Ship Breaker

People who have read the (one year earlier) Windup Girl will find aspects of the setting familiar, but it is not identical. This book does not talk about calorie scarcity which really drives Windup Girl but focuses on resurgence of sail transport. A triumphant and uncaring capitalism probably prevents the book from being solarpunk.

As for plot, young boy from underclass rescues princess, has adventures on land and at sea. It is immersive and makes the point well enough about human driven climate change, but it didn't touch me as deeply as some other stories in e.g. Pump six. Not sure why, could just be the others were my first exposure to the author's world building.

I guess this is targeted at young adults? No explicit sex, some light (hopeless?) romance. Reference to impoverished women forced to sex work as a means of survival.

I enjoyed this while I read it, but I put it down at the halfway mark and just didn't pick it up again. I thought it was well-written, well-paced and had all the elements to make it a solid piece of fiction, but there was no 'zing', no wow factor that made it stand out against other solid pieces of fiction. In the end other books with more interesting premises and promises took me away.