engaged me more deeply with less time and words in previous work. Also, I'm not a YA reader, for whom this book is intended. There are elements here reminiscent of RLS' Treasure Island (without being derivative), but I picked this up because I wanted to know more about the world I saw in The WindUp Girl. There's too little of that here for me, but if you liked Bacigalupi's The Alchemist, I think you'll be happy with Ship Breaker.

I read WindUp Girl less than a month ago, and then proceeded to DEVOUR everything else published by the author over the last few weeks. I read that Ship Breaker was set in the same dystopian future of WindUp Girl and wanted more of that. If you too are looking for more of that, you're better off reading and re-reading Bacigalupi's short story collection Pump Six. Indeed, shorts like 'Pop Squad', 'The People of Sand and Slag' and 'Pump Six' will stick with me longer than anything in Ship Breaker.

Still, I do leave this book thinking more about its big theme –the ties that bind people together– into families (genetic and impromptu), gangs, corporations, and the nature of loyalty, and what we do with all those things when everything else breaks down.

I'm sad there's no more Bacigalupi to devour at the moment, but interested in reading something like Cormac McCarthy's The Road that may give me what I'm looking for.

* NOTE - While I'm used to Jonathan Davis reading Bacigalupi, Joshua Swanson does a great job handling the voices of men, women, children, and even dog-men.

More conventional than his other stuff, but great

I enjoyed Bacigalupi's "adult" novel, The Windup Girl, but felt that its convoluted plot and lack of easily sympathetic characters made it hard to recommend outside speculative fiction fan circles.

Shipbreaker, however, a young adult novel set in a vividly grimy, frightening future, trades some intellectual complexity for a more accessible, visceral reading experience. Though apocalyptic fiction seems to be all the rage now, even in YA, this book is certainly near the top of the class. From its relatable characters to its convincing scenes of action and danger to its sense of a complex, lived-in world, Shipbreaker offers plenty that will genuinely speak to adolescent readers (though the uncompromising violence, scary adult characters, and modest amount of profanity might be a little too much for children) and grown-up ones, too. Of course, there are "messages" here, as well, in Bacigalupi's vision of a world environmentally and economically decimated by capitalism run amok, but he presents them in a smart, unobtrusive way, without talking down to his audience.

Totally recommended, and a book that puts Bacigalupi into the "young speculative fiction writers with something to say" category. Compared to the Windup Girl, this novel is a bit more conventionally plotted, but perhaps a better intro to Bacigalupi. If his vision draws you in, that book offers a richer experience.

Top Five Fave Author

I first learned of Paolo Bacigalupi when I won a copy of The Windup Girl at our local library. Was hooked immediately by his intelligent foresight. Great characters & dialogue, and especially by his understanding of the less fortunate among us & visceral knowledge of the plight any of us might face under the right ( or wrong) circumstances, or just by the simple luck of birth.

Bacigalupi writes intelligent bleeding edge near future as well as or better than most out there. As the title of my review said, he’s in my top five. And he writes books you can read and re- read, always picking up something new.

Poor boy meets rich girl.

I bought this one as a daily deal from Audible.com; I found that this is a great way to try books that one might not every try otherwise. Ship Breaker is set in a dystopian future where a poor boy meets a rich girl. Although there is nothing new with this kind of plot, It was still a great book about how they were thrown together and the adventures they have together. I would recommend it to any fan of dystopian si-fi. It makes a great teen reader as well.

Engaging Listen

I was pleasantly surprised at the easy flow of this story. I haven't found PB's books to be easy to follow in audio before, having to rewind and re-listen to parts before actually grasp them. But this was one of the books in my wish list, and it was on sale, so I took a gamble.

And, I enjoyed it!

Fast moving plot and action, it felt as though the story was rushing head-long into the jungle (of Louisiana, maybe?) and then.....run smack into a barrier. The story stopped. Literally. So....I'm feeling a little bit unfinished, without closure.

