The Drowned Cities (review)

In this companion to the Printz Award-winning Ship Breaker (BCCB 9/10), Bacigalupi returns to the dystopian wreckage of the southeastern United States in the not-too-distant future. We're a bit farther inland this time, among subsistence farmers and hunters who are trying to scratch a living in the wilderness and hoping to avoid attacks from the warring militia who have moved into the power vacuum created when Chinese peacekeepers left for home. War encroaches anyway, and a half-Chinese, half-African-American girl named Mahlia, considered a social pariah, is an easy target for the boy soldiers who invade her community. Her sole bit of luck is happening on an injured and dying Tool, a hybrid manbeast introduced in the previous novel. Tool holds her friend Mouse hostage while Mahlia goes for antibiotics, but the soldiers—who have a score to settle with Tool—delay her mission. Soon Mahlia takes off with Tool, Mouse is recruited by the United Patriot Front, and the UPF is out for revenge against Mahlia for setting vicious coywolv (sic) on them. Tool is a sturdy unifying element for the first and second volumes, and his character allows Bacigalupi to expand and develop the politics of his imagined world while recasting the hybrid this time around as a metaphor for war itself. As in Ship Breaker, some main characters escape with some slim hope for a better life, but the senseless battle for a ruined land goes on. Expect a third volume; this just can't be over yet.