Review of The Drowned Cities by Paulo Bacigalupi

I’ve become a big fan of Paulo Bacigalupi after reading his short stories and his first YA novel, Ship Breakers.  Bacigalupi is not only a great writer and world-builder, but like all good science fiction or dystopian fiction, he makes really compelling statements about the world we live in.

The Drowned Cities is no exception.  This is a book about two children, Mouse and Mahlia, who live on the edge of the war-torn Drowned Cities.  Mahlia is the daughter of a Chinese peacekeeper.  In this world, peacekeepers had been sent to control the Drowned Cities, but at some point they abandon the city, and when they leave the retribution is brutal.  Mahlia’s mother is violently murdered and Mahlia has her hand chopped off.   Her friend Mouse saved her life, and together they are fortunate to have been taken in by a kind doctor.  But in this savage and violent world, their life isn’t going to stay calm for very long.

While violent, Bacigalupi has created an incredible world, full of warring political factions, children trained as soldiers, and genetically enhanced creatures who are enslaved to the government as fighting machines.

Mahlia and Mouse, struggling to survive, run into Tool, a dog-man introduced in Bacigalupi’s earlier book, Ship Breakers.  Tool is an intelligent being bred and trained as a weapon of war.  He’s half man, half beast, with the sensory perception of a dog and incredible strength.  The dog-men are bred to be devoted to their masters, yet Tool somehow breaks away from a life of slavery and seeks his own path.

The setting of the Drowned Cities is based on Washington, DC, although I admit I didn’t pick up on that for most of the book.  Once you do, the parallels are really fascinating and make me want to read the book over again.

Bacigalupi’s writing is incredible, from the first sentences of the book.

Chains clanked in the darkness of the holding cells.

The reek of urine from the latrines and the miasma of sweat and fear twined with the sweet stench of rotting straw.  Water dripped, trickling down ancient marble work, blackening what was once fine with mosses and algae.

Humidity and heat.  The whiff of the sea, far off, a cruel, tormenting scent that told the prisoners they would never taste freedom again.  Sometimes a prisoner, a Deepwater Christian or a Rust Saint devotee, would call out, praying, but mostly the prisoners waited in silence, saving their energy.

The best thing about this book is that Bacigalupi really develops the characters and the friendship between them.  There is a devastating hopelessness to the lives of these two children, yet they continue to fight for each other.  Mahlia has learned at a very young age that the only way to survive is to put herself first – but she also has to learn that sometimes putting the people you love first is the only way you can live with yourself.

I’ve read a lot of young adult fiction recently that I found to be incredibly adult.  And not because of sexuality – I mean a combination of complexity, traumatic subject matter and violence that makes me wonder why we call these books YA.  What makes a book “young adult” fiction?  Is it when the main characters are young?  Does it have to do with length or complexity of the book?  I think I’ve decided it’s a marketing tool more than anything else.  And I’m not sure it matters.  But I have a very hard time calling this book YA.

I loved this book even though it was incredibly violent, and in a brutal, graphic way that really got to me.  Bacigalupi doesn’t write about death, he writes about torture and fear.  He makes you think about how innocent people can be turned into killers and how people lose their humanity.  But at the same time, he really takes you into the minds and hearts of his characters, and creates a vivid and terrifying future.

I highly recommend this book — although not so much for younger readers.

Review: Pump Six and Other Stories by Paulo Bacigalupi

Paulo Bacigalupi is the author of the award-winning science fiction novel, The Windup Girl, and a young adult novel called Ship Breaker.  I loved Ship Breaker; but I’ve tried to read The Windup Girl and found it difficult to get into.  Bacigalupi introduces a very detailed alternative world that’s can be compared to the noir-dystopian-Asian-influenced world of the movie Blade Runner. 

Pump Six is a collection of his short stories, published in science fiction magazines from 1999 to 2008, and many of them are set in a similar world as Windup Girl.  I don’t read a lot of short stories but I thought these might be a more “accessible” way to get into the head of Bacigalupi.

I wasn’t disappointed.  The stories in this book are thoughtful and disturbing and written in rich detail.  Some take place in a future very close to ours, and others are wildly different.  These are dark, violent stories.  They brought to mind Atwood’s vision of the future or Bradbury’s.  I’d describe them as science-fiction for the non-science-fiction reader, by which I mean they are about people, society, governance and society, more than technology or science.

My favorite story was called “Pop Squad” –  in this story, an investigator is hunting down criminals.  He breaks into a house and finds a couple of drug-addled women, who are taken away.  He then encounters three young children.  Rather than taking them in, he executes them.  It turns out this is a world where a drug has been invented that allows people to live indefinitely in perfect health.  The catch?  Children aren’t allowed in a world where nobody dies; the drug is a form of birth control as well.  There are a small number of women who, desperate for children, go off the drug and give up their own immortality — only society hunts them down and kills them.

What’s brilliant about the story is how complex the issues are – would we want to live forever if we could?  What would that mean for our population?  If having children was outlawed, would we want them more or less?  Why are some people so desperate to have children?  Would you give up your whole life to have a child?  Bacigalupi brilliantly contrasts today’s society, which is so baby-crazy that gigantic stores full of products are designed just for babies and children, with a world where people can’t remember children and toys exist only as collectibles.

