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Tool of War (Ship Breaker #3)

Paolo Bacigalupi (Goodreads Author)

4.03 · Rating details · 978 Ratings · 135 Reviews

This third book in a major series by a bestselling science fiction author, Printz Award winner, and National Book Award finalist is the gripping story of the most provocative character from his acclaimed novels Ship Breaker and The Drowned Cities.

Tool, a half-man/half-beast designed for combat, is capable of so much more than his creators had ever dreamed. He has gone rogu ...more

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Hardcover, 336 pages

Published October 10th 2017 by Little, Brown Books for Young Readers

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Goodreads Choice Awards 2017

892 books — 1,404 voters

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Apr 17, 2017 Emily May rated it really liked it

Recommended to Emily May by: Tatiana

Shelves: young-adult, dystopia-utopia, arc, 2017

It gave him a certain dark satisfaction to see humans floundering so. It was ever the way of them. Diving always into danger without thought, always optimistic that they might win out. And so they died.

This is such a great series. Bacigalupi's stories of a future ravaged by climate change and corporate greed have stood strong through the dystopian craze of a few years back, and they continue to drag me in and convince me so completely that this future world is plausible.

Tool of War should be r ...more

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Apr 17, 2017 Tatiana rated it really liked it

Shelves: 2017, ya, sci-fi, 3, starred-2017

Impressively brutal.

This installment of the series is kind of like a futuristic version of Jason Bourne. Essentially, it's about Tool on the run from his creators. Only Jason Bourne in this iteration is a half-human augment and the story is set in a not-so-far-off future ravaged by climate change and corporate interests.

The story itself is rather uncomplicated, but elevated by Bacigalupi's remarkable world building (I would say, out of all dystopias I've read, his version of the future is the mo ...more

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Jan 09, 2018 Jason rated it it was amazing

Shelves: e-books, read-2018

5 stars

Tool of War book 3 in the Ship Breaker series. What a great fun read. This book and series are YA gems by Paolo Bacigalupi.

Tool, the augment and scary killer from the first book is the main character in this one. The the plot, the scope and even the storyline are a real blast.

Like other Paolo Bacigalupi novels, Drowned Cities is a fast and incredibly enjoyable story that both adults and young adults will enjoy. I could read his novels every day. There is something raw and real about his ...more

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Oct 21, 2017 Justine rated it it was amazing

Shelves: 2017, ya-novels, dystopias-post-apocalyptic, all-time-favorites, book-hangover, books-i-could-repeatedly-read, books-that-will-stay-in-my-heart, fast-paced, wonderful-writing

Well, what can I say? Bacigalupi has done it again. Out of the three books in this series, Tool of War is the most intense, bleak and heart-pounding installment. I feared for the characters, despaired over the piling character deaths and rejoiced in moments of triumph. Tool is one of the most interesting characters I have ever encountered in science fiction, and I loved all the psychological dilemmas he went through and how he managed to overcome them through meaningful realizations. I just love ...more

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Jul 04, 2017 Nancy rated it it was amazing

Shelves: arc, ya

This book was so good. Bacigalupi brings you right back into his world without missing a beat. The strength of his stories, to me, is their realism. They are not only emotionally true (and brutal in their truth), but they are also frighteningly and viscerally real. This dystopia is less stark fantasy than bleak possibility. You feel like it really could happen. But of course that’s in large part due to the fact that so many of his horrors are grounded in reality. There are child shipbreakers, ch ...more

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Jul 17, 2017 Paul rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: e-book, kindle, science-fiction, young-adult

Actual rating: 3.5 stars.

I've been waiting for a follow-on to Bacigalupi's earlier YA novels "Ship Breaker" and "The Drowned Cities," and it's finally here. I devoured it in two days and wish there was more, but at least the stage is now set for a fourth installment, so I'll be patient.

The principle characters of the earlier novels, children and teenagers of a near-future world profoundly changed by pollution and climate change, ruled by warlords and corporations who rose with the fall of nation Actual rating: 3.5 stars.

I've been waiting for a follow-on to Bacigalupi's earlier YA novels "Ship Breaker" and "The Drowned Cities," and it's finally here. I devoured it in two days and wish there was more, but at least the stage is now set for a fourth installment, so I'll be patient.

