Tag: Adventure

Ship Breaker

Book Review

A post-apocalyptic, swashbuckling adventure, Ship Breaker begins the story of the young teenager Nailer, who works the “light crew” with a ship scavenging outfit on a beach on the gulf coast. Old oil tanker wrecks wash up on the beach, and Nailer climbs through their tight ductworks, stripping copper wiring for scavenge. In a future world where city-destroying category six hurricanes are a regular occurrence and the coast is lined with drowned cities and treacherous swamps, Nailer lives with his violent, strung-out father in a shack on the beach. When Nailer finds the ultimate scavenge that could bring him great wealth, he must make the tough decision to take the scavenged goods and continue life as usual on the beach, or face the unknown by rescuing a survivor for the risky and questionable possibility of great reward. Adding another complication, the survivor just so happens to be a beautiful and swanky girl.

Bacigalupi has constructed a gritty, violent adventure tale set against the backdrop of a future American gulf coast laid waste by climate change and environmental catastrophe. This book is smart but compulsively, easily readable, and is the first of a series: look for its sequel, The Drowned Cities, to appear later this year. Highly recommended for fans of The Hunger Games, this is another brutal teenage adventure rife with strong ethical dilemmas.

Ship Breaker
Written by Paolo Bacigalupi
Little, Brown & Company
326 p.
Release Date: May 1, 2010
ISBN: 9780316056212

The Kneebone Boy

Book Review

Three siblings: Otto, Lucia, and Max; the story is told by one of them, but the teller has been sworn not to reveal him or herself by the other siblings.  They live with their dad in a small town in England where they were long ago labeled the weird kids of the town, but only because their mother mysteriously vanished and/or died before they were old enough to really remember her, and the super-tall and oldest brother Otto never speaks and always wears a scarf.  The nasty theory is that he strangled his own mother with the scarf in a rage of madness, and their father covered it up to protect his son.

With The Kneebone Boy, American author Ellen Potter lets loose her anglophilia and successfully hijacks the magic of the long and storied history of British children’s literature, from Lewis Carroll and C.S. Lewis to Roald Dahl and J. K. Rowling, that she clearly loves so much; except there is no magic in The Kneebone Boy.  Our unidentified narrator makes this ever so clear from the outset, lest we end up disappointed.

Oddities?  Does the rumored existence of a boy born with bat ears and fur all over his body and locked in the top chamber of a crumbling old castle sound normal to you?

Mysteries? If a missing mom and a furry boy locked in a castle aren’t enough mysteries for you, then you are a tougher reader than me.

Adventures? Would getting in a fight with a tattooed thug while stranded in the streets of London parentless count?  How about exploring the treacherous secret passageways of the aforementioned crumbling castle, perched on a cliff overlooking the sea?

With all that, who needs magic?

Told by one of the cleverest narrative voices I’ve read in a long time and abounding with the weirdness, mystery, and plot twists of the children’s books I grew up loving, this is the first book I’ve read in a while that made me genuinely excited about children’s literature written primarily for children.  For that, and even though and maybe actually partly because of the fact that this book probably won’t win any awards, it was my favorite book of 2010.

The Kneebone Boy
Written by Ellen Potter
Feiwel & Friends
288 p.
ISBN: 9780312377724
Release Date: September 14, 2010