The investigator asks one of the women, “what you breeders are thinking” considering that having a child means you and your child will be hunted down like criminals.  She responds, “I’ve been alive for one hundred and eighteen years and I’m thinking that it’s not just about me.  I’m thinking I want a baby and I want to see what she sees today when she wakes up and what she’ll find and see that I’ve never seen before because that’s new.”

“The People of Sand and Slag” is a similar story in which humans have become nearly indestructible.  Animals have been extinct for years because of their mortality, but the characters discover a surviving dog and adopt it.  Only then they find it’s so weak (if it breaks a limb it doesn’t automatically repair itself) they don’t know if they want the burden of caring for it.  Another disturbing story is “Pump Six,” in which the main character discovers that humanity is gradually getting stupider every year, which will ultimately lead to a breakdown of infrastructure and equipment that no one is smart enough to fix.  It’s happened so subtly no one could tell.

“The Pasho” was another of my favorites, because it addressed the clash of two cultures, one focused on tradition and religion, the other focused on knowledge and change.  It asks the question, at what point should a “traditional” culture adopt new ways, when those ways are based on information and can improve lives?  Does adopting new ways mean the death of tradition, belief, and community?  Is the integration of different cultures a bad or a good thing?  When is it right for a community to fight to remain separate?

As is always true of short stories, some resonated more than others.  “Tamarisk Hunter” and “Softer” weren’t as interesting to me, but overall this book was outstanding.  In many ways these stories reminded me of the old “Twilight Zone” stories I read (and watched) as a child.  They may not be real life, but the real-world implications hit you like a punch in the gut.

Review: Ship Breaker by Paulo Bacigalupi

Ship Breaker is the first young adult novel written by Paulo Bacigalupi, a new but critically acclaimed science fiction writer who recently won a Nebula award for The Windup Girl. This is no light read in terms of poverty, abuse, violence, and environmental conditions – but at the same time a fun, action-filled read set in a vivid dystopianworld.

Ship Breaker is about a boy named Nailer, who lives in grinding poverty and works in near-slavery conditions as a ship breaker, meaning he is part of a team that salvages light materials like wire from the hulks of rotted-out ships. Young children are used for this work primarily because they can get into small places, and even though the work is deadly these children fight each other for every job.

Nailer has an abusive, drug-addicted father and his mother is dead. The bonds of the crew he works with are far greater than those of family, but even crew will betray each other to survive. His only friends are an older girl named Pima, who is also the boss of his team, and Pima’s mother.

Nailer dreams of someday sailing on one of the new clipper ships, rather than the old coal-burning iron freighters and oil tankers he climbs through every day. He thinks his luck has changed when, after a hurricane, a clipper ship filled with wealth (china, silver, jewelry) washes up on shore and he and Pima are the ones to find it. The dead bodies filling the ship don’t bother him too much – he’s used to death and violence – but then he finds the almost dead body of a girl who is clearly the daughter of the ship owner. Should he save her and give up the wealth that would change his life? Pima is ready to leave her for dead but Nailer can’t.

From there the story takes a number of turns, as Nailer’s father turns on him and begins hunting him for the wealth he knows this girl (Nita) will bring if sold to her enemies. Nailer has to try to get her home in safety, and while he sincerely wants to help he also hopes she will change his life if he does.

Nailer is a sympathetic character who doesn’t always use his head, but at least his heart is in the right place. He trusts this rich girl when no one else does. It could have been stronger on character development, especially the development of the relationship between Nailer and Nita, which remains largely superficial. They depend on each other for survival but it’s not clear how much they get to know each other. But this is a young adult book and young teens are not likely to get into that much depth. The book is action-focused and the pacing of the action is well-done. I hate when the action scenes in a book are too fast, too non-stop, or completely unbelievable – this book had none of that.

The world that Bacigalupi establishes is a frightening one. It’s mostly modern day – the work of ship breaking, child labor, differences in extreme wealth and extreme poverty, abuse and drug addiction – these are not futuristic elements but very real ones. Ship breaking exists today, primarily in India and Bangladesh, with the serious health hazards and environmental impacts that Bacigalupi describes.

We know the book is set in the near future primarily because New Orleans is no longer a livable city – the city was wiped out by frequent hurricanes, caused in large part by oil drilling which eroded the wetlands and left the city unprotected. Bacigalupi makes the same point about the melting of polar icecaps in Antarctica. These items are less than subtle and not really necessary to the story.

More interesting, society has learned to genetically engineer a race of “half-men” who seem to be part man, part dog but with super strength and trained to fight to the death. These “men” are treated as slaves and also engineered to be so loyal to their masters they will die voluntarily if those masters go away.

Nailer is assisted by one of these half-men, who has broken out of the slavery he was engineered for and now lives independently. No one who meets him can understand how this is possible, and yet he exists. Bacigalupi raises concerns not only about genetic engineering but slavery in general – how we justify slavery by seeing enslaved people as less than human, who are not capable of living independently, and who lack the emotional capacity to suffer as we do. There is a scene where Nailer questions one of the half-men about whether he can break his bonds with his master, and it’s incredibly painful to watch the half-man struggle with this question when he is “programmed” not to question.