The principle characters of the earlier novels, children and teenagers of a near-future world profoundly changed by pollution and climate change, ruled by warlords and corporations who rose with the fall of nation-states, populate "Tool of War," which is set a few years on, the children now teenagers, the teens young adults. They are survivors, now wiser in the ways of war, power, and corporate politics.

The main character in this book (also present in the earlier novels, though in smaller roles) is an augment, a human with spliced tiger and hyena genes, incubated in a tube and raised in a creche, trained in warfare and obedience. He is the Tool of the title, now breaking the chains of genetic subservience and striking out on his own, seeing himself as new kind of human, no longer a servant.

Here's a relevant paragraph from my review of "Ship Breaker":

"Ship Breaker" is killer good: a young adult adventure set in a post-environmental disaster, post-nation/state world where powerful clans control global trade conducted by sailing ships and dirigibles, and society is divided into two classes: the very rich and the very poor. It's a Margaret Atwood Oryx & Crake scenario on steroids, and like Atwood, Paolo Bacigalupi has rich narrative and descriptive powers: you can see the world of the shipbreakers on their oil-stained beach, you can feel the rust and sharp edges on the steel plates the breakers pry off their beached oil tankers, you can hear the hammer blows and the pop of forced rivets, you can smell the fuel oil and sweat. There's nothing theoretical about Bacigalupi's writing, nothing that requires page after page of dry explanation; his fictional world is immediate and gripping, fully revealed through the context of a kick-ass story, all but real.

Here's another relevant paragraph, from my review of "The Drowned Cities":

I really should list this as a banned book and beat the rush, because when the helicopter parents who have challenged "Lord of the Flies" and "The Hunger Games" see the darkness here, they will surely put "The Drowned Cities" on their target list.

Relevant how? Because some of what impressed me so in the earlier novels is missing or muted in this one. The lives of the young protagonists are less gritty and feral. The physical world is less threatening and immediate, though there are intriguing elements, as in the islands and arcologies of Seascape, the former Boston. The exciting feeling of reading something those who want to limit our knowledge and control our thoughts might try to ban or burn is absent as well. It's as if Bacigalupi has damped the fire that burned in the previous novels ... only a little, mind you, but it's noticeable.

Still hella good though, some of the best YA science fiction around, and I'll be there for Ship Breaker #4.

p.s. Many of the ideas and concepts explored in the Ship Breaker series come from Bacigalupi's masterful adult science fiction novel "The Windup Girl." Another of his adult novels, "The Water Knife," inspires parts of the future world revealed in "Tool of War." Any fan of Bacigalupi's YA fiction should read his adult fiction as well. ...more

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Oct 15, 2017 Brenda Ayala rated it liked it

Shelves: comic-con-2017

I definitely feel like I would've been able to enjoy this more if I had read the first two books in the series. Without that initial building block I had no idea who most of the characters were and I had to build my relationship with them from scratch.

Without that basis to work on, for me it just felt like there was too much emphasis on people's thoughts and feelings and not enough on plot progression. There was a great deal of time spent on Tool's monologues and for me it didn't create enough ...more

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Nov 07, 2017 Lekeisha The Booknerd added it

Shelves: arc-for-review, dnf

Okay, I give. At least until I can read the first two books. It's hard to jump in when you don't understand the world, and what makes the characters tick. What brought him to this point? I haven't a freaking clue.

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Nov 03, 2017 Kwoomac rated it liked it

Shelves: 2017, animal-as-main-character, antihero, complicated-protagonist, contemporary-lit, post-apocalypse, reviewed, sassy-teen, selfless-heroine, strong-female-protag

This third(and I assume) final book in the Ship Wrecker series reunites some characters from books I and II. While it was satisfying to be reunited with some old friends, the pace of this book was slower than I and II. (view spoiler)

I also was less satisfied with Bacilgalupi’s world building. I had a hard time picturing the p ...more

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Oct 27, 2017 Stuart rated it it was ok

The much anticipated sequel to Ship Breaker and The Drowned Cities delivers a metric ton of action, but not as much heart as the first two episodes in this YA cli-fi franchise. As in The Water Knife, Paolo seems to be skewing more toward the cinematic in his writing, and this one would be equally adaptable to the big screen, but only by sacrificing character at the bloody altar of plot. In the first two installments, the young heroes at the center of the action kept things grounded in human expe ...more

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Aug 08, 2017 Bookphile rated it really liked it

Shelves: 2017, arc, amazon-vine, young-adult-sci-fi, young-adult-post-apocalyptic

I'm going to need a day or two to digest this one. I've long been a fan of this series, and of Tool, and while this felt like it closed Tool's loop in a satisfying way, I'm vaguely dissatisfied with it at the same time. I think it's because it poses some HUGE moral and ethical questions that it doesn't deal with as deeply as I would have liked.

