Wednesday 10 October 2012

English novel: The Drowned Cities

For English, one of the two books I borrowed was named The Drowned Cities, written by Paolo Bacigalupi.

The Drowned Cities is the sequel to Ship Breaker. Set in a dystopian future where global warming and oil shortages have caused much strife, ship breakers salvage the wrecks of old ships. The titular hip breaker, Nailer, uncovers a ship with a survivor still aboard. This sets the stage for an adventure across post-apocalyptic North America.

The reason I chose The Drowned Cities is fairly simple; I read Ship Breaker and very much enjoyed it. It created an interesting world, a dynamic mesh of post-apocalyptic, dystopia, and science fiction. It was a very engaging novel, well paced and well written. It's main weakness being that the side characters were all much more interesting than the main character, who was fairly bland. I'm hoping that the author has resolved this somewhat in The Drowned Cities.

If you're at all interested in reading the book, I would recommend you begin with Ship Breaker. Many of the quirks of the world will be hard to understand. And in any case, it's a good book.




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