I have just finished the Drowned Cities by Paolo Bacigalupi and this is
my review. The Drowned Cities is the companion novel to Ship Breaker, which I
read in 2012 or something. It’s not a direct continuation, so the fact that I
had forgotten most of Ship Breaker wasn’t a big deal to be honest.
Plot:
The Drowned Cities is set in a sort of dystopian USA. It’s about a young
woman named Mahlia and a young boy called Mouse who are both orphans of war and
who live with a kind doctor who took them in. Mahlia is half Chinese, her
mother went out with a Chinese Peacekeeper and now that the Chinese are hated
Mahlia and other “castoffs” like her are seen as suspicious. Soldiers from one
of the factions cut off Mahlia’s right hand for fun, and she tries to sort of
slip by under the radar. Mahlia and Mouse stumble over a half-man, Tool, who is
part man, part tiger, part dog, part killing machine. He has been chased into a
swamp by soldier boys answering to a warlord, Colonel Stern. Mahlia sees the
half-man as her way out if she can save him. The soldiers take Mouse and Mahlia
has a choice to help Mouse or to get out and get away.
Thoughts:
It was amazing. It truly was. It was fast paced and exciting. The action
didn’t really seem to stop, or let up. There’s also tension through the whole
book, it doesn’t let you feel safe, which is interesting. In most books you
sort of assume that the main protagonist is safe from most things, but in this
book I had no clue what would happen to her.
The book is about loyalty and friendship, which I think is an
interesting subject. A lot of YA dystopia is based around a love story, but
there isn’t actually a love story in the Drowned Cities, which makes my black
little heart so happy. I’m bitter. It is a story about Mahlia trying to get her
friend back because she owes him her life. They’re not in love with each other,
they’re friends and they depend on each other. Mahlia overcomes all this logic
and pragmatism, and fear, to try to help her friend, even though it seems
completely hopeless.
The book also looks into child soldiers. Because there were wars and
battles and drowning cities there aren’t a lot of adults left, especially in
the armies, so most of the armies are made up of mostly young boys. And to see
how they turned someone into a soldier was fascinating. They have pretty much
killed his entire village and taken him away from everything he knows and they
force and scare him into service before getting his loyalty, and it’s
fascinating to see how they do it.
I thought Tool was amazing. He is part man, part dog, tiger, coyote,
part weapon. He doesn’t really have loyalty to anyone, being something of an
anomaly among the half-man pack. He’s very fascinating in that you sort of
assume he’s this brute who rips people apart. And while he does that he is also
very cultured. While the other people in the book, like Mahlia and the
soldiers, speak this rougher, tough accent with dropped gs and everything, Tool
speaks like a scholar. He sounds like he’s teaching University English. He’s an
excellent strategist, and he is a pragmatist, and obviously he can rip people
to shreds, but he will do what keeps him out of trouble. Not because he’s a
coward, but because he doesn’t want to die, which is fair. He was made to kill
people and he’s been pushed and punished to do what others have forced him to
do, and he just wants to get out.
I really liked the soldier boys. I liked to hate them, sort of. They’re
obviously pushed into this life and while they do awful things it’s not
necessarily something they want to do. It does seem like they enjoy their
status, and they enjoy the prostitutes and they enjoy killing people and
injuring people, and they enjoy the power they have. They can just go into a
town and take what they want, which you know, that’s nice. But I love them
anyway for the loyalty they have to each other. They care about each other and
they have qualms, and they were given no other chance for survival, so what
else would they do but fight to survive? Child soldiers make me so sad,
thankfully, but I think it’s good to read about them and how they work, to
understand them.
I feel like the ending was a little rushed and neatly done. It felt like
it suddenly just ended and it was like: this’ll turn out great. Now obviously,
the ending is very open-ended, so anything could happen, and Mahlia isn’t
really surrounded by friends, but there is hope. Which is probably necessary
now that I think about it. The book is so dark, and bleak, and there is so much
distress, and so much horror and war, so I enjoy the hope, but I just thought
it seemed a bit simple and easy. That was long and convoluted, but okay. That’s
just what I do.
Final thoughts:
It was grim and dark, and it went some really creepy, sadistic, horrible
places, and it was hard to stomach sometimes, but that just made it sort of
amazing. It was good.