BIG disclaimer, though. This book is *ultra* violent, and I do mean ultra. Since I've also read adult books by this author, that didn't surprise me, but I'm going to need a day or two to digest this one. I've long been a fan of this series, and of Tool, and while this felt like it closed Tool's loop in a satisfying way, I'm vaguely dissatisfied with it at the same time. I think it's because it poses some HUGE moral and ethical questions that it doesn't deal with as deeply as I would have liked.

BIG disclaimer, though. This book is *ultra* violent, and I do mean ultra. Since I've also read adult books by this author, that didn't surprise me, but this book was far gorier than I'm used to YA books being. Anyone who's sensitive to graphic violence will probably not like this book.

Full review:

Tool of War, much like Ship Breaker and The Drowned Cities before it, is a book that pulls no punches--and that's a good thing. The world the characters inhabit is violent and merciless, and the characters react to that world accordingly. That's not to say that dystopia need be graphic or ultra-violent, but the problem with many YA dystopian novels is they tend to tiptoe around things, using the dystopia as window dressing, as if afraid to tackle larger, darker, unseemly issues. This series shows no such fear, which means it is not for the faint of heart--and that's especially true for this book. Some spoilers to follow, so continue reading at your own risk.

I've been a fan of this series for years, the downside to that being that when I first started reading this book, it took me quite a while to remember what had happened in the previous books, and even then I'm sure I've forgotten many of the details. I did remember enough to know that this book reunites the characters from the previous novels, many of whom ended up scattered around this post-apocalyptic version of the U.S., and while this sounds like a happy occurrence, it isn't, not necessarily. This is because many of the characters won't make it to the end of the novel, and though I didn't think the author dispatched with any of them unnecessarily, it does make it hard to take that, after having survived a lot, the young characters end up meeting an untimely end. To the novel's credit, though, this proves that the stakes of Bacigalupi's world actually *are* high, rather than being proclaimed high without any proof, as often happens with YA dystopians.

Tool has long been one of my favorite characters, and it was interesting to finally get a book mainly from his perspective, disturbing as the perspective could sometimes be. This, though, is another asset of the book, as far too many YA books waste time trying to make characters "likable"--whatever that means. Even if you can't buy the idea of a genetic augment like Tool, he's really more of a symbol of man's potential for brutality, a potential that's hard to argue against if you take a good look at history and current events. Yet at Tool's central core, he's fighting hard against becoming what he was meant to be: the ultimate tool of destruction. It's possible to draw a lot of parallels between his struggles and those of slaves and/or people conscripted to fight in wars they didn't start and of which they want no part. His very existence brings up important questions about slavery, brain-washing, the cost of war, the effects wars have on combatants, and a long list of other deep issues of great significance.

This book's biggest problem? It brings massive issues like this up and then doesn't do a whole lot with them. A really good case in point, for me, was how Nita and Nailer deal with Tool. Nita and Nailer definitely have a point, one that Tool isn't always able to acknowledge, but Tool makes equally important points that Nita and Nailer don't deal with in any more than a fairly superficial way. Nita in particular will acknowledge her discomfort and spend some time thinking about what Tool has said, but it never seems to change her behavior, and while I understand her single-mindedness, she's missing a chance to experience a profound perspective shift that could serve her well in the future. Yes, these characters are all primarily concerned with survival, and yes many of them think often about the cost of that fight for survival, but it's disappointing how few of them try to find another way of doing things. I really wanted Nita to fully acknowledge what Tool was saying, to feel the full guilt of her complicity in the creation of Tool and others like him, but I ended up feeling like she brushed those misgivings aside because she didn't feel like dealing with them at the time. I feel like the book could have had even more impact if she had dealt with them, because one of the most difficult ways of changing oneself is when that change occurs at a time that's particularly inconvenient or dangerous. Tool reevaluates and changes his behavior quite frequently (and often to his own detriment and further peril), but the others, not so much.

