Ship Breaker

Ship Breaker by Paolo Bacigalupi

Ship Breaker #1

Description via The StoryGraph:

"A gritty, high-stakes adventure set in a futuristic world where oil is scarce, but loyalty is scarcer."

In America's Gulf Coast region, grounded oil tankers are being broken down for parts by crews of young people. Nailer, a teenage boy, works the light crew, scavenging for copper wiring just to make quota-and hopefully live to see another day. But when, by luck or by chance, he discovers an exquisite clipper ship beached during a recent hurricane, Nailer faces the most important decision of his life: Strip the ship for all it's worth or rescue its lone survivor, a beautiful and wealthy girl who could lead him to a better life....

In this powerful novel, Paolo Bacigalupi delivers a thrilling, fast-paced adventure set in a vivid and raw, uncertain future.

Read from August 13th through 21st of 2025


“Family. It was just a word…Could see its letters all strung together. But it was a symbol, too. And people thought they knew what it meant…It was a thing everyone had an opinion about—that it was all you had when you didn’t have anything else, that family was there, that blood was thicker than water, whatever. But when Nailer thought about it, most of these words and ideas just seemed like good excuses for people to behave badly and get away with it. Family wasn’t more reliable than marriages or friendships…maybe less…The blood bond was nothing. It was the people that mattered. If they covered your back, and you covered theirs, then maybe that was worth calling family.”


Alexx T. Holden

Speculative fiction author. Podcaster. Ally. Spreading the Woke Mind Virus. AoE Anxiety +15 DoT. Ya’ll means all.

Previous
Previous

The Wasp Factory

Next
Next

Kindred