Ship Breaker
- 336
- Pages
- about 6 h
- Reading time
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Our view
“Ship Breaker” builds a convincing drowned future on the Gulf Coast, where survivors strip beached oil tankers for copper. Bacigalupi’s prose earns praise, and the story raises moral questions about killing. Some readers stay at a distance from the characters and miss an emotional payoff, and for some of them the last third drags. Two more novels, “The Drowned Cities” and “Tool of War”, are set in the same world.
The view of the BookRank editors, written from readers’ ratings and comments. It does not affect the score or the book’s place in a ranking.
About the book
Ship Breaker is a 2010 young adult novel by Paolo Bacigalupi set in a post-apocalyptic future. Human civilization is in decline for ecological reasons. The polar ice caps have melted, and New Orleans is underwater. On the Gulf Coast nearby, humanity has reverted to survival mode and a small economy has grown from the scavenging of washed up oil tankers for bits of copper and other valuables. The book is followed by The Drowned Cities (2012) and Tool of War (2017) taking place in the same fictional universe, together making up the Ship Breaker trilogy.
Reading order · Ship Breaker Trilogy
Full order & progress →- Ship BreakerThis book
7.77.7 / 10 - The Drowned Cities
7.87.8 / 10 - Tool of War
–Not ranked yet
Where the score comes from
The sources average 7.6 across 147 ratings — not yet many, so the reader vote carries 50% of the weight and the rest pulls toward the Young adult average of 7.8. That is how 7.7 comes out.
| Source | Average | Ratings | Weight |
|---|---|---|---|
| Open Library | 7.5 | 19 | 13% |
| Hardcover | 7.6 | 128 | 87% |
Frequently asked
What age is Ship Breaker for?
Ship Breaker sits on the Young adult shelf in the sources we use, which by convention means roughly ages 13 and up. This is a guide from the book’s category, not a publisher’s age rating. It has 336 pages — shorter than 81% of the ranked books in Young adult.
In this book
Themes this book shares with others — each leads to the best books on it.
If you liked this
The same shelf — Young adult — and a score of 7.7, the closest to this book.