I also have to say that I didn't care for the ending all that much. I don't want to get into details and give too much away, but I found it rather unsatisfying. There's a bleakness to it that I understand, but that bleakness smacks a bit of cynicism and I guess I like to think humans can be better than that. Plus, so much happens in this book that it feels like it crashes along until it reaches a ending that's just a bit too neat, and that disappointed me.

Still, I wouldn't hesitate to recommend this series to mature teenagers and adults. It's excellent food for thought about humanity's impact on the planet, and the lengths to which people are willing to go when it comes to protecting their own. Given the current situation in the U.S., a book that delves a lot into the "us versus them" mentality, and how it drives justification for all sorts of acts that should never, ever be justified, is particularly relevant. ...more

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Apr 16, 2018 O.S. Prime rated it liked it

Ends (I hope) the Ship Breaker series and that's about the best I can say for it. Trivial story in what once was a fascinating (if depressing) possible future. Still, it wasn't a bad read, but nowhere near Bacigalupi's best efforts.

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Sep 15, 2017 Allie Penn marked it as to-read

Shelves: want-more-than-most

I DIDN'T KNOW THERE WAS GOING TO BE ANOTHER SHIP BREAKER BOOK NOW I'M EXCITED

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Dec 16, 2017 Lisa P rated it really liked it

Fantastic finish to the series. Mercier has its sight set on annihilating Tool by any means necessary. Who is pack, kin, friend or foe? From the Drowned Cities to Seaport and then some, Tool fights for survival. This story pulls in Tool’s memories and dreams as well as pieces from his past that tie things up.

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Apr 27, 2018 Nicholas Karpuk rated it really liked it · review of another edition

It's kind of weird to read a honest to goodness sequel to Bacigalupi book. While Shipbreaker and Drowned Cities shared a character, they didn't really interconnect in terms of events or other characters, and it took a while to work out which book actually came first.

Tool of War actually ends up being a sequel to both books in a way that felt reasonably satisfying in terms of returning to previous characters. It was genuinely pleasing to see how these characters had changed.

Otherwise, this book ...more

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Jun 08, 2018 Suzanne Rooyen rated it really liked it · review of another edition

YES!!! This was almost all the things I wanted it to be, however, it was extremely predictable and that's why this gets 4 and not 5 stars. I was hoping for some twist in the last quarter but (view spoiler) ...more

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Feb 15, 2018 Lynn DiFerdinando added it

Shelves: dystopian-apocalyptic, pp-library, teen-books

I read this one before reading the first two, but I think they're technically "companion" books rather than direct sequels, so I don't think I missed much at all. Some of the characters seemed to be from the other books, from what I know of them. In other news, I LOVED Mahlia, she was the best and her POV parts were the best written. I think I'll definitely search out the other two books and read them.

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Nov 09, 2017 John Clark rated it it was amazing

I haven't read the other books in this series (and don't think that took much away from this one). No matter, this is one heck of a wild ride through a world that seems more likely than most want to admit. Dandy characters, wild action and a very satisfying conclusion that leaves a nice option for more in this world.

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Oct 23, 2017 Lovely Loveday rated it really liked it

TOOL OF WAR is the third book in the Ship Breaker Book Series. I read this book without reading the first two books and was a little lost at first. It did not take long to get caught up but you should read the first two then this one since it cannot be read as a standalone novel. There is a little bit of a recap at the beginning which is enough to get you caught up but you would benefit more from actually reading them. The author creates a world that is so realistic and vivid. The setting is in ...more

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Jun 02, 2018 Diane Lynne rated it it was amazing

Shelves: young-adult-books, middle-school

I certainly hope this isn't the final installment of the series. Tool has started a mini-rebellion and, as a reader, I'd love to see how far it spreads and how the humans in our future will handle a world-wide slave rebellion the likes of which humanity has never seen. One of the most unique dystopias I've read in a long time, AND one that could really happen if we don't accept the reality of a changing planet. Highly recommend for middle school and young adults.

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Oct 15, 2017 Rana rated it it was amazing

Tool is an excellent anti-hero. And this book is an excellent master class in military urban dystopia.

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Aug 13, 2017 Liz Overberg rated it it was amazing

Shelves: ya-speculative-fiction

Brutal.

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Jun 14, 2018 John rated it really liked it

Is this the weakest story in the Shipbreaker series? Maybe I’m just not a fan of Tool. Sure he’s an unbeatable badass, but I think I want there to be more to him than that.