Still, it was enjoyable and I will probably download the 2nd in this series, even though I see that it isn't quite a continuing story.

Survival, treasure, Love, Ships, trains, Pirates!

Survival, treasure, Love, Ships, trains, Pirates!
So well Richard and cold feel like you're there

Great book, couldn't stop listening!

If you liked Hunger Games, try this one. Another view of humanity's future, in a world shaped by "City Killer" storms, where people struggle to survive by salvaging the relics of the past.

Too trivial story

Any additional comments?

This book is definitely not of the intricate plot quality of Windup Girl. Story is much too simplistic, linear & YA. Gave up on book after 3 hrs. Paolo should not do YA!

Superb SF superb clifi

What did you love best about Ship Breaker?

Absolutely the best science fiction novel I've read in years. The storytelling and world building equals that of the old masters of scifi. The necessary violence is handled well and described with reasonable restraint. I suspect a couple generations hence will be looking at this book the way current youngsters view the predictions of Arthur C. Clarke. A don't miss book for anyone who enjoys the genre or is interested in speculation about the implications of climate change..

What did you like best about this story?

The vividness and rich detail of characterization, setting, and plot gave this story the kind of riveting interest that marked the best scifi of the Golden Age. I literally read this book to the end without pause, couldn't put it down.

What about Joshua Swanson’s performance did you like?

I had no trouble understanding every word though I kept volume at a barely medium level. He did NOT overdue the variation of voices and what dialect there was he handled with excellent restraint, choosing to successfully communicate this particular book over (sarcasm here aimed at the overactors who have ruined some Audible narrations for me) the possibility that enough remarkable voice changes would get him a regular gig on Cartoon Network. His voice was pleasant to listen to and kept to a reasonably steady volume. I thought his reading of this book was excellent.

Clear Sailing

In the crowded field of YA post-apocalyptic dystopian fiction, overarching metaphors trump realism. The title contest in The Hunger Games is a fascinating fantasy about young people sent off to die in war, but the games themselves are far-fetched, to say the least. Faction life in Insurgent is a nice road map to human nature, but Occam would dull his razor arguing that this is a credible path to rebooting society. The maze in The Maze Runner? OK, you get the point. And credibility is not part of it. Not that it lessens the impact of those series, especially to the legion of YA devotees who have turned them into major multimedia franchises.

But the strength of a lesser know entry into the field, Ship Breaker, is precisely its credibility. No symbols or metaphors needed -- Paolo Bacigalupi builds a post-apocalyptic near-future where ecological disaster has flooded coastlines, man-made income inequality has created a wretched underclass serving the privileged super-wealthy, and corporations run what's left of a world in which the only thing of any value is making a buck (or in this case, a Chinese red).

That said, there are nevertheless some solid metaphors, secondary though they may be to the straight-ahead storytelling and world building -- a father-son conflict that symbolizes how the future has been mortgaged for the benefit of the here and now, a genetically engineered servant class that touches on the racism of the elite (in contrast to gender and race equality that regular people accept as part of the natural order), and a not-so-subtle message that education is the best path to rising above the station you were born into, as well as loyalty and basic goodness.

Bacigalupi delivers all of this succinctly, showing rather than telling -- for example, when the main character ruminates on what life would be like on a super-sleek clipper ship, his visions of running the polar route signal that the arctic ice cap is gone, and his admiration of its sails inform us that fuel is no longer readily available, not even for the upper class. And the arrival of a storm called a "city killer" rather than a hurricane is an immediate reminder of the threat posed by climate change. All of this while keeping the story moving along on a straight line.

This is good stuff. This deserves a higher place in the echelon of the YA dystopia genre. This deserves more sequels -- I'm ready to plunge right into the only one Bacigalupi has written so far, The Drowned Cities, hoping for more to come. I've learned that the sequel follows a different set of characters along a different storyline, which makes me regret that Ship Breaker wasn't 15-20% longer, with more scenes from other aspects of this wrecked world (some of the corporate intrigue that figures into the plot, for example).