Bacigalupi excels in his vivid descriptions of the world, the ships, and the characters, who are described to the level of skin color even where race isn’t an explicit issue in the book. These details make for a much more compelling read – I don’t know much about the inside of ships but from the description I felt like I was experiencing the events as Nailer did.

I don’t know if this is the beginning of a series but it certainly could be. These issues could be explored in much more depth, and I would like to see what happens to Nailer next.

Books in the News: A Weekly Update

The Nook and the Kindle both reduced prices this week.  The Kindle is down to $189.  Of course this is a reaction to sales of the IPad – but I’m hoping it’s also an indication that a new Kindle is on its way this holiday season.  I’m still on Version 1 and itching to see the next one…

Is anyone else following the reviews of the recently opened Wizarding World of Harry Potter?  I don’t like theme parks, and I don’t like Orlando, but it sounds like the designers of this one have done a great job.  The reason?  It’s not about the rides, it’s because they designed the park to be consistent with the books and movies.  JK Rowling apparently approved every detail, down to selecting the recipe for butterbeer (mmm, butterbeer).  So what I’m reading is you get talking paintings that look like talking paintings, you get Buckbeak that looks like Buckbeak, you get Diagon Alley, Hogsmeade, even an Ollivander’s Wand Shop where the wand actually selects the buyer.

Only merchandise actually featured in the books are sold – not that there’s any shortage of that – to the extent that Harry Potter books are only sold at the end of the last ride because they are inconsistent with the theme.  A recent article in a local Louisiana paper says that the only thing out of place in the park is the modern looking people in shorts and t-shirts.  So, as dorky as it sounds, I’m intrigued.  I don’t have kids to take with me, but I’d kind of like to go!

Finally, check out this interesting article a friend sent me from the New Yorker, “Fresh Hell”: It’s all about why dystopian young adult fiction is so popular right now.  It talks a lot about the Hunger Games and the Uglies series, and a few others.  I think dystopian fiction has always been really popular among teens, for some of the reasons discussed in this article – the life of a teen IS a dystopia.  High school IS hell.  You are more or less powerless as a teen, and freedom from oppression is what life is all about.  As adults we have more perspective, but to a teen, what happens day to day means everything.  All of that makes teens great fictional characters and makes their stories more interesting.

Review: Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins

(Spoiler alert: don’t read if you’re still planning to read The Hunger Games)

I was surprised by how much I enjoyed The Hunger Games – I was expecting Twilight but these books are fun, thoughtful reads . I was also put off at first by the fact that Hunger Games seemed like some combination of Shirley Jackson’s The Lottery and Stephen King’s The Running Man.  But there aren’t that many original plots in the world, and these are good ones. Collins takes these ideas and creates a highly original world.

Catching Fire has a tough act to follow as a sequel and as the middle book of a trilogy.  The book immediately draws you in, right where the last left off.  Katniss has survived the Games, and she gets to spend the rest of her life as a wealthy, adored celebrity.  Perfect, right?  Except we already know from The Hunger Games that Katniss will actually have to spend the rest of her life coaching young competitors in the Games, so she will actually have to relive her experience again and again. And she’ll actually become a part of this tyrannical system of government that forces children to kill each other to survive.

On top of that, the Games have placed her in the impossible position of having to pretend she loves Peeta.  It may be she actually does love him; or maybe she could have loved him if her feelings hadn’t been so manipulated.  So now she returns home to deal with her feelings for Peeta and her friend Gale.  Collins has created something more interesting than the standard love triangle here because Katniss really has no idea how she feels or what it means to be in a relationship.  (Although this can also be a detractor at times.  Kat is oddly asexual for a teenage girl; Collins describes kissing like she’s never done it before.)

I don’t want to give too much of the plot away.  In some ways, Catching Fire was not as engaging a read as the first one.  The book starts out strong, drags in the middle, then picks up again in the second half.  But Hunger Games had the advantage of a simple, straightforward plot device – character thrown into a conflict, fights for survival, and at the same time grows and develops as a person.  On the other hand, in this book Collins is really freed up to be more creative with the story – and we see that in her depiction of the Quell Games and the creation of characters who are more multi-dimensional.  Also, she moves from a story focused on the survival of a couple of people, to broader ideas of tyranny, and revolution.  Can one person make a difference? And if you could make that difference, could you sacrifice yourself, or the people you love, for a larger ideal?  I think the idea that one person, whether they intend to or not, can spark a revolution must be true.  Also interesting is the idea that Kat is the spark but Peeta is kind of the conscience — although even he is willing to kill people in the Games which I found contradictory.

The end surprised and satisfied, and definitely kept me anticipating the next book.  For people who like this series, check out the Uglies series by Scott Westerfeld, a fantastic writer of young adult paranormal/steampunk/dystopian fiction.  Also check out this article a friend sent me from the New Yorker, “Fresh Hell” – it’s all about why young adult dystopian fiction is so popular right now (though I’m not sure that’s anything new).