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Mar 16, 2018 Colleen rated it it was amazing

Shelves: science-fiction

We get to find out where Tool came from and why he's running. Loyalty and obedience vs. friendship and caring. Consider Phlebas mashed with Ghost in the Shell, Oedipus, and Frankenstein. And we get to see how much of a monster Tool really is when he remembers he was burned once before. He's not just the rogue cyborg, he's possibly the next step in human evolution. Not even 6 Havoc missiles can kill him. But they do destroy his pack, for which he is furious. If Windup Girl was the sentient sex to ...more

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Nov 26, 2017 Tim Hicks rated it liked it

Shelves: science-fiction

Not as good as the first two, perhaps because it's constrained by having to wrap things up.

As others noted, it's a bit more cinematic, and maybe a bit more oriented to a reader who plays first-person shooters and thinks if you're going to kill someone, let's make it MESSY, and while you're at it, let's not kill just a FEW people, let's be WADING in guts!

There are a couple of tired old tropes, and I don't recall seeing any on books 1&2.

First, we have Ocho's gold-flecked green eyes. Always w Not as good as the first two, perhaps because it's constrained by having to wrap things up.

As others noted, it's a bit more cinematic, and maybe a bit more oriented to a reader who plays first-person shooters and thinks if you're going to kill someone, let's make it MESSY, and while you're at it, let's not kill just a FEW people, let's be WADING in guts!

There are a couple of tired old tropes, and I don't recall seeing any on books 1&2.

First, we have Ocho's gold-flecked green eyes. Always with the eyes. Workshop 101. Are we ever told about anyone's plain brown eyes? At least he spared us the old trope of one-look-at-the-eyes-from-100-feet-and-we-know-this-person's-life story. And no one had gray eyes.

Second, just before that, the author carefully explains the limitations of the camera footage, then describes details at the seen-from-a-foot-away level, and then, oh dear god did he really do this, he has her refine the image and pull out some molecular detail. Did he subcontract that part to an apprentice?

(Minor spoiler warning) : on the Annapurna, author spends PAGES telling us how screwed Tool is,
then cuts away. Suddenly "with a mighty leap" Tool is inside the ship, and a ladder is mentioned. What did he do? Re-reading, I see that he began to move. Well, gosh, he didn't we just establish that he didn't have any options? Was this a tribute to pulp fiction, where it happened all the time?

The world here is carefully thought out, but I think overdrawn, perhaps for the intended audience. There's a Chinese government, but Mercier seems to run North America. Will it really be that simple? I think the corporations will run the future world much more discreetly, maintaining the fiction of governments.

And if they are smart enough to dominate North America, can they really have failed to notice that Caroa is waddy-waddy-here-come-the-cabbages crazy? Although I admit he gets better toward the end as he accepts his madness.

Jones is a bit weird. I know we need a point of view inside the Bad Team, but junior analysts launching drone strikes? Promotion directly from JA to CEO's aide?

You can see that all these things have distracted me from the story, in which there is a decent examination of the ethics of augmentation. Looking back, though, Looking back, the augments are a bit ludicrous. Animal genes, silly size, no issues mentioned re fueling these huge bodies (except a note that Tool can eat chicken carcasses). But OK, fantasy licence granted on a one-time basis.

I didn't much care for volume 3, but on the whole I'm still left with a good series, and I acknowledge that I am not in its target audience so maybe I don't have to like it.

Looking forward to PB's next adult book.
...more

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Oct 15, 2017 Nannette Demmler rated it it was amazing

This book picks up Tool's story a few years after the events in Drowned Cities. Tool is different from other augments, in that he can think for himself and he doesn't have a master. This book mostly covers why that is and it was quite a shocker when it is revealed. Like the other books this one is brutally honest in it's depiction of war. There is a lot of death, sometimes on a vast scale, but mostly on a much deeper and personal level. Most of the other characters are kids, some in their te This book picks up Tool's story a few years after the events in Drowned Cities. Tool is different from other augments, in that he can think for himself and he doesn't have a master. This book mostly covers why that is and it was quite a shocker when it is revealed. Like the other books this one is brutally honest in it's depiction of war. There is a lot of death, sometimes on a vast scale, but mostly on a much deeper and personal level. Most of the other characters are kids, some in their teens, but many much younger, who are forced to fight against more powerful and better equipped organizations.

