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Ship Breaker (Ship Breaker, #1)

Paolo Bacigalupi

Discussion: Dystopian

Why we're reading this: Fantasticly dark dystopian story set in the gulf coast of the future. I would recommend this book to fans…more
[close] Fantasticly dark dystopian story set in the gulf coast of the future. I would recommend this book to fans of the Hunger Games and Life as We Knew It.

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Dystopian

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What Members Thought

Nov 16, 2009 Paula rated it it was amazing

Shelves: favorites, young-adult, great-books-for-teens

You want my one-line recommendation? This is the most exciting book I have read since Emma Clayton's The Roar. Action, plot, an interesting world... deeper questions of what makes family, what makes a person valuable, and to whom and to what do we owe our loyalty... oh man. I am totally hoping there is a second book.

Full review on Pink Me: http://pinkme.typepad.com/pink-me/201... ...more

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Jul 11, 2010 Anna rated it it was amazing

I would rate this 4.5 if I could. Brilliant adventure story set in a world that I'm dying to read more about. Dark. Fast-moving plot. Interesting characters - not as flat as you often find in this sort of action-packed tale. Philosophical questions.

Excited to see what, if anything, will come next. He could really go all sorts of places. Although this is a stand-alone title, I'm REALLY curious about the rest of this world. Siberian and Inuit pirates? Half-men? Ship life? More please! ...more

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Mar 06, 2013 April Fell rated it it was amazing

April M. Fell
Bacigalupi, P. (2010). Ship Breaker. Grand Haven Michigan: Brilliance Audio.
Genre: Dystopia
Award: Michael J. Printz 2010 and National Book Award Finalist
Format: Audiobook
Selection Process: Novelist and School Library Journal

Nailer works for Lucky Strike on a scavenging crew, snaking through wrecked oil tankers and ships off the Gulf coast, in search of copper wire and anything of value to bring back to Lucky Strike. The job is deadly and many young kids like Nailer have died trying April M. Fell
Bacigalupi, P. (2010). Ship Breaker. Grand Haven Michigan: Brilliance Audio.
Genre: Dystopia
Award: Michael J. Printz 2010 and National Book Award Finalist
Format: Audiobook
Selection Process: Novelist and School Library Journal

Nailer works for Lucky Strike on a scavenging crew, snaking through wrecked oil tankers and ships off the Gulf coast, in search of copper wire and anything of value to bring back to Lucky Strike. The job is deadly and many young kids like Nailer have died trying to scavenge enough to make the “quota”. It is a cut throat business, one which Nailer dreams of one day being able to leave behind.
Nailer’s father is a brutal and angry man who has no qualms about beating his own son for the few dollars he makes scavenging. When his father is not drinking alcohol he is on a drug overdose and it is during these times when Nailer is in real danger.
Nailer and his friend Pima stumble upon a recent shipwreck and it could be their lucky day, or it could be their last, if any of the crew sees this wreck before they are able to pillage the ship. It is further complicated by the fact they find a young girl onboard who survives the wreck and Nailer comes to understand she holds a very prominent place in upper society. As luck would have it, she is the daughter of a man of high influence in the shipping industry. This girl will test his loyalties and he will find himself trying to answer the question, “Will I be like him [father] since I am made of the same flesh or am I able to be different from him?”
I think this quote sums up nicely his realization throughout the story, “The blood bond was nothing. It was the people that mattered. If they covered your back, and your covered theirs, then maybe that was worth calling family. Everything else was just so much smoke and lies” (Bacigalupi, p.274).
I highly recommended Bacigalupi’s book Ship Breaker. Teenagers must answer some of the same questions Nailer had to answer as they move to adulthood. In this dystopian tale, Bacigalupi makes us step back and ponder a world where self-preservation is valued over the human predisposition to help others.
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Apr 18, 2011 Elizabeth rated it did not like it

I didn't like this book. I felt like the language was stilted, with damn being the only curse word that was used, and it didn't come off naturally. The half-man was obviously supposed to be a substitute for slavery in America, but I didn't really think that was natural either. Ultimately, I thought the writing was stilted. It was pointed out to me that this could have been because I listened to it on talking book and I didn't like the reader, which is probably 80% of the reason I didn't like it. ...more

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Oct 28, 2010 Laura rated it really liked it

Shelves: ya-lit, bes11-12, 2010

I picked this up since it's a 2010 National Book award winner. Bacigalupi also wrote The Wind Up Girl which has received a lot of critical acclaim this year for sci-fi.

Bacigalupi creates a vivid post-environmental destruction scene on the Gulf Coast. He uses easy to understand slang to describe Nailer's life and job as a ship scavenger. The story kind of drops the reader in the middle of the story and events don't always make sense until later; I would not recommend this book to literal middle ...more

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Sep 11, 2013 Sherrie rated it liked it

Shelves: young-adult-books, adventure, post-apocalyptic

Ship Breaker takes place in the post apocalyptic Gulf Coast region. The grounded oil tankers are big business in this area because their scavenged parts can turn quite a profit. In this futuristic world where there are many more have nots than those who have, scrap metal has become a high stakes business. When Nailer, the book's main character, discovers a grounded clipper ship, he must make a choice between rescuing the only survivor or stripping the ship and making a huge profit.

I enjoyed Ship ...more

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Aug 17, 2010 Paula Gallagher rated it it was amazing

Exhilarating YA adventure fiction at its best! Bacigalupi has done a masterful job at building his world-gone-wrong, set prophetically in the Gulf coast in a not too distant future. I want more Nailer! More Nita! And a whole novel devoted to Tool, the half-man who serves no one but himself.

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Jul 04, 2012 JoAnne rated it it was amazing

Although set in a futuristic time, this story presents a vivid look at the life of ship breakers today. The details are graphic and sometimes hard to read. The characters are well developed and poignant but the ending may have been a little to tidy. This is a must read.

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Nov 03, 2010 Sarah Russo rated it it was amazing

Shelves: ya-sci-fi

Suspenseful, violent, and gritty.
Casts a look at our future that I hadn't experienced before.
Loved hearing about Lucky Boy's adventures.
Speaks to teens on so many levels. ...more

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Jul 01, 2011 Christie rated it liked it

Shelves: library, ya

A good read of loyalty and choices. I enjoyed the book. it went a little slower than I would have liked. It had great characters and a good story line, but was a bit predictable. Just not a great as I thought it would be.

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