Paolo Bacigalupi writes real women in SHIP BREAKER

You don't need me to tell you Ship Breaker is an amazing novel.  It won the 2011 Printz Award and was a National Book Award Finalist.  A lot of people much smarter than me agree Paolo Bacigalupi has written a masterpiece.

Ship Breaker has some of the best world-building I've ever read.  You might expect an epic post-apocalyptic sci-fi pirating novel to be a little far-fetched, but the world Bacigalupi has created felt so real, gritty, and complete I never questioned any aspect of the complex setting.

Nailer is a perfectly flawed hero.  He's loyal and kind, yet fierce.  I was swept away by the story and captivated by Bacgalupi's prose.  The danger and desperation of Bright Sands Beach and Nailer's life of poverty and abuse felt so real, I ached for him to escape.

But more than just an excellent story, I was impressed with the women in this book.  Bacigalupi created a stark dichotomy between rich and poor, or swank and ship breaker, and in doing so he was careful to craft whole and mutli-faceted female characters.  So when Nailer meets Nita, their differences aren't about gender, but about economics and culture.

So often stories that follow the hero's journey have oversimplified archetypal females: the mother, the witch, and the sex-object love interest.  Bright Sands Beach is full of smart, tough, hard-working women who are fleshed out as complex characters.  There's smart and loyal Pima, Nailer's best friend.  There's Sadna, who acts like a mother to Nailer but also beats the crap out of the villain.  There's Sloth the betrayer, and Blue Eyes the crafty cult-member.

Even Nita who is weaker than the other girls because she's grown up in the lap of luxury and needs to be rescued a few times, is awfully tough and pretty smart.  She helps to save herself like any self-respecting heroine should and she has an awesome line at the end basically telling Nailer to suck it up.

I also loved how Bacigalupi crafts the romance.  Nailer's culture values hard-work and the ability to earn a living, so we know he's falling for Nita when he compliments her ability to skin eels.

Ship Breaker is a dark adventure with some tough chicks who hold their own.