The story is mostly told through Tool's point of view, with other chapters told by characters from the first two books. There is one new voice however that I really like. Arial Jones is an analyst for one of the powerful organizations that rules this world. She has been tasked with finding Tool for her boss General Caroa. She is a very interesting character that has a lot of conflicting feelings about what she has done. She is the voice that shows us what war is like for those who fight it from a distance with drones and bombs and never really meet their enemy face to face. She looks at what the bombs have done to the Drowned Cities and is very conflicted about what she has done and the devastating consequences of it.

The thing I like most about these books is their realism. There is always something in the back of my mind that thinks, this is what the world may become in the future when the oceans rise and the oil runs out. It is also about science run amok, in the case of the augments and some of the other technologies. It is a very bleak world that is depicted here, but there is some hope in the characters courage and determination to keep moving forward even against the toughest odds. I hope to reread this series sometime in the near future, so that I can better appreciate the world and the characters that have been created.
If you like my review check out my website for more at: https://elnadesbookchat.com ...more

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Jul 20, 2017 Ryan rated it really liked it

Shelves: fic-speculative, fic-ya

There’s the kind of dystopian fiction that’s meant to be read more as a mirror on current times than as a prediction of a likely future. The Hunger Games and 1984 come to mind. You feel unsettled by the worlds these novels portray, but you know they’re only what-ifs.

Then there’s the other kind, the kind that tries to scare readers with a picture of a future that could very well happen. This is the sort of fiction that Paolo Bacigalupi writes, and he might well be the most electrifying author in There’s the kind of dystopian fiction that’s meant to be read more as a mirror on current times than as a prediction of a likely future. The Hunger Games and 1984 come to mind. You feel unsettled by the worlds these novels portray, but you know they’re only what-ifs.

Then there’s the other kind, the kind that tries to scare readers with a picture of a future that could very well happen. This is the sort of fiction that Paolo Bacigalupi writes, and he might well be the most electrifying author in this category right now.

This is book three of a Young Adult trilogy that takes place in a North America that’s still limping on following the melting of the polar ice caps, a “peak” in fossil fuel supplies, and the collapse of much of the continent into third-world failed-state status. People now survive as scavengers combing the wreckage of the “Accelerated Age”, pirates, or soldiers serving one savage warlord or another. In a few high-tech hub cities, corporations control what’s left of civilization, collecting the Earth’s remaining resources, jockeying for supremacy, and devising new weapons, such as half-man, half-beast super-soldiers.

There’s a man in the story who, decades earlier -- maybe in our own time -- marked up buildings in Boston with spray paint to indicate where the seas would rise to. Arrested for vandalism, this visionary snarled to the court, “people don’t mind that the sea will swallow their homes, but woe to the man who paints their future for them.” That’s one of the messages here, plainly put. Later, the man, unable to convince anyone by yelling from his soapbox, becomes a disaster capitalist. Also a message.

These books might feel a little too heavy-handed if message was the only point, but, luckily, the world-building is fantastic. Bacigalupi understands the value of crafting a universe, grim though it is, full of things that will grab the attention of adolescent readers (and grown ones). There are highly-advanced sailing vessels, future-tech dirigibles, beast warriors, post-apocalypse cities, and adolescent soldiers fighting with military hardware. Bacigalupi only shows us a few corners of his broken-up biopunk future, but conveys a constant sense of a world where the experiences of characters in one place are connected to distant going-ons in another. Some of the background themes (politics, economics, history) might be a little over the heads of the intended young adult audience, but I’m glad the author included them -- they make the story’s universe feel more real, and I’m of the opinion that kids don’t need to grasp all the particulars of how and why to get something from the what. Indeed, Bacigalupi does a great job of not over-explaining how we got here. To characters fighting in the ruins of Washington DC, the Capitol building is a “palace” and they have no idea it was ever anything else. And why not? That little detail speaks volumes as to what happened along the way. (I can still remember the warm glow I got as a 14-year-old from figuring out little Easter Eggs like that.)

