I enjoyed this one– and it vanished quickly. It’s much less… repulsively brutal than The Windup Girl was. Nailer is a great lead character; his relationships, good and bad, are great to empathize with. His luck, his relationship with Pima and later with “lucky girl” and his wife– they all work, and feel natural. His connection to lucky girl makes sense and follows only because of his other luck.
The world is familiar; the ship breaking experience is all too similar to news articles about modern day work going on in India today. The world is well built– it’s the same future as in The Windup Girl, a post oil collapse and runaway greenhouse gas disaster. The way the wealthy skim above the changes and continue to run everything runs all too true. I bought the boardroom/ship maneuvers too– politics, greed, and piracy all trudge along into the future.
After this one, I’m really looking forward to tracking down more books by Paolo Bacigalupi.