The preceding two novels, typical for YA fiction, were about characters who, though relatable, weren’t very complex. The most interesting figure in the story was Tool, the terrifying part-human part-beast “augment” who was originally designed for combat, but also bred for subservience to his human masters. When we first met him, Tool had managed (at least partly) to escape his obedience conditioning and reluctantly helped the young protagonists. Now, he takes the spotlight as his former corporate master arrives to hunt him with high-tech weaponry, pursuing him and his human “pack” from the remains of DC to a future version of my home city of Boston (still a functioning technological city-state). Tool is a very special weapon, and his freedom is very much a threat to the order of things, given all the augments that serve the people who are still well-off.

In fact, Tool’s a good enough character to belong in Bacigalupi’s adult fiction. His intelligence and sense of honor make him sympathetic, but his general contempt for humanity, weak in so many ways, gives him a cold, demonic edge as well. It’s easy to cheer his strength and resourcefulness as he struggles to free his mind from automatic subservience to those he once saw as gods, but the author injects nagging doubts, too. Is the victory of someone like him an altogether good thing? What will happen when we finally make tools too strong for us to control?

A military character muses on the constant need for weapons to evolve, in order to beat opponents on the battlefield in a world of increasing scarcity. Later, the same character, considering how humans might act after a line of no return has been crossed, tauntingly asks, “I often wonder what would happen to a species faced with its own extinction. Would it accept it and fall limp? I tend to think so.” Another character also glimpses the possibility that we might be authors of our own obsolescence. “He look at us exactly like we’re people,” he says of Tool. “Not masters, not owners, just people.”

These and other ponderings are heavy ones to hand to 14-year-olds, but they will be the inheritors of our accelerating mess, after all. Bacigalupi doesn’t force the questions, but merely leaves them on the table. Recognizing the need for some optimism, he grants the plucky young human characters, including Nailer and Nita from the first book, relatively happy conclusions to their stories. We also meet a new player, a go-getter junior military analyst who serves the opposition and finds herself being promoted to a level of responsibility that’s more than she bargained for. She’s a well-written character and I wouldn’t be surprised to see her again in the author’s oeuvre.

Though I thought this book moved a little slowly compared to previous outings and underused Malia and Ocho, readers are rewarded with a ferocious final quarter in which Tool ascends into the sky to battle his gods and satisfyingly earns the victory he deserves. Definitely a series I would recommend, though with the caution that it’s very bleak and pretty violent (this book a notch above the other two). I think most high school age kids ought to be able handle it, but parents might want to preview Ship Breaker on behalf of younger ones. Bacigalupi remains a favorite author of mine and I hope he revisits this universe in future books.
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Oct 11, 2017 Emmi Rose (emmirosereads) rated it really liked it

Shelves: four-and-a-half-stars

*Rating 4.5*

After reading Ship Breaker, The Drowned Cities, and finishing this, I think it's my favorite one of the series! I wasn't impressed with The Ship Breaker really, it was okay but I found myself really dragging through it. The Drowned Cities was so much more enjoyable to me and I loved it! I was afraid I wouldn't like Tool of War as much because one thing that made me love The Drowned Cities was the characters, particularly Mahlia. I wasn't sure if they would be in this book since it's ...more

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Mar 03, 2018 Mike rated it liked it

Third book in the series, this one focuses on Tool, the genetically engineered human/animal hybrid (or augment) created to fight in the corporate wars of the dystopian future. An enjoyable sequel. However, I was expecting more social commentary about the augments as slaves, which was lightly touched on, but never really looked at in detail. I thought this one was more about action/adventure than the first two.

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Nov 04, 2017 Melissa rated it it was amazing

Shelves: books-i-own, favorites, post-apocalyptic-dystopian

I loved this book! The world building, the story, the horror of people, it was all good. I just wish it was darker, but I understand that this is a YA book so it had to be toned down a bit. Having said that though there were a lot of brutal deaths and the book was still pretty horrifying. I'm glad for those freelance gigs in NYC because during my train rides back home I would have ample time to immerse myself in this book and really get into it. I never make expressions when reading a book, but ...more

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About Paolo Bacigalupi

Paolo Bacigalupi

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Paolo Bacigalupi is an award-winning author of novels for adults and young people.

His debut novel THE WINDUP GIRL was named by TIME Magazine as one of the ten best novels of 2009, and also won the Hugo, Nebula, Locus, Compton Crook, and John W. Campbell Memorial Awards. Internationally, it has won the Seiun Award (Japan), The Ignotus Award (Spain), The Kurd-Laßwitz-Preis (Germany), and the Grand ...more

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